Program scripts from week of July 8, 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.
Your Kids Might Be Rednecks
Being a parent these days means that you are faced with a seemingly endless list of potential pitfalls for your children. As someone one who works with teens I know it seems that every week there’s some new fad or trend that I need to pass along to parents so they know. But this one may come as a surprise. You may want to check but it’s possible that your kids are becoming or have become rednecks.
The first thing we’ll need to do is deal with the whole concept of redneck. People tend to fall into two groups when it comes to the term - those for whom it is a negative and those for whom it is a badge of honor. In media terms today redneck can be defined as a culture or a way of looking at culture that is based in a more rural or working class point of view. In a day and age when we are predominantly an urban culture dominated by technology there is a growing popularity of what seems like a simpler way of life.
Don’t believe me? Take a look at the current trend of popular TV shows starting with “Duck Dynasty”. The show has amassed some huge ratings about a group of folks who proudly proclaim themselves and their lifestyle as “redneck”. Then check out shows like “Swamp People”, “Buck Wild”. Add in shows that are aimed at a much more blue collar lifestyle like “Deadliest Catch” and “Ice Road Truckers”. Once you get thinking about it there is a HUGE number of shows like this all over cable these days. If you’ve noticed an increase in the amount of plaid and denim being worn by pop culture figures you’ve already seen the effect it is having on society. The interesting thing is that these shows model some interesting intersections like National Geographic Channel’s “Rocket City Rednecks” a show about a group of redneck scientists bringing some down home inventiveness to some real world problems and advanced engineering challenges.
What’s really funny is that we’ve been through this before. Head back to the mid-60’s. “The Andy Griffith Show”, “Gomer Pyle, USMC”, “The Beverly Hillbillies”, and the syndicated hit of “Hee Haw”. You could probably add in the westerns of that same time period into the mix as well.
Given that redneck culture TV tends to support concept like family and hard work maybe it’s not the worst thing that could be influencing our kids.
Future of e-books Part 2
Last week I commented on the future of the e-book reader based on the less than thrilling sales numbers of Barnes and Noble’s Nook. I wondered if the window for that particular technology might be closing sooner than we might have expected. I wrote and recorded that program on Monday night. On Tuesday morning the CEO of Barnes and Noble resigned without warning.
I would love to say those two events were connected in ANY way but my momma raised me to not tell lies. We’re still not sure why William Lynch Jr resigned only 3 years into his tenure. What we do know is that Barnes and Noble, a company that is still primarily a brick and mortar bookstore company, now has another problem on their plate. In addition to chasing Amazon, Google and many others are moving into the competition for digital books.
If Barnes and Noble is going to survive they have to make the right decisions in the next 12 months. Make the wrong ones right now and they will probably never recover. What you do in a moment like this is pretty obvious just not necessarily easy. You build on your strengths, you find what the audience wants and you give it to them.
So if I’m being asked where to focus here’s what I tell them. You’re a bookstore. Book lovers love book stores. But it’s not the vast impersonal big box book store that lights our fire. It’s the one where we can feel like part of the culture, where the staff are knowledgable and helpful. Don’t think Target think the Apple Store. Think about creating a bookworm version of the Genius bar. Book lovers want to come in and relax and love books. Unless you come in the middle of the day it’s tough finding a seat in the reading areas at the Buffalo Barnes and Noble.
The next step is so obvious that I’m astounded I need to say it. But it’s time to drop some big bucks on getting the word out about who you are and what you offer. The Nook e-reader is generally highly regarded but when was the last time you saw an ad for one?
There is a future for B&N. Whether it’s a successful merger of brick and mortar with digital or bankruptcy will rest on the decisions they make in the wake of last week’s CEO exit.
I’m pretty confident in that prediction too.
There is nothing harder in this world to overcome in popular culture, no obstacle more challenging to surmount in a career than to be a teenage pop star. The highway of fame is littered with folks who simply never found the way to make the transition from cute child star to adult working professional.
Note I don’t even talk about making the transition from star to star. Making the transition from teen star to just having a career as an adult is incredibly hard.
Why is that? I think there’s a lot of reasons. First of all you have that shift from “cute” to something else. There’s the fact that your audience is growing up, same as you. You can’t keep doing the stuff you did when you were 14 aimed at a 14 year old audience once you pass about 17. It just gets creepy. The same problem happens to the pop star themselves. Who are they really? Any teenager wants to shed their younger persona while at the same time you have the distorted reality of being, well, a pop star. It’s hard enough to be a teen in a regular life. Imagine one with everything from more money than you’ve ever seen before to people who have quite simply lost their minds about you. How do you find your way to an adult persona in the middle of all that foolishness?
What brings all of this to mind is watching the recent derailments in Justin Bieber’s career. Think about this - Justin Bieber didn’t hit the Top 10 in the U.S. till 2010. So in just three years we’ve gone from teeny bopper heart throb to having the largest janitor’s union in the country mad at him when he used a floor bucket as his own personal bathroom. There have been other dopey moments along the way, like suggesting that Holocaust icon Anne Frank might have been a “belieber” if she’d lived today. You just don’t go there. The “Beebs” is 19 years old and that puts him right on the bullseye of this challenge. A 20 year old still targeting a tweener audience just won’t work. Meanwhile defining your “adulthood” through clubbing, obscenity and poor potty habits isn’t going to win you a lot of even young adult listeners. To them you still carry the taint of teeny bopper stardom.
What should he do? Well get his mom to stop defending him in print wouldn’t hurt. No one will take you seriously if your mom is still telling everyone what a nice boy you are. Oh and maybe he should talk to his stylist. Every time I see a current photo of him I think it’s Vanilla Ice.
Surely that can’t be what they’re going for.
Call that the View From the Phlipside
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