Program scripts from week of July 29, 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.
Unsolicited Advice
Periodically on this program I offer up some utterly unsolicited advice to various media personalities and major corporations. I will be the first to acknowledge that there is no evidence that any of them have ever actually taken this advice.
But they should.
In this case my advice is aimed at the folks at the television broadcast networks. It’s a tough life at the networks these days. Once upon a time just a few decades ago they were the king of the hill.
Today their viewership is falling overall across the board and for the second year in a row NO broadcast network show was even nominated in the Outstanding Drama Series category. That’s the serious win category. It’s the one that makes everyone sit and take notice of the quality work you do. So let me repeat myself. NO, as in ZERO, broadcast network shows were even nominated.
Ouch.
This prompted NBC Entertainment chairman Bob Greenblatt to rise up on his hind legs and try to explain it all away. Kind of interesting that it’s someone from the #3 network making the noise. His arguments aren’t really worth getting into since they’re pretty mundane but I thought maybe it’s time for a little unsolicited advice.
The networks are desperate to figure out how to turn this all around. NBC’s plan apparently involves more “event programming” which apparently means mini-series about Hilary Clinton and live broadcasts. I think I’ve got a better idea. How about we actually try investing in top quality programming? Maybe take a page from the folks at the BBC and go for short run, high quality programming. I mean BBC is generally accepted as a quality TV producer. Take a look at the new “Sherlock” series. A season is 3 90 minute episodes. Dump some serious time, effort and yes money into creating some real “event programming”. Surround them with your best series TV.
My bet is that ratings will go up and award nominations will pick up too. Beyond that we’d finally get some TV worth watching.
But no one will listen.
Apologize
Early on in my career I got into a dispute with one of my bosses. And yes it was just one of many, many such disputes I got into with various people. Who knew you could work with so many people who were wrong?
OK, not all of them were wrong.
But I still think I was right this time. I had messed up something on the air, misspoken myself reading a story, something like that. I apologized and went back and corrected myself. When I came off the air I was told I should never apologize because it just drew more attention to the mistake. Just read it correctly and move on.
The problem I have with this is that it assumes the audience is stupid. That they didn’t notice and if you act like it didn’t happen they’ll just forget about it. Pretending I didn’t do it didn’t work when I was 8 so why would I expect that it would work as an adult?
A couple of major news organizations found themselves in the same position. How they handled it is instructive.
A whole bunch of news organizations, including the L.A. Times and Business Insider, recently ran a quote by actress and new host on “The View” Jenny McCarthy about vaccines and autism. Now Jenny has said a lot of uninformed things about that subject but she didn’t say this one. The quote came from a satire site called “The Superficial”. When confronted with the mistake these organizations tried to bury the mistake. Which has allowed the false quote to continue to circulate with their names giving it weight.
On the other hand the Chicago Tribune recently ran a story about a disabled veteran and his seeing eye dog. Problem was the man in the story lied about being a veteran and how he’d lost his eyesight. The Trib ran an apology that explained what was wrong with the original story, took responsibility for not getting it right, explained the mistakes they made and promised that steps were being taken to insure that it never happened again.
So one news organization acted like professional adults. The other ones acted like guilty 8 year olds. Which one do you have more respect for?
But I still think I was right this time. I had messed up something on the air, misspoken myself reading a story, something like that. I apologized and went back and corrected myself. When I came off the air I was told I should never apologize because it just drew more attention to the mistake. Just read it correctly and move on.
The problem I have with this is that it assumes the audience is stupid. That they didn’t notice and if you act like it didn’t happen they’ll just forget about it. Pretending I didn’t do it didn’t work when I was 8 so why would I expect that it would work as an adult?
A couple of major news organizations found themselves in the same position. How they handled it is instructive.
A whole bunch of news organizations, including the L.A. Times and Business Insider, recently ran a quote by actress and new host on “The View” Jenny McCarthy about vaccines and autism. Now Jenny has said a lot of uninformed things about that subject but she didn’t say this one. The quote came from a satire site called “The Superficial”. When confronted with the mistake these organizations tried to bury the mistake. Which has allowed the false quote to continue to circulate with their names giving it weight.
On the other hand the Chicago Tribune recently ran a story about a disabled veteran and his seeing eye dog. Problem was the man in the story lied about being a veteran and how he’d lost his eyesight. The Trib ran an apology that explained what was wrong with the original story, took responsibility for not getting it right, explained the mistakes they made and promised that steps were being taken to insure that it never happened again.
So one news organization acted like professional adults. The other ones acted like guilty 8 year olds. Which one do you have more respect for?
Have you ever done a vanity Google? That’s when you type in your own name to see what comes up. For public figures it has become something of a must do because it’s the fastest way to check out your online image. Google’s search will take things into consideration like the how often terms are searched for and common words associated with those terms.
For a cancer surgeon in New South Wales, Australia that was part of the problem. You see when you googled his name the search engine’s autocomplete function added the word “bankruptcy”. He claimed that this cost him patients and financial backers so he sued Google in California court.
This may sound silly but I guarantee the folks at Google don’t find it funny. It is one of a series of such suits brought against the search giant. Another suit had been thrown out in Wisconsin concerning a woman whose name brought up an autocomplete association with the prescription drug Levitra.
Here’s the problem I have with these suits. Both of the people in these two cases DO in fact have connections with the words they dislike so much. The doctor was listed as a creditor to a company that had gone bankrupt and the woman had already sued Yahoo over the same issue with Levitra.
The equations used to determine Google’s search process are way beyond my understanding so I thought I’d try a simple test. I googled myself.
With just my first name entered I got “Jay Phillippi Princeton” (I did some study there years ago), my full name then entries for Jay Leno, Jay Z and Jay McKee. By the time I got my full name in it was just the first two listings. So is that association with Princeton any fairer than the bankruptcy? No, although this makes me look good while making the doctor look bad.
The reality is that if you search the doctor’s name today you get dozens of stories about his suit against Google (which he has dropped without prejudice at the moment). All of which means that the word bankruptcy has that many more associations with his name.
I find it hard to blame Google for this problem. Your online reputation is made up of all the things that appear on the World Wide Web. For the professional it is more and more important that we spend some time working that system.
Call that the View From the Phlipside
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