Program scripts from week of January 14, 2013
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.
Late Night Revolution
You never want to jump to a conclusion but it looks like there may be something very interesting about to happen in late night TV. Late night television has been one of the most astoundingly stable time periods in TV history. First there was Steve Allen, the Jack Paar, then there was Johnny Carson. And for 30 years that was pretty much it. When Carson retired Jay Leno stepped up and David Letterman stepped up and a bunch of other guys tried to pick up the crumbs. But it’s been Leno and Letterman holding down most of the late night audience.
The problem is that both of the top guys are getting old. Leno is 63 and Letterman is 65. And the question has to be who is the next king of late night?
It looked like Conan O’Brien might be that person. Maybe it’s Jimmy Fallon. Or maybe it’s Jimmy Kimmel. Kimmel’s show on ABC got moved last week to the same time slot as both Leno and Letterman. While Kimmel has been saying all the right things, like he thinks he’ll eventually settle into third place behind the two veteran hosts, the results of his first show in the competitive time slot have to have the big boys worried.
On the first night Kimmel finished in second place comfortably in front of Letterman, he finished the week with a couple of thirds and another second place finish. But in the key 18-49 audience demographics Kimmel was a power. He finished second the first night, tied Leno on the second night and easily out distanced the Tonight Show on the third night with growth in younger viewers every single night.
Now one week is way too small a sample size to be drawing any profound conclusions from but it’s well worth considering the potential that’s out there. Over the last couple years the big boys have messed around (remember the whole Jay Leno to prime time catastrophe?) and that means there’s an opening that could be exploited by a smart, new, younger talent. Someone like Jimmy Kimmel.
Kimmel is playing it smart. He’s had the big name stars, he’s even teasing that he’ll finally pay off on a long running gag about having Matt Damon on the show. And that’s exactly what he should be doing.
The hotshot young host says there will never be another king of late night like Carson. He might be right. But someone is going to be the new top dog. That just might be him.
Musberger Mess
It never ceases to astound me with all the REAL problems that exist in the world of the media when so much energy gets spent on a non-problem. Like the tempest in a tea pot that erupted over comments made by ESPN sports commentator Brent Musberger.
In case you somehow missed all this let me offer a quick summary. During the college football national championship game between Alabama and Notre Dame, where Musberger was one of the broadcast team, there came a moment when the camera found the family of Alabama quarterback AJ McCarren. Sitting with the family was McCarren’s girlfriend, Katherine Webb, who also happens to be the current Miss Alabama. Musberger commented on how good looking she was, noted that quarterbacks always seem to get the good looking girlfriends and recommended that young men should polish their football passing skills so they could get such good looking girlfriends too. The whole thing took just over 30 seconds. And the Mrs. Grundys of the Twitterverse promptly lost their minds. ESPN displayed a complete lack of guts and apologized.
My question is - for what?
Let’s review the facts. Miss Webb is by pretty much any contemporary standard a beautiful young woman. And at least based on my experience quarterbacks DO tend to have good looking girlfriends. Add to this the fact that not Miss Webb, her father OR her boyfriend were offended in any way shape or form. They’ve all said so publicly.
Let’s also remember one other fact. TV is about the picture. And when a game gets as far out of hand as that did the director starts looking for other stories. So there was exactly ZERO chance that they weren’t going to show the beauty queen girlfriend.
Did Musberger do anything wrong? Yeah, he’s a 73 year man who came off as a little bit hummina, hummina, hummina because he went on past the first obvious comment. He should be a little embarrassed. His network should have said nothing. And all those self appointed guardians of public morality, all the Mrs. Grundys of the world? They need to go find something serious to worry about.
When The News Is The News
As a general rule there is one story that no news organization ever wants to have to report. It’s the story when the news organization itself becomes the story. Unless it’s crowing that you’ve won a Pulitzer Prize news organizations don’t want to be in the news. Let’s face it, they know as well as we do that the vast majority of the news is when something bad happens. And the mythology of the news biz is that all the bad stuff happens outside the newsroom.
That strange noise you just heard was every single person who has EVER worked in a newsroom snorting in derision at that last thought.
Never the less the Journal News, a newspaper serving the lower Hudson Valley, recently became the story when they ran article and accompanying map that showed the names and addresses of everyone in their region that had a legally registered gun. Needless to say those folk did not appreciate the attention. In fact some folks went so far as to threaten violence against the newspaper resulting in the paper hiring, ironically, armed guards to protect their building.
So what’s really the issue here? Let’s review the facts. The story ran shortly following the tragedy in Newtown. In a time when gun violence, gun ownership, and gun regulation are major topics the question of how many legal guns are in the paper’s readership area is legitimate news. The information they published was legally obtained from public records.
All of which has been met with a certain level of hysteria. There are claims that gun owners were treated like sexual predators which seems a stretch to me or that they will be targeted by burglars. White Plains police note that no such pattern has emerged.
So what then to say about the Journal News story? I’m not sure I see the news value of printing the names of people involved in a perfectly legal activity. There is a question of privacy. While there may be a right to know about total numbers of guns or even areas of especially high concentrations the individual owners names strike me as an especially poor editorial decision.
Call that the View From the Phlipside
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