Program scripts from week of April 2, 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.
R.I.P. Richard Griffiths
I’ve always wondered about this. Most of us will pass through this world known to a only small circle of people. And there is a very small percentage of people who will be remembered for generations. In between those two groups are the people who will be remembered for a little while usually for some small thing. I sometimes wonder if what they are remember for is what they would have chosen in that category.
It was the death of actor Richard Griffiths last week that brought this bubbling to the surface for me. I’m betting the majority of you are having trouble pulling up just who Richard Griffiths was. Now if I say that he was the piggish Uncle Vernon Dursley from the Harry Potter movies I’m betting an image has jumped into a great many folks minds. There is no doubt that that one role will be Griffith’s memorial. One obituary even referred to the role as the “renowned Vernon Dursley”. This despite the fact that he probably wasn’t on screen a total of an hour over the eight movies of the series.
So my question is that really everything that should come to mind when you think of Richard Griffiths? Over the course of his career he had no less than 91 TV and movie credits to his name. That would be a solid career all by itself. You could also check a career acting on the radio with the BBC or his voice over work on movies like “Hugo”. Then add in his career on the stage where he worked with, among others, the Royal Shakespeare Company. On the stage he won a variety of awards including a Laurence Olivier Award and a Tony both for an astounding show called “The History Boys”. If you want to add a little honor to the memory of a fine actor check out the film version of that title where Griffiths re-creates his stage role. Or keep your eyes peeled for smaller roles like King George in “Pirates of the Caribbean - On Stranger Tides”.
In the end we will be remembered for whatever the wider world decides to remember. Given the short attention span of the modern media and those of us who consume it that probably means that if we’re remembered at all it won’t be for what we’ve given most of our lives and energy to. It just makes me a little sad to see someone reduced to a two dimensional image of all the things they were in life.
Richard Griffiths was 65 years old.
April Fools
Given that this was the week of April Fools day for 2013 I’m digging back into the files a little bit for this story. It actually took place back in mid-February but it just feels right for right now.
On February 12 of this year folks in Great Falls Montana who had their TVs tuned to KRTV that day were suddenly greeted with what seemed to be an Emergency Alert System message. One that claimed that the dead in the Great Falls area were rising from their graves and attacking the living. The message was a hoax and the TV station apologized for the confusion. It seemed someone had hacked into the EAS and played the prank.
Now here in the week of April Fools it would be easy to just mark this off as just a high school or college computer geek prank. This particular prank has happened before and even has a name. The technical term for it is a “broadcast signal intrusion” and if they catch you it’s a quarter million dollar fine and up to ten years in Federal prison. So somebody out there doesn’t take it all that lightly. Honestly not many people get caught so the penalties are mostly show but the incident raises other questions that need to be examined.
I’ve mentioned the problem with the whole Emergency Alert System model. It’s still based on the idea that most people will be either watching TV or listening to the radio for significant portions of the day. While there’s a lot of TV still being watched it’s much more diverse than it was back in the day and the question is whether an EAS model system might actually reach the population centers needed in time of emergency. Add into that that apparently there are exploitable computer weaknesses in the system and it’s worrisome. As the cherry on the top is a study out last year that more people are turning to social media for their news. And the top news source for these people? Facebook. I’ll just let the horror of the concept of Facebook as a primary hard news source sink in on you. The study also notes that the quality of information found on the social media sites is significantly lower quality than what can be found through traditional news sources. It’s fast, it’s unedited and it’s unverified. And more Americans are turning to it for information.
That just might be the worst April Fools joke of all.
Facebook Phone
Some publications are calling it the rumor that won’t die. It’s the legend of the Facebook phone. This one has been going on for a while (well what passes for awhile in media terms these day. Don’t forget Facebook has only been around since 2004 and smartphones in any form from just shortly before that.) That Zuckerberg fella keeps denying that any such thing is coming but the rumor just refuses to go away.
Now just like the first flowers of Spring peeping through the snow it’s time for the rumor to begin the rounds again. This time concerning a rather obscure PR release the folks at Facebook about a mobile event this week that included the word “Android” in it. Now as recently as January the Z man has said that Facebook is NOT building a phone. So the focus right now is on Facebook based software that would integrate the online social media site tightly into the function of the phone.
Which leads me to the question of - why would anyone want that? This strikes me as a loser of an idea for everyone involved here.
It’s a potential loser for both the phone manufacturer (rumor says it’s HTC) and Facebook. HTC (if that’s who will turn the vapor into something solid) has been struggling. A high profile flop doesn’t help them. Neither does a phone that is probably a one trick pony. So you can use Facebook more efficiently, so what? Would that really sway YOU to buy this phone over whatever else may appeal to you? Especially given that you can access Facebook anyway on other phones? It seems inevitable that Facebook would be teaming up with a struggling manufacturer to bring this to market. They are the ones more likely to take a shot at something like this. Apple doesn’t need it. So without a highly desirable phone platform all the money has to be on the desirability of a phone that is deeply tied into Facebook.
So my question is - why would anyone buy such a thing? I love Facebook, between work related visits and personal ones I spend at least two hours a day on it. And while I might glance at a Facebook phone there is no chance I’m going to buy it. With any newer smartphone I can get as much social media as I need. Plus ALL the other things I use my smartphone for.
I know Mark Zuckerberg wants all our social media lives to be rooted in Facebook. I just think that if this week’s announcement is about turning the rumor into reality it’s going to be a pretty nasty April Fools joke on him.
Call that the View From the Phlipside
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