"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.
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