Program scripts from week of August 26, 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.
The Cost of Friendship
The other day Mrs. Phlipside was grumbling that she might have to unfriend someone on Facebook. Seemed the person in question was spending a lot of time exercising their potty mouth on their feed and it was getting my lady down. I know that I’ve downgraded several folks and dropped a couple more because they’ve had a negative effect on my enjoyment of Facebook. Just like real life, sometimes you grow away from certain friends. It’s not that big a deal.
At least I didn’t think so. Turns out I might be wrong. And that may mean all of us need to take a much closer look at who shows up on our Friends list. How would you feel about some of those friends if you discovered they were keeping you from getting a loan or taking out a mortgage?
Turns out that some lending institutions are now reviewing the social media of folks who are applying for loans. The idea is that if you have friends who discuss their debt problems you may be a greater debt risk. At it’s simplest it’s a “birds of a feather flock together” concept.
One U.S. company called Movenbank is working on a system where your interest rate might be related to your levels of friends or followers on sites like Twitter, LinkeIn and Facebook. Other lenders are already using things like your payment record at Amazon, Ebay and Paypal right along side your credit score from the major credit ratings companies.
How you feeling about all your Facebook friends now?
Here’s the reality. I have several friends or family members who have had financial problems, even gone through bankruptcy. Being a decent human being I don’t walk away from them just because they’ve had financial problems. And their financial problems don’t have ANY impact on how I pay my bills. So I find this concept pretty idiotic. And even for someone who likes social media I find the idea that my online “influence” is somehow an indicator of my creditworthiness as quite possibly the dumbest thing I’ve heard this year.
Tell me its a minor consideration way down the list and maybe I’d shrug it off. But if you still aren’t sure you want to make the loan by the time you’re looking at how many Facebook friends they have let me make it easy for you.
Just say no. Facebook should be for jokes, silly videos and cat photos.
It started with MP3 players. Two completely different ones at very different points on the cost spectrum. Interesting but not compelling. Then I came across an article talking about how it’s the next addition to cellphones from the folks at Sprint. Then when MY new cellphone arrived (NOT from Sprint) it had it too! So I guess I need to take note.
What’s this new addition? Climbing back out of the scrap heap of history it’s...an FM tuner chip.
A little research shows that it’s not a brand new thing. The difference is that with the addition of a large wireless provider making a commitment to making it a standard part of their product line suddenly local radio has a toe in the new media door.
I’ve heard plenty of people poo-poo this saying that there are plenty of apps that allow you to access all kinds of radio from all over the country, even all over the world. Trust me when I say that I’ve listened to some great radio stations from Chicago, Boston, Cleveland, Detroit, New York and more. But on a morning when the snow is falling steadily and I’m trying to figure out how that’s going to affect my drive into work or home at the end of the day I want LOCAL radio.
Here’s the chance for local radio to get on the playing field of the technology that the majority of adult consumers are now carrying. The question is what are they going to do about it?
The new environment has a lot more competition than before and competition that doesn’t play by the same rules. But they are in the game. I spend a lot of time talking about the challenge in a paradigm shift. Radio is getting what they’ve been asking for, the core of the business, access. If they think they can just keep cranking out the same bland corporate tripe against this competition it will all have been for nought.
They can either open the door in front of them or they can just curl up next to the Dodo bird.
He. She. Him. Her.
Seems like pretty simple concepts to most of us I’d wager. But in the past week the modern complexity around those concepts has leapt to the forefront of discussion in the media.
If you have been following the news you have heard the story of Army Private Bradley Manning. He was convicted of illegally publishing secret military communications. That’s the easy part of the story. Manning has announced that he believes he is actually a woman trapped in a man’s body and has asked that he be referred to from now on as “Chelsea”.
You may or may not have any sympathy for this part of the story but trust me it creates an enormous issue for the media covering the story. How do you refer to Private Manning? Which personal pronoun do you use? The New York Times has chosen to try and sidestep the issue by simply saying “Private Manning”. The problem is that this is in variance with their stated policy to refer to people in the news by their preferred gender. National Public Radio has made an even more unfortunate choice by announcing that until such time as gender reassignment surgery is completed they will continue to refer to “Bradley” and “he”. That decision simply makes them sound judgmental and insensitive.
For activists in this area the answer is simple. Just do it. People should be referred to by the label and personal pronoun of their choice. That sounds simple until you realize some people are making up their own. The media has a legitimate concern about clarity. We need to understand who and what is being talked about. Suddenly talking about Chelsea instead of Bradley is going to lose some folks in the shuffle.
This discussion is brand new for a lot of people. It’s also a subject that will be a struggle to comprehend for many people. I’ve had a couple of these discussions over the last few years with people who were willing to walk me through some new concepts and I STILL don’t think I’ve got it down.
The best thing for the media to do right now is lead the way. Take us through the concepts. Help us understand what is trying to be said and why. Shine a light and help us to understand what we see there.
In the end I believe that will bring us most successfully through the changes coming in those very simple concepts.
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