Program scripts from week of November 26, 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.
New Rules Needed
The BBC has asked its employees not to do it, at least for the time being. A Kansas state appeals attorney was fired and faces ethics charges because she did it during a session of the state Supreme Court. And two weeks ago I sat in a meeting where it was a major topic of discussion.
What’s causing all this fuss? Using the micro-messaging service Twitter otherwise known as tweeting. And the reality is we are facing a serious change in our culture that needs to be addressed.
At the BBC several senior staff members have been tweeting about the upset following two major scandals that resulted in the head of the broadcasting giant resigning. The BBC has asked folks to allow these issues to be worked out inside the company. In Kansas the attorney tweeted a rude comment about the defendant in the middle of a court session! She was suspended and then fired.
I was attending a series of committee meeting connected with my work that drew people from all over the country. At the beginning of our meeting we discussed our expectations of one another while we met. And that’s when the tweeting issue arose. It splits largely along generational lines. The younger group sees tweeting as a normal part of their lives. The older generation sees it as rude and disruptive when done during meeting time. A realistic look at the issue says that the older generation is going to lose this argument in the long run.
At the same time not every moment of our lives is appropriate to be tweeted about or during. Out of our conversation at the meeting were a couple of concepts that I’d like to share. We need to understand that this issue is essentially one of mutual respect. That we respect the time, the place and the people where we find ourselves. That we realize that some issues need to be held in private and that everyone needs to make clear what they think should be private. Finally there needs to be a commitment to presence. Not just being in the room but being involved in what’s happening there. When your digital communication interferes with that then you’ve stepped outside the lines.
We need to acknowledge the times are changing and find ways to bridge between the generations.
Worst to First
This is almost too funny. It was just a couple years ago, heck barely that, that we all but wrote the obituary for the National Broadcasting Company better known simply as NBC. The Peacock network has struggled to the point that at one time it appeared that it was going to slide out of the top three among networks for the first time in living memory.
It really wasn’t clear that NBC would ever be able to recover. The saying is that to everything there is a time and a season and you had to wonder if maybe NBC had just run out its string. With the media landscape changing as quickly and broadly as it has the question started to look like whether broadcast networks had simply become dinosaurs headed toward extinction.
Then we hit the first week of the fall season this year. Much to my delight I was able to report here that NBC had actually won a night! Shortly thereafter they won a week in the ratings as well. It was all very surprising and encouraging to see the one time champ come back slugging.
Well the latest news is almost impossible to believe. According to reporting in the Financial Times NBC has pulled off that legendary move called worst to first. The network has not only climbed out of the hole it has become the highest rated network for the fall broadcast season. It’s a story that has everyone in the industry scratching their heads. Turns out that may not be the most amazing part of the story.
The most amazing part of the story is that at the moment NBC is the only network that isn’t seeing significant ratings drops overall. Think about that. EVERY other network is facing what the Financial Times report refers to as a “...precipitous drop in television ratings so far this season”. Which may mean that the other networks may be facing similar kinds of problems some time soon.
So against all odds it looks like NBC had plenty to be thankful about last week.
Proof in the Crisis
Sometimes the most powerful positive moment in a person’s or a company’s life is the moment of crisis. Normally we think of a crisis as being something to be avoided but think about a crisis as any moment of great stress. A time when all of your resources will be called upon, a time when you are going to have show just how much you are truly capable of doing and being. A crisis is never really a fun time but it can be the time when you can find out just who you really are.
Two web companies found themselves in those kind of crisis, high stress moments recently. And both of them have to be happy with what they discovered about themselves.
The early stress moment was election night and the service in question was Twitter. The problem that Twitter has consistently suffered from is the appearance of the Fail Whale. If you’re not into Twitter culture then you may not know that beast. When the service became overwhelmed by usage you would get a graphic of a whale saying Twitter was down. But on election night, a night that saw a peak usage of 327,452 messages a minute, the fail whale didn’t make an appearance. This is huge step forward as Twitter becomes more mainstream. To survive an event that big without going down was a big victory.
The second moment of crisis was related to Superstorm Sandy. The storm surge flooded a great many internet server sites in the storm zone. A lot of online companies suddenly found themselves completely unable to do business. But the digital world prides itself on it’s flexibility and its ability to react quickly. So the question became how do we get back online? And the answer came from a surprising source - the online service Tumblr. Tumblr is what is called a micro-blogging site. It’s dedicated to shorter, more image oriented communication. What happened was when the folks at Gawker and Huffington Post among others got knocked off the internet they turned to Tumblr to help them get up and running. And the reality is that partnership worked so well some folks think that Tumblr might just be the future of online publishing sites. Tumblr isn’t sure it’s ready to make the move but let’s face it, it never hurts to have people want you.
A crisis can be a time that can break you. But if you’re good at what you do it just might be the event that makes you as well.
Call that the View From the Phlipside
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