Program scripts from week of March 4, 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.
Variety Fades
This is one of those oddball stories that just feels like it needs to be shared. Another iconic print publication has found itself on the ropes and is downsizing and moving more emphasis to the online publishing. In this case it’s a publication that you have probably never held in your hand but you may have seen several times. What is it? It’s Variety magazine.
Variety may not always have been the top dog in reporting on Hollywood but it’s hard to imagine that any of its competitors are better known outside the movie capital. Over the years it has been a favorite device in the movies for quickly moving the plot forward in movies about the stage or screen. You may remember them in the movie “White Christmas” for example. The other reason to use Variety headlines is that Variety was known for its snappy headline style often involving what was called “slanguage”. Thus you got “Sticks Nix Hick Pix” in 1935 over a story about how rural audiences did not like pictures about rural themes and “Good Book Books Boffo Biz” in 2004 over a story about the box office success of “The Passion of the Christ”.
Variety began as a vaudeville magazine back in 1905 published in New York City. In 1933 they added “Daily Variety” which was headquartered in Los Angeles. It probably published the very first movie review in 1907. That “slanguage” of Variety’s helped to popularize words like “sitcom”, “sex appeal” and “striptease”. Pretty good for a magazine aimed at a pretty focused market.
In the end all the usual problems arose. The magazines and associated web sites were sold late last year to the Penske Media Corporation for about 25 million dollars. To try and keep the icon ticking Penske announced they are ending the Daily Variety, going back to just being a weekly (that’s how the magazine started) and putting more emphasis on the online reporting. In an interesting twist they also announced that they will eliminate the paywall at Variety.com. The big question now is how will they replace the income after losing both the daily subscription and sales PLUS the paywall income too. Penske also owns one of Variety’s biggest online competitors “Deadline.com”.
One way or the other it’s the end of the line for an American icon. We can only hope that they came up with an appropriately pithy headline for their last daily edition.
Social Death
Have you ever opened up your favorite social media site and found that one of your friends there was threatening to quit? Just walk away from the whole deal and never post again and close their account and they’re serious this time? Happens to me a couple times each year. They almost never go through with it but something has just made the experience less than warm and fuzzy for them and they think about quitting. Most of the time you just shrug it off or maybe even laugh it off. I’m sure that’s what the staff and owners of the social network do.
Turns out it’s actually something they need to pay a little more attention to if they know what’s good for them.
A second question (and yes it’s related to the first I promise) do you remember the web site Friendster? Friendster is probably the granddad of the modern social media. It was founded the year before MySpace and two years before Facebook. At its height it boasted 100 million users and snubbed a thirty million dollar buyout offer from Google. And in 2009 it basically curled up and died. Friendster still exists but as a gaming platform.
So what happened? According to a group from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich what basically happened was it simply become too much of a hassle for its users and they left. The group did what is being called a digital autopsy. The results showed that following some technical problems and an unpopular re-design users simply decided it was more trouble than it was worth and left.
Now here’s where your friends come in. YOU may think that the network is just fine. But if enough of your friends leave the study shows that you will leave too. That’s exactly what happened to Friendster. A critical mass of users left, their friends left with them and suddenly you have social media death spiral. These are SOCIAL networks. If your social group doesn’t hang out there any more why would you?
It’s a lesson that current social networks need to heed. The problem as I see it is that the folks designing a lot of this are technophiles who really want to jazz the site up with some nifty new whiz bang. Most of the users simply want the darn thing to work they way they expect it to work. Most of us don’t care if our social network is the latest word in programming. If it makes the experience even slightly more difficult it may be a tiny step in the direction of digital death. Something Facebook should probably keep in mind.
Why Swimsuits?
I have no doubt that this topic is going to get me a fair amount of disbelief and abuse from my fellow men. In fact I expect at least a few of them to hold that I am in fact betraying my gender by taking the position that I am. I will in fact even admit to a small amount of conflict within my own person about this issue. With all that said I’m still not sure I can honestly answer this question:
Why is there an annual Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue?
Let’s start by acknowledging the purely business argument in favor. It sells a ton of issues and makes lots of money. It is popular enough that there are SI Swimsuit calendars and videos and TV programs. It’s a money maker. I am willing to stipulate all of that.
But I still keep coming around to the original question. Sports Illustrated is a SPORTS magazine. So why an annual issue that has become quite simply about parading beautiful young women (and they are beautiful and yes I like looking at beautiful women, in photos or in person) in as little clothing as you can? The new thing for this issue is to in fact have the women in no clothing and to substitute body paint for the clothes.
And this is sport related how?
Back in 1964 when the first swimsuit issue came out they at least tried. The headline on the cover of that issue read “A Skin Diver’s Guide to the Caribbean”. In very short order this predominantly male read magazine (out of the 23 million readers each week over 18 million are men) staked out its claim to women’s fashion? Am I reading that right? Today there isn’t even an attempt to pretend that this is anything other than what it is. An appeal to the prurient interests of the male readers. It has nothing to do with sports and has very little to do with women’s fashion. It also has little to do with a mature view of women in general. The Swimsuit issue has its roots firmly in the sweaty palmed, furtive sniggering of adolescent boys trying to sneak a peek down a girl’s blouse.
Jumping back to the financial arguments it should probably be noted that SI turning a profit for the first time and that first swimsuit issue occur within a year of each other. Take that for what it’s worth.
Call me a traitor to my gender but there’s just not much of defensible rationale for this issue from this magazine.
Call that the View From the Phlipside
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