Program scripts from week of October 15, 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 New You
I have talked here before about the ridiculous and antiquated system of demographics used by many media and advertising folks. The times when we’ve talked about the classic 25-54 age group as a family reunion rather than a rational group for analyzing media use. Or pretty much anything else for that matter.
So I was interested when I saw that NBC News Digital is trying to do something about it. The problem of course is that while it’s easy to point out that demographic emperor is in his birthday suit what are you supposed to do in its place? It may be bad but it’s better than nothing. Well maybe not any more. The folks at the Digital News Peacock are approaching the audience based on how they access the news. I love simple concepts. Their research says that news consumers come in four flavors. The “Always Ons” who are constantly plugged in, the “Reporters” you know these guys, they’re the ones who are constantly saying “Hey, did you hear?”. Then we have the “Skimmers” which is self explanatory I think and finally the “Veterans” who rely on traditional media for their news. Otherwise known as “Old People”.
It’s a simple system designed to replace what had originally been intended as a temporary measuring stick back in the ‘60s.
The reality is that this is probably just a stopping off place as we begin to try and figure out how to measure the audience in our new media environment. It would be great if we knew that this was a mature, stable media consuming environment. Any even cursory examination of the last decade shows that it’s just not true. By the early 1960’s TV had settled into a stable system that was going to be around for a while. The digital media environment doesn’t stay the same for more than a year or two at this point. So figuring out how users will interact with that media is going to be just as fluid a situation.
At the same time I have to admit that it is nice to be viewed as a person based on what I do in my life rather than just being a number in an age group. I mean have you seen some of the things people my age do?
Winter Storm Names
Do the following names mean anything to you? Ike, Andrew, Irene, Agnes and Katrina. That last one will probably tip you to what we’re talking about. Those are the names given to some of the most destructive hurricanes to ever hit the United States. Most of us are so accustomed to having storms named that we may not realize that it’s a relatively new tradition. The devastating category four hurricane that hammered Galveston Texas in 1900, a storm that remains to this day the deadliest natural disaster in our nation’s history, is known simply as the the Galveston Hurricane of 1900. It was in 1953 that the National Weather Service began naming them with women’s names in alphabetical order. Men’s names were added in 1978.
The names exist for two reasons. First to help track the storms easily in the records and to help folks in the world have a handle on the storms as they approach. It’s a distinctive if every so slightly silly practice.
But now the Weather Channel has announced that it will begin naming winter storms. And with that we may have slipped into major silliness. Why the Weather Channel? Well because while there is a National Hurricane Center there isn’t one for winter storms.
The problem I see is that there is a very simple formula for naming Hurricanes. Once they reach sustained wind speeds 39 miles an hour they are declared a tropical storm and given a name. When they hit 74 miles an hour they’re a hurricane. Easy.
But The Weather Channel has laid out the most complicated standards to determine if a winter storm gets a name you can imagine. First it can only happen three days before the storm hits a metropolitan area. Then things like snowfall, wind and temperature will be factored in. Finally the day of the week and the time the storm arrives will also have an effect. So presumably a big storm that hits the Great Plains on a weekend day won’t get named. I guess. On top of that the list of names for the first storms are just silly. Athena, Brutus, Caesar plus names like Rocky and Zeus.
As we well know around here winter storms are a pain in the butt. They’re dangerous and unpredictable. And naming them isn’t going to make that any easier at all.
There’s nothing silly about a blizzard.
Facebook Study Madness
There’s nothing quite as much fun as hearing the media lose its collective mind over the latest study on...whatever. Somewhere along the line it seems like we have lost the gene that allows to take a step back and consider the issues with even the tiniest bit of rationality.
I have no doubt that we are going to spend a lot of time in the very near future listening to people lose their marbles over a new study that says Facebook makes you fat and rude.
Yeah, really.
The study is coming from folks at Columbia University and the University of Pittsburgh. The basic concept is easy. Facebook with it’s constant system of “Likes” and “Friends” raises the self image of users while decreasing their self control. As a result they are more likely to get into arguments, more likely to be aggressive in their interaction with one another. At the same time that impulsive reaction to life can lead to poor decisions in what Facebook users eat and even in how they spend their money. Because of that the study indicates that Facebook users can be overweight, resort to binge eating and carry higher levels of debt. Even more depressing is that the study said the effect can come after as little as five minutes of cruising Facebook. FIVE MINUTES!
I can already hear every parent out there who is looking for some reason, ANY reason to limit the amount of time that their kids spend on Facebook. It’s the mother lode!!!!
Except it’s really not. You see there was another study from the University of Salford in England that showed using Facebook resulted in feelings of inferiority. Looking at everything that is going on in their friends lives made them feel like they were failures.
The reality is that both of these studies describe only portions of the reaction that many Facebook users have. Most of us manage to hang out with our friends, share photos and even have discussions without losing our minds, gaining tons of weight or sinking deep into depression or credit card debt.
In other words we can use Facebook and still stay rational.
We ought to take the same attitude about the latest batch of studies.
Call that the View From the Phlipside
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