"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 September 24, 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.
The Man Who Made Football
My normal practice when I note the passing of someone from the world of media is to try and stick to folks who don’t get the splashy coverage from the mainstream media. Those folks w
ho made a difference but don’t get the A list star treatment at the time of their deaths. This week is a slight variation from that policy.
The reality is that the sports networks carried lots of coverage about the death of Steve Sabol long time leader of NFL Films. In the larger sense however I still think people overlook the importance of what Sabol did during his career. Quite simply I believe that Steve Sabol along with his father Ed made the National Football League.
Not founded it, the NFL goes back to 1920 as the American Professional Football Association but made it. The argument can be made that pro football was already on its way to being the highest attended sports event in the world based on average attendance but I’m not sure it works its way into our collective psyches the way it has without NFL Films.
The company was founded by Ed Sabol in 1962 as the Blair Motion Picture Company. They won the bid to film the ‘62 NFL championship game (it wasn’t the Super Bowl until 1967) and proceeded to create a film like no one had ever seen before. Two years later the NFL bought the Sabols out but left them in change. That may be the smartest thing the league has ever done.
What Steve Sabol and his father did was create pro football, a sport once sneered on and considered something no self respecting athlete would be involved in. Using brilliant photography, a profound love and understanding of the sport and helped in no small part by the magnificent voice of the late John Facenda (who joined NFL Films in ‘65) Sabol took a game and made it legendary. A sport known for brute force was suddenly displayed as graceful. Games were given the veneer of tragedy and comedy. Football was suddenly high art. I know that in my own case I fell in love with the NFL because of what Sabol father and son did far more than what the awful Steeler teams of the late ‘60s did.
Steve Sabol was 69 years old.
Saving Us From Us
There are times when the cure just might be worse than the disease. We’ve talked a lot about old line media trying to figure out how to survive in a new media environment. One of the other old line groups that is struggling with the new media world is government. When the media that is being used is no longer necessarily physically present in one particular nation how do you go about regulating it? And how do protect your citizens from folks that are trying to hurt them? It’s a question that is still very much up in the air all over the world.
The newest attempt at trying to figure this out is taking place just to our south here in the southern tier. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is trying to take a shot at making Facebook a little bit safer place for its citizens. House Bill 2249 is legislation that would make it a crime to impersonate someone on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. It would also outlaw doing the same thing with fake email addresses and text messages. The intent to make online bullying a criminal offense.
Now that sounds all well and good but even the bill’s sponsor, State Representative Katharine Watson, is aware of the pitfalls of trying to do this. She notes that she is not attempting to outlaw people just being stupid. The idea is to control those folks who are actively trying to abuse and rob folks through the Internet. Questions have already be raised about issues like parody, satire and well, commentary.
When I was a student at Edinboro my Criminal Justice professor defined a bad law as one that couldn’t be enforced. Not only because it was a waste of time but because it diminishes the standing of all laws. I’m afraid this law looks very much like a bad law.
I’m not quite sure how you enforce laws against what amounts to adult cyber-bullying. We already have laws against fraud and theft and slander. Given that Facebook and Twitter and the like are globe girdling media monsters what do you do if the person making your life miserable is in Colorado, or Ceylon? How does a state law in Pennsylvania help you much at all?
How much and what kind of law and order we need slash want in the Wild West of the Internet is still an open question. Well meaning but ultimately useless laws like this aren’t the answer.
The Next Big Thing
I am old enough to remember the early days of cable TV. It was the next big thing even though there were plenty of doubters who wondered if anyone would pay for television when they could get it for free with an antenna. The nay sayers lacked the vision to realize how much more there might be in that Next Big Thing. Well the next Next Big Thing might just be lifting its head over the horizon on how we get our television fix.
It’s called cutting the cord. Now to a lesser degree those of us who are on satellite systems or have gone to watching TV online have already begun the process of cutting that cord. But once again the first look may not be the most interesting one. There are a couple of things out there that are really interesting.
For example in Scandanavia HBO has announced that viewers will not have to pay a TV subscription to watch the network online. That differs from the model here in North America where if you want to watch HBO GO you need to be a current HBO subscriber. The move is to take on Netflix which is already a major player with this kind of business model elsewhere in the world. It is a major shift in business model.
The other interesting bit is from an Israeli company called Vidmind. They are marketing an Android based set top box that will allow independent Internet based virtual cable operators to distribute programming not just to TVs but tablets and smartphones as well. All without having to string any cable or launch any satellites. Just the way that the world wide web has become the home for locally based challengers to radio stations this could offer the same kind of ability to TV distribution as well.
If the question you’re asking is why would these companies do this just think about how often we hear of service provides like Comcast and Direct TV getting into fights with networks like AMC or HBO. Setting up systems like these would allow the networks to completely circumvent the whole question of carriage fees and the fights that go with them.
The reality is that the big boys still have too much money in the game to make it likely that we’ll see the change too soon here in the U.S. But if it works elsewhere I think it’s inevitable here as well.
Get ready for the Next Big Thing.
Call that the View From the Phlipside.
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