The Cyrus Thing, What Makes Great TV? and New Reading Models

 "The View From the Phlipside" is a media commentary program airing on WRFA-LP, Jamestown NY.  It can be heard Monday through Friday just after 8 AM and 5 PM.  The following are scripts which may not exactly match the aired version of the program.  Mostly because the host may suddenly choose to add or subtract words at a moments notice.  WRFA-LP is not responsible for any such silliness or the opinions expressed.  You can listen to a live stream of WRFA or find a podcast of this program at wrfalp.com.  Copyright 2013 by Jay Phillippi.  All Rights Reserved.  You like what you see?  Drop me a line and we can talk.

Program scripts from week of September 15, 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. 

New Reading Models                                                                                          

I have been a fair bit of traveling recently and that means my beloved Nook Color is getting a workout.  One of the advantages of an e-book reader is that I can carry around not only things I really want to read but also things that I think I probably will be interested in.  One of those is a very ebook kind of book called “Ebooks and Self Publishing - A Conversation Between Authors Barry Eisler and Joe Konrath”.  It’s actually the transcript of a live Google Docs discussion and for those of us interested in these kinds of things it is fascinating.  So imagine my joy when I got home and sat down to look for topics to find two ebook related stories waiting for me!

There are books that I would love to have on the Nook.  Roger Zelazny’s “Chronicles of Amber”, Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” trilogy, Harper Lee’s “To Kill A Mockingbird”.  Books that I love to reread every couple years.  The problem is that building a new digital library is a huge expense for books I already own.  Well the folks at Amazon are looking at solving that problem.  Their newly announced Kindle Matchbooks program allows you to buy Kindle versions of paper books that you have purchased from Amazon.  There are two really cool things about this.  First it will cover any book you’ve purchased at Amazon going back to 1995 (which just happens to be the year they were founded).  The other thing is price.  Most of the ebooks will be priced between 99 cents and 2.99, some may even be free.  Curiously this is exactly the price range that the two guys in that book I read feel is the sweet spot for ebook sales.  It’s an interesting concept that actually makes a logical connection between the old and the new.  The first thought that came to mind was the video combo packs that combine Blu-rays, DVDs and, wait for it, digital versions.
The other story I think has great potential for an old line media.  The folks at Barnes and Noble have entered into a deal with UWire to be able to offer college newspapers on Nooks.  What I really like is that it gets an audience that has effectively given up on newspapers to start thinking about newspapers on their readers.  If you can get the future leaders of the nation in the habit of turning to their e-readers to get the daily news it might translate into a potential future for the rest of the newspaper industry.  As per usual it is NOT the industry itself that has figured this out but the thinkers outside the industry.

Which is exactly what would have been predicted by those two guys in that book I was reading.

What Makes Great TV?                                                                                     

Here’s a question that could make us all rich if we can just come up with the answer.  What makes compelling television?  What I mean by that is what needs to be done to create the kind of television that people will really want to watch?  It’s also called “appointment television”.  In the old days, you know like 2010, before you could watch television shows on the internet, most TV was appointment TV.  People would plan to be home at such and such a time on such and such a night to catch a show.

There is still some of that.  Most recently were the final episodes of AMC’s show “Breaking Bad” are shows that will have the shows fans glued to their seats.  Sure you could record it and time shift the program but the reality is that no one wants to miss really good TV.  That’s the compelling part.  You want to be able to talk about the show.

Now there are two things we do know about making compelling television.  First, that some people are already doing it.  The second is that plenty of other people don’t have a clue.  These are the people who need our help.

Now most commonly there are two ways for people who don’t really get it to try and fake their way to compelling programming.  The first is get as racy as possible.  It’s tough if you’re working on network TV because of the FCC regulations.  We’re seeing more and more cable channels seeing how far they can go.  A recent NPR story said that AMC actually has a limit on the number of times the “f-bomb” can be said.  In the end does that really create “Must See TV”?  Only in the short run.  The problem with relying on shock is that after a while the audience gets used to it and it’s not shocking anymore.  “Breaking Bad” has certainly been shocking in its run.  At the same time it has also offered memorable characters and great storylines.

The other way that folks try to create that special TV is to re-make the hits.  Steal ideas, do spin-offs and sequels.  If you pick the right ideas or follow the right characters from one show to the next.  So it’s interesting to note that now that “Breaking Bad” is ending its run the producers have to try and create some new compelling programming.

What are they doing?  Creating a sequel.

The Cyrus Thing                                                                                                      

I was really hoping that I could avoid this whole thing.  It’s stupid, and pointless and very much a tempest in a teapot.  I don’t care that it was the lead story on news outlets that should have known better the morning after it took place.  The fact that it is still managing to be news is astounding.  What’s worse is that by actually taking notice of it here I’m actually becoming one of those people who keep it high profile.

But it just won’t go away.

What is it?  It’s the Miley Cyrus...you groaned right there, didn’t you?  I don’t blame you.  It’s a stupid story about a stupid act.  

The latest bump up for this stupid story is an equally stupid story in USA Today in an interview with dowager rock queen Cher.  In the interview itself she pretty much trashes Miley.  Not because it was bad taste, let’s face it that’s a subject that Cher has no standing on, but because she thought it was badly done.  Once the story was published there was the inevitable backlash and Cher sort of backed away from her comments.

And that’s really the unfortunate part in my opinion.  Cher DOES have standing to discuss outrageous female stage performance.  That is almost certainly why McNewspaper asked her the question.  Sadly what Cher retreated to a “she’s pushing the envelope, being an artist” stance that smacks of PR timidity.

If what Cyrus did was in fact art somehow, and you can count me among those who find that concept dubious at best, then it ought to be able to stand up to scrutiny by people with expertise in that area.  That’s part of the whole process and always has been.
So by backing away from her criticism Cher is pretty much telling us that she realizes it’s more about the outrage than the art.

Which is, of course, what most of the rest of us realize from the outset.  So how do we fight back against the onslaught of these nonsense stories?  Two ways I think.  The first is follow the path Cher took before she lost her nerve.  Treat it like art and then take it apart.  It will become obvious quickly to the vast majority of people that’s it not worth the time and effort.

The second way?  What I wish I could have done from the beginning.

Just ignore it.  The stories die without sunlight.

Call that the View From the Phlipside

The Perils of Pop Stardom, E-book readers Part 2, Your Kids Might Be Rednecks

 "The View From the Phlipside" is a media commentary program airing on WRFA-LP, Jamestown NY.  It can be heard Tuesday through Friday just after 8 AM and 5 PM.  The following are scripts which may not exactly match the aired version of the program.  Mostly because the host may suddenly choose to add or subtract words at a moments notice.  WRFA-LP is not responsible for any such silliness or the opinions expressed.  You can listen to a live stream of WRFA or find a podcast of this program at wrfalp.com.  Copyright 2013 by Jay Phillippi.  All Rights Reserved.  You like what you see?  Drop me a line and we can talk.



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.

Perils of Pop Stardom                                                                                                                   

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

So what's on your Nook Jay?

For no particular reason:

Here's what is currently resident on the Nook Color (there are more books stored on my computer):
Organized by author (* indicates I've read it, - means started and put down):

Little Women Louisa May Alcott
Betrayal Aaron Alston (a Star Wars book)
*The Time Hunters  Carl Ashmore
Radix, and Solis both by A.A. Attanasio
Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen
*Shakespeare in an Hour Christopher Baker (GREAT book!)
*Two Barnes and Noble User Guides
*Soul Identity and *Soul Intent both by Dennis Batchelder
The Winds of Khalakovo  Bradley P Beaulieu
Guns Phil Bowie
A Princess of Mars Edgar Rice Boroughs
*50 Classic Science Fiction Novels collection
The Murder at the Vicarage, *The Secret Adversary   Agatha Christie
*The Book of Common Prayer
101 Famous Poems
*15 Decisive Battles of the Western World   Edward Creasy
*Dark Legacy Anna DeStefano
Robinson Crusoe Daniel DeFoe
An American Tragedy Theodore Dreiser
The Autobiography of Ben Franklin  Benjamin Franklin
Early Frost A Boys' Will, North of Boston  Robert Frost
*Stupid History Leland Gregory (lives up/down to its title)
Guide to Spiritual Practices  George Herbert Gunn
*Arson Plus, and *The Assistant Murderer  Dashiell Hammett
The Black Moth, and *Footsteps in the Dark  Georgette Heyer
The Multiplex Man   James Hogan
*Life Blood, *Syndrome  Thomas Hoover
*God's War  Kameron Hurley
Sharp Writing   Kaplan
How We Got Here   Andy Kessler
The Elephant's Child  Rudyard Kipling
Write for Life   Kominars and McCourt
The Altar at Midnight   C.M. Kornbluth
*Dead(ish)  Naomi Kramer
*A Plague of Demons, Future Imperfect, Keith Laumer- The Lighter Side, Legions of Space and Retief!   Keith Laumer
The Practice of the Presence of God    Brother Lawrence
*The Haunted Bookshop  Christopher Morley
*The Hunt  Jan Neuharth
Fallen Angels    Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle and Michael Flynn
*50 Classic Science Fiction works collection
*Bone Rattler  Eliot Pattison (Excellent!)
*Son of the Revolution   Rachel Phillippi (yes, THAT Rachel Phillippi!)
The Answer   H Beam Piper
Orthodoxy   G K Chesterton
West of Honor  Jerry Pournelle
The Millenials   Rainer and Rainer
Living with the Himalayan Masters   Swami Rama
Berserker Throne  Fred Saberhagen
*Sepitmus Heap Book One  Angie Sage
*Santa's Little Red Spaceship  H Jason Schulz
Arms and the Man   George Bernard Shaw
Dracula  Bram Stoker
-The Blue Light Project    Timothy Taylor
Social Media and the Episcopal Church    Various
*50 Classic Books collection  Vol 1
*50 Classic Books collection  Vol 2
*The Golden Age of Science Fiction Vol 1
*The Golden Age of Science Fiction Vol 2
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea   Jules Verne
*The Angel of Terror   Edgar Wallace
The Time Machine  H G Wells
The Age of Innocence  Edith Wharton
Portable MFA in Creative Writing   NY Writers Workshop
The Last Ringbearer  Kiril Yeskov
The Sentinels Fortunes of War   Gordon Zuckerman
After the Prophet - The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split in Islam   Lesley Hazleton (library book)

That is some 82 books across a wide range of topics, styles and generations.  I intend to read them all.

And then keep going!  You see my list, anything jump out at you that I really ought to read next?  Anything you'd warn me away from?

Virtually all of these books I got for free (legally).  If you have the Barnes and Noble reader or a Nook you should definitely check out their Free Friday program.  There are lots of other places to get free books for free as well.  Maybe I'll share those in a future post.  They are VERY easy to find however.  Just Google it!

View From the Phlipside - Nook Color

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.
Two weeks ago I took the plunge into a new realm of media.  One that I wasn't sure I was ever going to be ready for or want to make a part of my life.  But I pulled together some Christmas money and few extra bucks and decided to jump in.  I bought an e-book reader.

I love books.  I love the feel of them, I love exploring the stacks at the library searching for an author I've never read before.  There's a wonderful tactile experience that goes along with the experience of the reading itself.  When I first saw the e-readers I couldn't imagine that they could ever offer the same experience.

On the other hand like my father before me I love gadgets.  Technology is just fun as far as I'm concerned.  I enjoy the challenge of learning to use new technology and finding ways to use it in my life.

The two loves collided in my new Nook Color.  The first thing you need to deal with when you move into this new world is the borderline fanaticism engendered by the various models.  At the top of the heap is the Kindle from Amazon.  The Nook is from Barnes and Noble.  The Borders chains, including Walden books, have their own the Kobo, then there's the Sony versions as well.  Prices start below $100 and go beyond $300.  Each have their fans and it can be as parochial as the old days of PC vs Mac.

I did a lot of research and decided on the Nook Color because it offered more options as far as magazine and newspaper reading.  The biggest factor was that it works very well with e-books from our local library.  The Kindle falls down in that area quite badly.  And yes our local library, the Prendergast Library, does indeed offer a growing collection of electronic books.  I'm telling you, we have a REALLY GOOD local library.

So how's it going?  I must admit mostly quite well.  The experience of reading hasn't been effected at all.  I added a leather cover to the Nook and now it rather looks and feels like a real book.  The range of books available for free is pretty impressive and I've checked out several books from the library as well.  The process you have to through to get your library book onto your e-reader is a few more steps than I wish but it's not hard.  And that's not the libraries problem but the system required by the publishers.  I'm still just feeling my way along.  I'll check back in a couple months and let you know how it's going.

Still lots of reading to do, both virtually and in real life.

Call that the View From the Phlipside.

"The View From the Phlipside" airs on WRFA-LP Jamestown NY.  You can listen to WRFA online HERE
Copyright - Jay Phillippi 2010