Marketing Chains, Strange Movies, New Indecency

 "The View From the Phlipside" is a media commentary program airing on WRFA-LP, Jamestown NY.  It can be heard Tuesday through Friday just after 8 AM and 5 PM.  The following are scripts which may not exactly match the aired version of the program.  Mostly because the host may suddenly choose to add or subtract words at a moments notice.  WRFA-LP is not responsible for any such silliness or the opinions expressed.  You can listen to a live stream of WRFA or find a podcast of this program at wrfalp.com.  Copyright 2012 by Jay Phillippi.  All Rights Reserved.  You like what you see?  Drop me a line and we can talk.



Program scripts from week of June 25, 2012

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, radio, the movies and more.  I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View from the Phlipside. 

Marketing Chains

  It must be said right at the outset today the I am utterly unqualified to comment on fashion.  I have never been fashionable, I am not currently fashionable and I have no interest in fashion in any way, shape or form.  Anyone who knows me will verify all of the above.  So I can not comment on the fashion aspects of this story.  I will only note that the fashion puzzles me just as much as the marketing aspects.

And the marketing aspects puzzle me to an infinite degree.

Adidas has announced that it has discontinued any work on its JS Roundhouse Mid sneaker.  The early promotional photos had been shared with its fans on the Adidas Facebook page.  It’s a classic marketing move.  Give the fans a little taste of what is in the pipeline, get them pumped up and excited about what will be hitting the stores in the future.

What they didn’t expect was the overwhelming negative reaction that those promo shots elicited.  The shoes are your basic modern basket ball inspired sneaker with one major exception.  That would be the the bright yellow plastic chain and shackle that are part of each shoe.  The chain connects to just above the heel and then to a replica shackle that goes around just above the ankle with what appears to be a velcro closure.  Try and picture that for just a moment.  Think slave or prison shackles like you seen in the movies and imagine them made of plastic and vinyl and attached to a pair of sneakers.

Then ask yourself “Who thought this was a good idea?”.  Again, I’m not competent to comment on fashion.   And an awful lot of what I see in fashion makes no sense to me what so ever.  But how do you pitch this product?  The design is the work of someone named Jeremy Scott and supposedly the design has nothing to do with slavery.  How do you look at this and not see visual references to slavery?  Allowing that the fashion folks might look past the concept how did the marketing people not get up on the conference table and shout that this was a BAD idea.  A Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaad idea.

Previous Scott designs for Adidas included Panda bears and Mickey Mouse.  And somehow someone thought that chains and shackles was the next logical step?

At least Adidas was smart enough to bow to public response.  There’s edgy fashion design and then there’s just over the edge. 

Strange Movies

I honestly have no idea what to make of this latest trend in the movies.  Actually I may even be jumping the gun by calling it a trend.  There’s really only one movie actually up and running but there’s another even stranger one under consideration.  So maybe it’s time to think a little bit about where this is all headed.

The movie that is starting me off is Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.  I will admit that the 16th President is something of a boyhood hero of mine so I have some trouble wrapping my mind around the whole concept.  Based on a 2010 book of the same name it tells the story of the young Abe who discovers that not only are vampires real but they caused his beloved mother’s death.  He vows revenge and eventually discovers that the vamps are planning on taking over the United States.  I haven’t seen the movie although I probably will just out of curiosity.

I’m not a big vampire literature fan (a point of some contention with my daughter) but it can be fun at times.  We are big Buffy fans for example (to be clear TV Buffy NOT movie Buffy).  I’m just not sure what the answer to the question of “Why” is.  Abe Lincoln vampire hunter.  Really?

Now if you think that’s out there then the next one waiting in the wings might even be more head scratching.  Rob Cohen, the man who directed such high intensity action movies like XXX and The Fast and the Furious, has signed on for an action thriller movie on the life of...Sir Isaac Newton?

Yes the great English mathematician and scientist will have the last 30 years of his life turned into some kind of butt kicking science action flick.  I think.  I’m not sure how much rock’em sock’em the great man got into between his late fifties and mid eighties.  The project is very early on.  At this point it doesn’t even have a title.  I would expect that a lot of its future will be based on how well old Abe does in the vampire killing movie.

In the end I just scratch my head over the whole thing.  Folks younger than I have very little trouble in deciding to just re-write other people’s stories to suit their own desires.  That’s always struck me as a little disrespectful.

And turning a great president or a brilliant scientist into something a silly as a vampire hunter or action hero strikes me as the height of disrespectful.  Surely there are better movie ideas out there waiting to be made.

New Indecency

I want you to think about this.  Over the last 9 years would you be surprised to be told that there were 1.5 million complaints filed with the Federal Communications Commission in relation to some 9,700 television broadcasts?  That’s over 166,666 complaints per year.  And actually that’s just the backlog at the FCC.  I’ll admit that number rather stunned me when I read it.

It came up because the Supreme Court just ruled on an FCC regulation that will have an impact on that backlog.  The rule under question had to do with penalties handed down over what are called “fleeting” instances of obscenity or nudity during prime time hours.  The Commission had been handing down some massive fines because of things like a stray bad word or a bit too much skin being shown during those primary hours.  Think of things like the unexpected F-bomb dropped by rock singer Bono at the Golden Globes award ceremony a few years back.  In fact the rule in question is often called the Golden Globe rule.  The justices ruled 8-0 with Justice Sotomayor recusing herself.  The logic was that the FCC hadn’t given the networks enough of a warning that even fleeting instances could result in penalties.  They chose to sidestep the question of whether or not the rules violated the First Amendment of the Constitution.

It’s interesting to me that both scripted and unscripted shows are treated the same by the Commission and the Court.  That doesn’t seem quite logical to me.  A scripted program knows whether or not the actors are going to say bad words or if someone is going to strip off in the middles of the second act.  Setting up the rules for those instances should be pretty straightforward.  What has always amazed me is the size of the penalties that things like Bono’s unscripted speech or the costume malfunction at the Super Bowl a couple years ago.  Once upon a time you didn’t really have to worry about it because the world was a better behaved place.  Of course you can solve most of these problems with the use of a simple delay.  The problem has been that sometimes the events are so fast and so small (like both of the recent Super Bowl incidents) that they slip by the delay operators.

In reality I wonder how many of those million and a half complaints are things so small that most of us wouldn’t even bother with them?  Which makes me wonder if both the FCC and the Supreme Court of the United States don’t have more important things to be worrying about?


Call that the View From the Phlipside.

Movies for June

Hugo  (2011) - OK let's see just how brave I am.  Take one of the greatest directors of my lifetime, add in 11 Oscar nominations and 5 wins and what do you get?  A nice if rather underwhelming movie.  This is Martin Scorsese's first 3D movie and his first family movie in many years.  It is the story of a boy named Hugo in 1930's Paris.  Orphaned he lives in a Paris train station, attempting to fix an automaton (a simple kind of robot) that his father had been working on at the time of his death.  He will meet a young girl and French film legend George Melies (played by Ben Kingsley).  Melies is based on the historic French movie innovator.  To be honest the first third of the movie is slow and dull.  Once young Hugo gets involved with the old man and Scorsese can start to explore the history of film (a favorite subject) it gets much more interesting.  Kingsley is always worth watching as well. The movie also features Christopher Lee in a small role and Sacha Baron Cohen plays the station cop and is easily the worst thing about the movie.  In the end the movie is only OK at best (which is supported by the fact the movie lost money worldwide).  Which really feels like a failure given all the things it had going for it.
Rating - ** Not Impressed

The Adventures of Tintin  (2011) - Well let's just re-run the last review.  Great director (Stephen Spielberg) doing something new (first animated movie) and exploring a favorite topic (Spielberg fell in love with the French language original comics when Raiders of the Lost Ark was compared to them) all done in 3D.  Neither of these movies make me change my mind about 3D.
  Tintin is a reporter with a nose for trouble.  With his faithful pooch Snowy he explores the mystery of a sunken treasure with assorted adventures that require chases, explosions and even a dead body or two.  The movie didn't do as well with the awards as Hugo but did much better at the box office.  It was fun but not great.
Rating - *** Worth a Look

Capote (2005) - Then you get a movie like this.  I remember seeing Truman Capote on TV when I was growing up.  The words I have always associated with him are "strange little man".   Philip Seymour Hoffman's portrayal of the American author is all of that and a whole lot more.  This is an Oscar win that makes perfect sense when you see the movie.  The action follows Capote's research into the 1959 murders of four members of the Clutter family of Kansas.  Along the way he enters into a strange relationship with one of the murderers.  In the end you will have to decide who used whom more.  The reality is that Capote never completed another book after the enormous success of In Cold Blood (which is a brilliant and chilling book if you like true crime stuff.  Capote at his best, which is astoundingly good).  Hoffman, Catherine Keener as Nelle Harper Lee (yes, THAT Harper Lee.  At the same time as the movie events To Kill A Mockingbird was also published.  The shallow fashionable crowd that flocked around Capote in New York never really grasp the fact that a second brilliant writer is in their midst) and Clifton Collins Jr as murderer Perry Smith are all wonderful.  But the star is Hoffman.  His performance is nuanced and chilling.  Capote cajoles and lies and plays the diva to get his story.  In the end it nearly destroys him.  An astounding movie.
Rating - **** Gotta See It

The Man Who Never Was (1956) A pretty nicely done piece about one of the greatest intelligence deceptions of World War II.  The goal was to fool the Nazis into believing that the Allies were going to invade Greece rather than Sicily as the southern front.  The problem was that no one in their right mind would think anything of the sort.  Sicily was the obvious choice.  What British Intelligence came up with was the simple trick of letting false plans fall into enemy hands.  The hard part was creating the false identity for the body that was to wash ashore in Spain.  Oh yeah, and where to find a dead body that looked like it had died in a plane crash and drowned.  Clifton Webb does a nice job as the brains behind it all Ewen Montagu (who appears in the film early on as an Air Warden.  Even gets a line!).  I've read the book several times and the movie really does a nice job of turning the history into a compelling movie story.  The identity of the body was a closely guarded secret for many years at the family's request.  Today the grave site carries both the real and assumed names of the man who never was.
Rating - Worth A Look ***

The Gold Rush - (1925) Time to catch up on some of the classics of the early cinema.  This is perhaps the greatest of all of Charlie Chaplin's movies.  It features his trademark character The Little Tramp this time in Alaska during the gold rush years.  If you've ever seen footage from a Chaplin movie the chance is about 1 in 3 that you saw something from this movie (probably the dancing dinner roll section).  What still catches me about the best movies from this time period is how well the movies really hold up.  Yes there is a naivete that we don't have any more that is easy to mock.  I think that probably says more that we are less than we were rather than that we've become more sophisticated.  The version I watched was a 1940s re-release where Chaplin had added music and a narration track.  The idea was to get some more mileage out of a silent film at a time when no one wanted to see them any more.  I don't know that it helped much at the box office.  I certainly can't say that I thought it added a lot to the movie other than the chance to hear Chaplin's voice.  The movie is worth seeing simply because it was Chaplin at the peak of his story telling skills and some of the best of the silents.
Rating - *** Worth A Look (for the average movie viewer)  ****- Gotta See It (for the serious movie fan)

The Big Lebowski - (1998) As a committed Coen Brothers fan I'm not sure how I've never seen this movie the whole way through.  I know I've seen parts of it but this was the first time beginning to end.  Those sentences will no doubt elicit a burst of amazement and outrage among the Lebowski fan clan.  As much as its a cult hit now it's interesting to note that in 1998 it was 96th on the list of gross movie earnings that year.  The initial reaction was lukewarm with several critics comparing it unfavorably to Fargo, the Coen's previous movie.  This is classic Coen to me.  Perfectly ordinary America seen through a lens that is just slightly out of focus.  A world that is just a half a bubble off plumb.  Language will be a problem for some folks.  The "F-Bomb" gets dropped 292 times according to IMDB.  There's also some nudity. But the characters are true classics.  Everyone has a very definite idea of exactly what reality looks like except The Dude.  He simply wishes to live his life quietly which is the one thing that everyone including his friends seem to be determined not to allow.  In the end what can you say other than The Dude Abides.
Rating - *****  Put It In Your Collection

Books - June

The Art of the Steal - Christopher Mason (2005)  What's the sign of a truly fine writer?  Taking a topic as unexciting as the collusion between the world's two great auction houses to fix prices and turning it into a fascinating story is no small feat.  Mason does have several large personalities at the center of the story and that helps a great deal.  The book takes you into the high stakes world of the fine art auction world, a world dominated by the two great auction houses, Sotheby's and Christie's.  They are the only players in this arena on a worldwide basis.  And for several centuries they were old school, class ridden English institutions.  When the old ways start to break down both houses will reach out to new leadership who will fundamentally change the way business is done.  One of the changes is agreeing to fix prices on certain fees that will cost clients millions of dollars and deposit that money directly into the auction houses pockets.  The question of who made those decisions would eventually end up in U.S. Federal court and several of the actors would face serious prison time.  Mason weaves the story beautifully and draws you deeply into the story of this arcane world.
Rating - *** Worth a Look

Lilith- A Snake in the Grass - Jack L. Chalker - (1981) Imagine a solar system with four planets inside the livable zone around the sun.  On the world known as Lilith you will receive the potential of great power very much like magic and where sickness and injury are no longer a problem.  The problem is that it all comes at a price - you can never leave the solar system or you will die.  Humanity uses the Warden planets as prisons and now suspects those prisoners may be conspiring with an unknown alien race.  Jack L. Chalker kicks off a four book series with this one which Phoenix Pick is now re-publishing them.  Chalker does a great job weaving the story and exploring all the possibilities of the world he creates.
Rating - *** Worth a Look

Lost Kingdom: Hawaii's Last Queen, the Sugar Kings, and America's First Imperial Adventure   - Julia Flynn Siler - The story of how the U.S. gained a foothold in what would become the 50th state.  Sadly like too much of American history it involves devastation of indigenous people, lying, subversion of ideals and a blindness to any other point of view other than our own.  For those who think that the role of big business in the halls of power is a new trend in our history (which would only prove that you've read very little of our history) this shows that it's been around a long time.  With the same goals and often the same techniques.  Certainly the results are the same.  Profits are snatched short term, not thought is given to long term impact and the every day population takes it in the shorts at the end.  A cautionary tale.  Written in a more academic historical style the book isn't a bad read but does get bogged down in details sometimes.
Rating - *** Worth a Look

The Enemy of God - Robert Daley - Daley is the former Deputy Commissioner of the NYPD and a writer who has gained a solid reputation.  This effort however was disappointing.  The main characters, four boyhood friends raised in the Roman Catholic church and its schools, all failed to engage me.  All four are paper cutouts of men too dedicated to their own internal drives and therefore poor husbands, friends and in large part human beings.  The story centers on the death of the one who went into the priesthood.  The other three (the cop, the lawyer and the journalist) are determined to figure out the truth.  Along the way they display a lack of concern for wives, friends, colleagues or even common sense.  At the end you get a rather silly and unconvincing twist ending.  Daley can write certainly but this was just disappointing.
Rating - ** Unimpressed

A Graveyard for Lunatics - Ray Bradbury - In honor of the passing of what I believe to be one of the greatest American authors I'm going to work my way through as much Bradbury this year as I can.  I was sorry to discover a very thin selection at the local public library.  This one is from my personal collection however and it's a favorite.  The story of two young men living out their dreams in the movie industry of the 1950s.  In true Bradbury style nothing is quite what it looks like especially not the quiet Middle America streets found on the fantasy back lots of Hollywood.  Bradbury's characters are large and energetic and fling themselves into the action of the book.  Because how else would people who make their living in Hollywood behave?  Between my love of the author and my live of the great days of Hollywood this one is a keeper for me.  I won't say that it's one of his all time best.
Rating - **** Gotta Read it

Taming Trolls, Lies and Facebook and Old School Outrage

 "The View From the Phlipside" is a media commentary program airing on WRFA-LP, Jamestown NY.  It can be heard Tuesday through Friday just after 8 AM and 5 PM.  The following are scripts which may not exactly match the aired version of the program.  Mostly because the host may suddenly choose to add or subtract words at a moments notice.  WRFA-LP is not responsible for any such silliness or the opinions expressed.  You can listen to a live stream of WRFA or find a podcast of this program at wrfalp.com.  Copyright 2012 by Jay Phillippi.  All Rights Reserved.  You like what you see?  Drop me a line and we can talk.



Program scripts from week of June 18, 2012

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, radio, the movies and more.  I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View from the Phlipside. 

Taming Trolls

There are few things more infuriating online than trolls.  Trolls are folks who choose to use the anonymity of the Internet to abuse anyone with whom they disagree.  This often involves abusive language, outrageous statements or even ongoing harassment of other people.  We’ve talked about trolls before.  Conventional wisdom says “Don’t Feed the Trolls”, meaning you should just ignore them.  Most trolls are interested in the amount of attention they can get.  In the end the fact is that there is very little you can do about trolls.

At least until now.  In the United Kingdom they’ve decided to strike back against trolls.  A new law is going to put at least some limits on what trolls can say and still get away anonymously.  Before your only choice if you felt you had been defamed on a website was to sue the site owner.  In many ways that was never really fair and allowed the real culprit to get away without penalty.  Under the new law if you are defamed the website operator will be required to give up the information they have on the troll.  That information will be sufficient to identify that person and then you can sue them.

It’s already had its first test when a man was convicted of sending an offensive e-mail to a Member of Parliament threatening the safety of her children if she didn’t stop posting on Twitter.  The court gave 60 year old Frank Zimmerman a six month jail term suspended for two years and a list of other folks he is not allowed to contact.  My assumption is that he had been trolling them as well.

The bottom line is that trolls are cowards and bottom feeders.  Acting out of their own fears and insecurities they lash out from behind the screen of anonymity because they don’t have the courage of their convictions.  While I’m certain some in this country will be concerned about First Amendment rights I think the law can very easily fit within our understanding of Freedom of Expression.  Remember, your First Amendment rights are not unlimited.  There have always been carefully crafted boundaries for what is and isn’t protected speech.  And there are large swathes of trollish expression that we can legitimately legislate against.

If you want to call me names that’s probably protected.  Defamation, harassment and threatening my own or my families safety is not.  Nor should it be. 

Lies and Facebook

As if the folks at Facebook needed a few more problems on their plate it looks like there is one headed their way.  Oh by the way just for the record who was it who noted that the IPO for Facebook stock was going to be a complete circus?  Me.  Ok, me and a couple hundred other people.  But hey, I called it.

Meanwhile to add insult to the injury of lost billions of dollars Facebook is facing a rather vexing problem.  It begins with the fact that a largish number of folks on Facebook are big fat liars.  And that the result is that the social network just might find itself out of compliance with a federal law because of it.

The law in question is called COPPA, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act which went into effect in the spring of 2000.  The basic idea is to protect children under the age of 13 from having all kinds of personal information gathered about them by websites and used to target commercials to them.  A lot of online folks have gotten around the rules by simply not allowing people under the age of 13 to use their site.

And that’s where the lying comes in.  LOTS of underage users simply lie about their age.  Consumers Report says seven and a half million as of 2011.  And a lot of their parents not only know about it but approve of it.  Beyond the whole question of teaching our kids that lying is OK in pursuit of what you want (which it isn’t) there’s still the question of what our children may be exposed to because of it all.

It’s one thing if a 12 year old says they’re 13.  They probably won’t be exposed to anything too age appropriate.  I am personally aware of 11 and 12 year olds who claim to be 16, 17 or 18 on Facebook.  Now we’re in a whole different world.  Information about our kids is not only shared between Facebook and its advertisers its sold or given to third party developers as well.  A thought that has probably never occurred to the parents assisting their children in their online lies.

In the end Facebook wants your kids for one reason and one reason only.  So they can sell to them.  COPPA may not be perfect but it’s designed with the best interests of our kids in mind.

Might be nice if parents tried to do the same thing.

Old School Outrage

I got my start in the media in newsrooms.  At the college radio stations where I first began your first job was usually reading the news.  My first professional job was as a one man news room at a tiny radio station in the middle of no where.  My attitudes towards the news media especially are old school.  I believe in all those old standards about trying for objectivity, checking on sources and make the story the star.  For me the ultimate news man remains Edward R. Murrow.

So you can probably imagine my reaction to what happened during a White House press conference this past week.  The party in question was Neil Munro a correspondent for an online news site called The Daily Caller.  He’s not a regular member of the White House press corps but one of the folks who are rotated in and out.  It’s a way that minor news outlets can still get some access.  At a press conference held at the White House Rose Garden Munro suddenly shouted out a question in the middle of the President’s speech.  The President corrected him but Munro persisted for a moment before subsiding.

Munro claims that he thought the President was through and was just trying to get the first question in.  Having looked at the video I find that explanation a little thin.  But even if I give him the benefit of the doubt why keep pushing?  The President informs you he’s not done, you apologize and wait till the end.  Pretty simple protocol.  Which Munro didn’t bother with so he loses points there as well.

I was also appalled with the reaction from his boss.  Talking head Tucker Carlson is co-founder of The Daily Caller.  When another reporter caught up with him at an airport following the incident at the White House Carlson acknowledged that he hadn’t seen the video but was fine with whatever Munro had done.  Your reporter had interrupted the President of the United States but you’re fine with that.

This is what I hate about too much of what passes for journalism these days.  It’s become much more about the reporter and much less about the story.  It has become much more about being a personality and commentator than being a journalist.  And any concept of respect for the time and place has been flushed entirely down the toilet.

Personally I think Munro and The Daily Caller should lose their spot in the White House rotation all together.  At least until they learn a few of the old rules of journalism.


(When this program aired I consistently omitted the word Daily from the name of the news outlet. I apologize for that error)


Call that the View From the Phlipside.

RIP Ray Bradbury, Apologies Well Done

 "The View From the Phlipside" is a media commentary program airing on WRFA-LP, Jamestown NY.  It can be heard Tuesday through Friday just after 8 AM and 5 PM.  The following are scripts which may not exactly match the aired version of the program.  Mostly because the host may suddenly choose to add or subtract words at a moments notice.  WRFA-LP is not responsible for any such silliness or the opinions expressed.  You can listen to a live stream of WRFA or find a podcast of this program at wrfalp.com.  Copyright 2012 by Jay Phillippi.  All Rights Reserved.  You like what you see?  Drop me a line and we can talk.



Program scripts from week of June 11, 2012

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, radio, the movies and more.  I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View from the Phlipside. 

RIP Ray Bradbury

   Let me join the hundreds if not thousands of voices offering a eulogy to Ray Bradbury who passed away last week.  Bradbury was, in my opinion, a truly great writer who is under appreciated.  Given his best selling status and great fame that might seem unlikely.  I would argue that he deserves to be included with Mark Twain and Walt Whitman as the greatest of the truly American authors.  By that I mean writers who speak with an essentially American voice and whose vision is an essentially American vision.  Those three represent that as well as any one I think.

It would be easy to dismiss Bradbury because he was a science fiction writer.  Once upon a time that was quite common.  The reality is that Bradbury isn’t that easy to pigeon hole.  If memory serves Stephen King, in his book Danse Macabre, argues that Bradbury should be categorized as a horror writer.  When I read that I was outraged but as the years have gone by and I’ve read more Bradbury I think both King and I were wrong.  Ray Bradbury was a great writer.  Period.  He wrote brilliantly in the horror, science fiction, fantasy and mainstream genres.  He will always be best known for Farenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles and Dandelion Wine.  But I have soft spots for a variety of other pieces including the novel A Graveyard for Lunatics and many, many short stories.

I was not always such a huge Bradbury fan.  In fact it took me three tries to read The Martian Chronicles.  The book is short at 222 pages but I kept getting to page 32 and hitting a wall.  I don’t know if it was the format (Martian Chronicles is not a classic novel but rather a collection of short stories that are vaguely linked together by the theme) or if those opening chapters just didn’t grab me.  Finally on the third try I turned to page 33 and it was all over.  I devoured the rest of the book.  I’ve never looked back.

For me what sets Bradbury apart is the beauty of his writing.  I am far from the first to note that his prose is almost poetic in its beauty.  His ability to spin the fabric of different times and places and make the both beautiful and comfortable is probably his greatest gift as a writer.

The only other tribute I can think to offer is to go back and start reading as much Bradbury as I can lay my hands on.

Ray Bradbury was 91 years old 

Apologies Well Done

A couple years ago I think we discussed here the fine art of the apology.  Most especially we discussed how a great many public figures never seem to figure out the great benefits of a well done, properly timed mea culpa.

So I was interested when two stories came across my desk that show folks who have it all down pat.

First we have the case of Boston mayor Tom Menino who just last week wanted to drop in a good word about the Boston Celtics during their playoff run.  So he spoke of “KJ” and “Hondo”.  Sadly he meant to say KG (Kevin Garnett) and Rondo (point guard Rajon Rondo).  He was at least in the ball park with Hondo since that’s the nickname of all time Celtic great John Havlicek.  This isn’t the first time he’s muffed a local sports name and the mayor handled it perfectly.  A quick apology tweet where he got the names right and called it another Menino-ism.  Short, sweet and with a sense of humor.  Perfect.

The other case is slightly more serious.  Actor Jason Alexander was on The Late Show with Craig Ferguson when he called cricket a “gay sport”.  Now that’s just a dumb term to use but he had made the same joke in Australia a month before and it had gone over big.  Back in the USA however he got a lot of grief from fans.  Alexander’s first reaction (and the first reaction from gay friends he consulted) was that these folks needed to get a sense of humor.  As he continued to think about it all he realized that he didn’t like some of the underlying concepts beneath the use of gay in that manner.

In the end Alexander ended up doing a complete 180 on the subject.  He very carefully laid out the history behind the remark, his process of analyzing the reaction and his journey to his final decision.  The apology was thoughtful, carefully reasoned and clearly sincere.  He didn’t try to lay off blame on anyone else and took full responsibility for his own words.  I’m not sure any apology will ever do a better job than this one.  It was exactly what he needed to do.

I’ll admit to not being a huge Jason Alexander fan before this.  As an actor he’s OK but has never really grabbed me.  However I will admit to becoming a huge fan of Jason Alexander the human being.

Nothing quite like an apology well done.

New Media Revolution

I suppose in the end this was where we were going to end up.  In fact the more I think about it the more I’m surprised it didn’t occur to me before.  We’ve talked about the changes coming to old line media and the challenges they face adapting to a new digital media world.  I keep saying that it’s going to take some innovative out of the box thinking but in reality I’ve been just as guilty as most of the rest of the world.  Still stuck thinking inside the box.

So special kudos go out to the folks at Louisville Kentucky TV station WDRB.  They were faced with all the same challenges as everyone else.  They were particularly concerned about competing with the local newspaper the Courier-Journal.  One of the interesting things about web based media is that it levels the playing field between the traditional media.  Radio has voice only, print has written words and still pictures, TV gets to have the moving pictures.  In the old model the differences were clear and unassailable.  But in the digital world you can be who and what you want to be.  The Fox affiliate grasped that and saw an opportunity.  WDRB wanted to be more competitive in the sports arena.  The Courier-Journal was their targeted competition.  So the station went out and hired away both of the paper’s top sports columnists.  Those two will now anchor the sports presence online for the station both in written and video formats.

To be honest I was thunderstruck when I read the piece.  It’s so obviously the correct choice if you want to be competitive in the future.  The media needs to stop thinking about themselves as Radio, Television and Print.  It needs to start thinking about itself as The Media.  That means going beyond the traditional boundaries.  The mind behind the concept at WDRB is Director of News Barry Fulmer who says he just saw it as a natural outgrowth of their vision for the business over the next 5 years.  And I think he is absolutely correct.

The problem has been that newspapers keep on thinking about how to bring the newspaper to the Internet. Radio and TV have done the same thing. The real question is how to bring the quality of news coverage to a whole new media?  It’s going to change the skill set that will be required for reporters because it means they will need to be in all three areas - written, oral and visual.

Which is probably bad news for those of us with faces made for radio.


Call that the View From the Phlipside.

Oprah Cynicism, Bad Reality and On Newspapers

 "The View From the Phlipside" is a media commentary program airing on WRFA-LP, Jamestown NY.  It can be heard Tuesday through Friday just after 8 AM and 5 PM.  The following are scripts which may not exactly match the aired version of the program.  Mostly because the host may suddenly choose to add or subtract words at a moments notice.  WRFA-LP is not responsible for any such silliness or the opinions expressed.  You can listen to a live stream of WRFA or find a podcast of this program at wrfalp.com.  Copyright 2012 by Jay Phillippi.  All Rights Reserved.  You like what you see?  Drop me a line and we can talk.



Program scripts from week of June 4, 2012

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, radio, the movies and more.  I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View from the Phlipside. 

Bad Reality

I have watched a lot of reality TV shows.  I’ve watched ones about cooking and losing weight and shooting and being left to scheme your way off a desert island.  People locked into a room and people wandering the world.

Despite that I have to admit that I was probably NOT going to watch the new American Ninja Warrior on NBC.  My taste for Reality TV has begun to fade.  The real allure for programs like this these days seems be hoping to see contestants perform the most spectacular face plants possible.  The reason for me tuning in last week was that the son of a friend would be competing.  So I tuned in especially to see one Arthur Skov compete.  Remember that name it’ll be back around in a minute.

What I got was quite possibly the stupidest example of Reality TV I have ever seen.  The basic format of the show is fine.  The contestants have to get through a physically challenging obstacle course that requires strength, agility, speed, endurance and timing.  Fine so far.  

The problem was that NBC had 30 contestants to get through the course in an hour.  Given that most of them were taking at least 3 minutes the network had a problem.  Add in the features stories on some of the contestants and the number game really started working against them.  Solution?  Simply don’t show all the contestants runs.  

Now this was NOT a live event.  It was taped months ago so they knew who would get through and who wouldn’t.  So instead of seeing all the folks who completed the course, like Arthur Skov, we saw lots of, well, face plants.  Skov finished fourth overall and got about 4 seconds of recognition.

Here’s what really stinks.  The feature stories were mostly about folks who finished well down in the standings including at least one who didn’t even finish the course!  The final field was filled out based on who made it the farthest.  So here’s my cycnical thinking.  I think the show has already picked out who we’re supposed to be rooting for and setting them up despite their poor performance.  That they tipped their hand quite so blatantly is really astounding.

The end result was a totally unsatisfying TV experience.  So American Ninja Warrior can count on me NOT becoming a regular viewer.  I’ll tune in the next time my friend’s son is competing.  But I’m betting I already know the outcome on that score.  

Oprah Cynicism

I’m going to give you permission right up front to call me cynical at the end of this program.  I’ve been hanging around the media for over 30 years and I think I only have one or two remaining illusions about the media left.  And they are pretty well tattered and torn at this point as well.

So maybe I’m just letting my cynicism get the best of me when I hear the latest news out of the Media Empire of Empress Oprah.  Yes this week Oprah has announced that after a two year hiatus she is bringing back the Oprah Book Club.  Lady O claims that she’s doing it because she came across a book that was so good that she just wanted to share it the way she had before.  And that would be a really lovely idea if it’s true.  I’m not about to call Oprah a liar but I’m thinking that perhaps that’s not the only reason to resurrect the book.  Even worse my inner cynic is pretty sure it’s certainly not the most important reason.

A quick review of two items.  Item number the first is that for 15 years Oprah turned the publishing industry on its ear with her book recommendations. It was pretty simple.  If you could get the Queen of daytime TV to pick your book you were made.  Over the years she chose about 70 titles and they sold a total of some 55 million copies.  And Oprah wasn’t choosing the easy winners like a James Patterson.  At times she was choosing complete unknowns.  And making them best sellers.

Item number the second is what we’ve reported here before.  OWN, the Oprah Winfrey Network, has been laying a fairly large egg.  It’s been losing money at prodigious rates and some of the folks who bankrolled it aren’t very happy about that.

So perhaps it is just coincidence that at a moment when things aren’t going well Oprah suddenly decides to relaunch one of her most successful program elements.  Sure it was just that for two years she hadn’t really found any books that thrilled her.  But now, suddenly, the book just popped up.  And this very week Oprah’s Book Club version two gets launched.

Only a terminally cynical person would think that Oprah is getting a little desperate.  Only a profoundly cynical person would think that the network and their glorious leader are grasping for anything to help them pull out from the nosedive they find themselves in at the moment.

Like I told you at the beginning, you can call me cynical now

On Newspapers

 Time to talk about newspapers again I think.  We haven’t mentioned them in a little while and they are suddenly back in the news themselves again.  As always these days the news is challenging at best.

First lets start with the really bad news.  The city of New Orleans recently woke up to discover that they were a major city without a daily major newspaper.  The Times-Picayune, a highly respected paper and an institution in the Big Easy, announced that it was moving to a three day only print schedule.  The online news product would be there on a daily basis but the hard copy version would only come out Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.  While there have been newspapers that have completely disappeared this one was rather shocking because of the tight bond between the city and the paper.  It was a shock when even that relationship couldn’t save the Times-Picayune.

The question remains what does the future of the newspaper really look like?  A lot of folks say it’s just a matter of making the shift to a digital delivery system.  The problem is that when you look at the places that have gone that route like Seattle’s Post-Intelligencer the outlook isn’t all that great.  Sure the P-I has cut costs and is money making enterprise again.  Unfortunately folks will tell you that it’s no longer the comprehensive, award winning news source it once was.  And that means it loses a lot of influence in the community it serves.

The Chicago Sun-Times has announced that they are no longer a newspaper company but a technology company that happens to publish a newspaper.  The other phrase they use is they are content providers.

All of which offers a lovely 21st century high tech kind of feel to it.  My question is has the function of the fourth estate been forgotten.  That’s the role of shining lights into dark corners, of asking the questions that the Powers That Be don’t want asked.  It is a certain watch dog function that the media has done with a less than perfect record over the years.  The advantage that print media has always had is the ability to examine these questions with a little greater depth than the electronic media can.

If all we’re left with are dumbed down, low impact news institutions who will snap at the heels of the powerful?  If the answer is no one what kind of world do we end up with?

Call that the View From the Phlipside.

The Latest Movies I've seen

More Movies!!!!

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil -  (1997) Not sure how I missed this one.  Kevin Spacey and John Cusack are on my list of modern actors who I'm willing to watch in pretty much anything.  Based on a true story of murder in the high society of Savannah Georgia it's as much about the character of the city as it is the character of the characters.  Spacey plays an art dealer to the best of the city.  He kills a violent, unpredictable young man who works for him and as it turns out is his sometime lover.  Cusack plays a NY writer who comes down for one story and ends up following another.  Directed by Clint Eastwood it does a wonderful job of weaving together all of the madness that surrounded the original.  Some folks complain that the story has been streamlined for the screen.  I can only assume they don't see many movies.  This is an astounding story and includes deft turns by all the principals.  The movie will suck you in, keep you twisting and turning and spit you out at the end.
Rating - **** Gotta See It

Inside Man - (2006) A modestly clever whodunit bank robbery movie featuring Denzel Washington, Clive Owen and Jodi Foster.  The story line is pretty straight forward with a tiny little twist at the end.  Spike Lee takes a good cast and a fun script and turns it into something quite satisfying.  You're not going to confuse this with a great movie but the actors make the characters interesting enough and the interplay between them is just enough fun to carry you along.  Owen plays the mastermind of a bank robbery where the robbers refuse to play the game by the rules.  Meanwhile Foster is a high priced and high power "fixer" who has been called in to take care of a secret that the bank's founder(Christopher Plummer) wants kept secret.  Caught in the middle is Washington as the police negotiator who knows something isn't right but can't quite figure it out.  This isn't anyone's best work but it's a fun piece of movie popcorn to wile away a free afternoon.
Rating - *** Worth a Look

A History of Violence (2005) You take a decent premise, a competent director and a better than average cast, mix them all together and get a worthless piece of crap.  Seriously.  What a waste of time and energy.  Here's the deal a Philadelphia psycho mobster decides he wants to leave what is commonly know as "The Life" (don't ask why, it's never explained) so he goes to the desert (don't ask why it's never explained) re-creates him and moves to Indiana (don't ask why it's never explained) where he falls in love, gets married, has kids, runs the local diner and becomes a pillar of the community.  One night a couple bad guys come into the diner and decide to start killing people (don't ask why it's just what they do).  The reformed mobster kills them both and becomes a media hero.  The boys back in Philly see him and come to drag him back to face the music.  So he kills them.  Then goes to Philly anyway.  Where he kills everybody there.  He comes home, sits down to dinner and exchanges the most idiotic, indecipherable look with his wife you can imagine.  Fade to black.  Finis.  Yes I just totally spoiled this movie for you.  You can thank me later.
    You never care about the characters.  They do illogical things.  There's a totally superfluous sub plot involving the nerdy son.  Who apparently has the psycho killer gene.  There's plenty of gratuitous sex and violence (I loved the one interview where director David Cronenberg says he edited out some of the violence because he's against violence.  Has he ever watched his own movies?).  This is every thing that's wrong with graphic novels (movie is based on one).  Shallow characters, minimal plot, lots of blood, sex and nudity.  For some reason William Hurt got an Oscar nomination for his role in this movie.  He's a cartoon character.  The only thing I'll remember from this is the brief full frontal nudity of Maria Bello.
Cast includes Viggo Mortenson, Maria Bello, Ed Harris and William Hurt.
Rating - * Don't Waste Your Time

Collateral - (2004) - Now in comparison to the movie above this one just blew me away.  Solid director (Michael Mann), good script and two actors (Jamie Foxx and Tom Cruise) who just nail their roles.  Foxx got an Oscar nomination for his work as a cab driver who picks up a hired killer (Cruise) and gets sucked into a series of contract hits when the first one goes bad. Mann brings his trademark visual style that is stunning as always.  There's an early scene in the cab between Foxx and Jada Pinkett Smith that is just a beautiful piece of movie making.  Mann doesn't rush it.  The conversation is allowed to unfold at the tempo of a cab ride.  But the real treasure in this movie is the relationship between the killer Vincent and the cabbie Max.  Vincent isn't a cookie cutout psycho killer.  He is professional, intellectual and engaging while still being cold and focused on his work.  The interplay between the two is funny, chilling and completely enthralling.  The tempo of the movie picks up speed as it goes along to an exciting end.  It was so good to have this wash the bad taste of the previous movie out of my mouth.  I am definitely considering adding this one to my library.
Rating - **** Gotta See It

The Queen - (2006) -  Helen Mirren scored an Oscar for her astounding performance as Queen Elizabeth II living through what the real life queen has called "the worst week of my life".  The movie walks the thin line between all the issues surrounding the death of Princess Diana.  The older royals were products of a different day and age.  They were completely unprepared for the huge emotional tsunami that swept through England.  Meanwhile new Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair is trying to find his way through the maze of his great respect for the Crown and his certitude that they are getting it wrong.  It was a moment of great crisis for the Queen, her heir, her government and her people.  The end result is a movie that won't let you walk away.  103 minutes flew by.  I came away with a different and more complex feeling for Her Majesty and the challenges she continues to face.  Like Tony Blair I think I've fallen for The Queen.
Rating - **** Gotta See It

Just too funny.  The folks at Adweek shared this as the most honest cover to a woman's magazine ever.  Just hysterically funny.  From the folks at the Ad Freak are my kind of people.

Real Life Super Heroes,

 "The View From the Phlipside" is a media commentary program airing on WRFA-LP, Jamestown NY.  It can be heard Tuesday through Friday just after 8 AM and 5 PM.  The following are scripts which may not exactly match the aired version of the program.  Mostly because the host may suddenly choose to add or subtract words at a moments notice.  WRFA-LP is not responsible for any such silliness or the opinions expressed.  You can listen to a live stream of WRFA or find a podcast of this program at wrfalp.com.  Copyright 2012 by Jay Phillippi.  All Rights Reserved.  You like what you see?  Drop me a line and we can talk.



Program scripts from week of May 28, 2012

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, radio, the movies and more.  I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View from the Phlipside. 

Real Life Super Heroes

Some stories just need to be passed along.  If you’ve ever spent any time around little children you know that seemingly out of the blue they will begin putting ideas into new and wonderful patterns.  It will have a logic that makes perfect sense to them even when it leaves us scratching our heads.

So the announcement by a little boy in Connecticut a few weeks back perhaps wasn’t so surprising.  4 year old Antony Smith woke up one morning and informed his mother that he didn’t want to wear his hearing aid any more.  The reason?  Because super heroes didn’t wear hearing aids.  Well, sure.  The problem is that Antony suffers from severe congenital hearing problems.  His hearing aids had provided a huge improvement in his life and his mom knew she needed to find a way to get Antony to accept them.

And here’s where the media part comes in.  I suppose when your little boy wants to talk about super heroes then you go the experts.  Antony’s mom went to the folks at Marvel Comics.  Marvel Comics is a huge corporation that was bought in 2009 by the Disney folks for just shy of four and a half BILLION dollars.  That’s big business no matter how you cut it.  I would be willing to bet that the company receives fan mail by the truckload on a daily basis.

Yet somehow that letter got noticed.  Even better it got acted on.  In very short order the Marvel folks sent Antony some artwork showing the character Hawkeye wearing a hearing aid from a 1984 storyline where the superhero lost his hearing.  Apparently the letter then began to circulate around the Marvel office and it caught the attention of some of the artistic staff.  That resulted in one with Hawkeye with a little boy sidekick called the Blue Ear.  The Blue Ear is Antony’s name for his hearing aids.  Last but not least was a full blown super hero bearing the Blue Ear name.

One of the things that always attracted me to the Marvel universe was the conversation created by the editors and Stan Lee in comments included in the comics.  There’s always been a feel that Marvel connected with it’s readers.    It’s great to see that even now that it’s a big time entertainment corporation they still are willing to take a minute for a little boy who loves superheroes.

Who says superheroes don’t exist in real life? 

Penney's Failure

Have you ever had a good idea go really wrong?  It was just so obvious that it was a good idea, a better way of doing something, an easier way to get to where you were going.  And in the end it all went terribly, horribly wrong.  Well that’s just about how things must feel at the headquarters of the JC Penney’s company.

Back in February Penney’s decided to do something radical but that was obviously right.  They were going to stop playing the game involving tricky specials, fine print in the advertising, coupons and all the rest of the discount sleight of hand that has been a mainstay in retail merchandising for decades.  In its place they went with a simplified pricing structure.  The deal was that they would offer such solid prices ON A DAILY BASIS that they wouldn’t need to play the game.  Everyday you could come in and get great prices.  Forget doorbuster hours or coupons.  In fact you could forget those silly 99 cent additions to the prices.  It would be 9 bucks instead of 8.99.  Clear.  Simple.  Fair.  So obviously a great idea.

Well there was only one problem.  Seems that customers prefer the old system.  In the first quarter of the year JC Penney’s lost 163 million dollars.  Last year in the same quarter they had a 64 million dollar profit.  The man behind the new approach is Ron Johnson.  His background as the head of Apple’s retail division surely gave everyone the confidence that this approach would work.

And it hasn’t.

While I find the current TV ad campaign from Penney’s to be annoying what really shocks me is how much the consumer is just rejecting the whole concept.  How much of that is a failure of the overall marketing plan (the feeling in some quarters is that the customers haven’t really understood the new pricing system) and how much of that is the natural tendency to stay with the devil you know is still unclear.

It turns out that even with the best ideas Robert Burns was right.  The best laid plans of mice and men go oft astray.  The folks at JCP say they will stay the course.  We’ll have to see if they can find their way back.

Summer Movie Fun

Every so often I like to take a look ahead at the upcoming movie releases and see what’s headed our way that might be interesting.  Now as we head into summer time proper it might be a good time to do that again.

Of course a couple of the summer blockbuster movies have already been out for a bit.  I’ve seen both Hunger Games and The Avengers and like them both.  In fact I liked them both a great deal.  So the summer movie season has gotten a great start.

If you need more for your summer super hero fix there are still at least two still to come.  The latest re-boo of a character is lined up with The Amazing Spiderman with Andrew Garfield as Spidey.  Sony Pictures had been set to do a Spiderman 4 in the previous story line but cancelled it for this.  Given my track record on re-boots let’s call me dubious on this one.  Meanwhile the third movie in the current Batman storyline is coming up.  Christian Bale is back in The Dark Knight Rises which claims to be the last movie in this story arc.

Of course that means nothing.  For example later this summer we’ll get the Bourne Legacy.  A Jason Bourne movie that doesn’t actually have Jason Bourne in it.  We’ll have to see on that one too.

In the I’m not quite sure what to make of them category we have Abraham Lincoln - Vampire Hunter.  Based on a popular book I’ll probably give it a shot, well just because it’s Abraham Lincoln - Vampire Hunter.  On the other hand we have Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Witness Protection.  I don’t get Tyler Perry but his track record says the movie will bring in big bucks.  

In the mega-hype category we have sci-fi monster movie Prometheus.  If there’s an actual story to go with the effects it might work.  Or we have Rock of Ages with Tom Cruise playing a heavy metal rock god.  Every time I see an ad for this movie I think of 2007’s Across the Universe.  Rock of Ages makes use of classic rock as its hook but I’m betting it lacks the warmth and depth of the older movie.  

Elsewhere we have Madagascar 3 and Ice Age-Continental Drift for the family market. And because every summer needs some good mindless fun we can take a run at the over the hill action star filled Expendables II.

Plus we’ll get a surprise movie or two we don’t expect.  Sounds like fun to me.  


Call that the View From the Phlipside.