No More Real Life, Hump Daaaaay! and Chasing Youth

 "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 October 13, 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. 

Chasing Youth                                                                                         

What are the kids doing?  That is the most often asked question in your life if you are A: a parent or B: an advertising executive.  For the parent the question is usually about whether little Johnny is eating dirt again or where Suzy and boyfriend have suddenly disappeared to.  If you’re in advertising the hope is that if you can keep up with what younger folks are doing you will be successful in your chosen line of work.

Those two groups usually have one other thing in common.  They get the answer to that question wrong more often than they like.

Sticking to the media side of the equation the biggest problem is that not only are younger media consumers hard to predict under the best of circumstances but also that we are living in a time period where they can change more quickly and move in more directions than ever before.

Facebook and Twitter are rapidly disappearing in the media rear view for many younger consumers.  Oh they’re still there but it’s no longer THE place to be.  Which means that by the time the media establishment has cranked up its machinery the target has moved again.  Expectations are different, needs are different.  Plus if you’re in the advertising sales end of the business you need to remember that a lot of this generation actively uses software to block your ads.

Here’s another place that the media is struggling.  A new longitudinal study done by the folks at Pew shows that the youngest consumers spend less time with the news than their elders do.  The post retirement generation spends over 80 minutes a day with the news.  The sub-30 generation is right around 46 minutes.  I wonder how much of that disparity is covered by the difference in media between the two generations.  If you’re getting your news mostly online you can scan through to what you want much more efficiently than waiting on radio or TV to deliver it.  My problem is that the media tends to focus on the lower time spent viewing rather figuring out to better serve that demographic in the time available.  Solve that question and you just might see growth.

The one thing that is guaranteed in this pursuit of youth is that there will continue to be as many or more misses than hits.  

But then any parent could tell you that.

Hump Daaaaay!                                                                                                  

There’s that wonderful, weird moment when something that was created for a specific purpose suddenly veers into the other lane and takes off.  Of course the general rule is that any public recognition is good recognition.  That doesn’t really work in real life.  So I always wonder what goes through the minds of companies who see something from their advertising plan takes on a life of its own.

Never forget the goal of advertising is to separate you the consumer from your money.  In the long run that is its purpose in life.  The short run may include things like changing your mind or convincing you of a certain point but in the long run they are there to get your money in exchange for some product or service that you probably don’t need.

So what do the folks at GEICO think when they find out that one of their ads has become a problem at schools across the nation.  First we have to sort through all the various GEICO ads.  The insurance company still amazes me because they are running so many different campaigns all at the same time.  My bet is you know the spot.  It involves the phrase “Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike” and the problem phrase itself “Hump DAAAAAAY!”.  That’s right, the GEICO camel spot.

Beyond the fact that it’s annoying, no wait, it’s BECAUSE it’s annoying that it’s a problem.  I will admit that I have a soft spot for this ad.  It pleases me deep down in that 9 year old boy part of my personality.

The problem seems to be with, well, 9 year old boys.  A lot of schools are banning that phrase.  I have no doubt that many Middle Schools and Junior Highs are disrupted every Wednesday when the boys break out their best camel imitations at the top of their lungs.  Funny once, maybe twice.  By the end of the day, following hour after hour of it, I’m quite certain that many teachers and school administrators are ready to slam their heads into the wall.

Which brings me back to the folks at GEICO.  You can’t REALLY be happy that your advertising is seen as a big enough disruption of the education system that it’s actively being banned.  How do you react when one of your ads has gone viral, has become a catchword in the culture?  

My bet?

They’re laughing all the way to the bank.

No More Real Life                                                                                                             

Why do you go to the movies?  That’s a serious question, by the way.  Why do you go to the movies?  I love the movies but why?  I love the epic quality of stories told on the big screen.  I love the relief from reality that the movies have always offered.  When I watch a movie I can be a superhero or even just a regular hero.  I can explore far parts of this world or leave this world entirely and explore other times and places.  Along the way I can be challenged, I can be amused, I can be moved.  I go to the movies because no other media can tell those stories in quite the same way.  Some other media do some parts of storytelling better and some parts worse.  I love movies for what they do well.

So let me ask you this - do you go to the movies to learn history?  If you answered yes I want you to seriously re-consider that answer.  The movies are about storytelling.  Consequently accurately representing historical events comes at best a distant second and more than likely a distant third, fourth or fifth.  Now at this point someone is going to say “What about documentaries?”.  Well let me ask another question and be honest.  In the last 10 years how often have you gone to the movies, meaning gone out to a theater because the essence of the theater experience, and watched a documentary?  If you’re like most Americans that’s probably what, once?  So that’s not really a significant part of the average movie goers experience.

I know when I go in that if the movie is “based on actual events” there’s going to be a certain percentage of the story that gets shuffled, edited or flat out dropped to advance the movie storytelling.  For example you don’t want to bring up last year’s movie “Argo” in Canada.  The movie focused on the rescue of some of the hostages held by Iran in 1979.  What’s upset the Canadians?  Simple, in real life they played an important part, a major part in that rescue.  You’ll never know it by watching the movie, because it got edited out.  This comes up now because folks are upset with some artistic license employed in the telling of the new Tom Hanks movie “Captain Phillips”. 

Here’s what I wish the bottom line could be.  I wish the movies would drop the whole “based on actual events”.  Be inspired by real life, tell the story that relates the important parts of the history, use the wonderful storytelling tools at your disposal and do that.

Then the rest of us can stop fact checking and just sit back and enjoy the movies.

Call that the View From the Phlipside

Late Night Revolution, Musberger Mess, When The News Is The News

 "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 2012 by Jay Phillippi.  All Rights Reserved.  You like what you see?  Drop me a line and we can talk.

Program scripts from week of January 14, 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. 

Late Night Revolution                                                                                               

You never want to jump to a conclusion but it looks like there may be something very interesting about to happen in late night TV.  Late night television has been one of the most astoundingly stable time periods in TV history.  First there was Steve Allen, the Jack Paar, then there was Johnny Carson.  And for 30 years that was pretty much it.  When Carson retired Jay Leno stepped up and David Letterman stepped up and a bunch of other guys tried to pick up the crumbs.  But it’s been Leno and Letterman holding down most of the late night audience.

The problem is that both of the top guys are getting old.  Leno is 63 and Letterman is 65.  And the question has to be who is the next king of late night?

It looked like Conan O’Brien might be that person.  Maybe it’s Jimmy Fallon.  Or maybe it’s Jimmy Kimmel.  Kimmel’s show on ABC got moved last week to the same time slot as both Leno and Letterman.  While Kimmel has been saying all the right things, like he thinks he’ll eventually settle into third place behind the two veteran hosts, the results of his first show in the competitive time slot have to have the big boys worried.

On the first night Kimmel finished in second place comfortably in front of Letterman, he finished the week with a couple of thirds and another second place finish.  But in the key 18-49 audience demographics Kimmel was a power.  He finished second the first night, tied Leno on the second night and easily out distanced the Tonight Show on the third night with growth in younger viewers every single night.

Now one week is way too small a sample size to be drawing any profound conclusions from but it’s well worth considering the potential that’s out there.  Over the last couple years the big boys have messed around (remember the whole Jay Leno to prime time catastrophe?) and that means there’s an opening that could be exploited by a smart, new, younger talent.  Someone like Jimmy Kimmel.

Kimmel is playing it smart.  He’s had the big name stars, he’s even teasing that he’ll finally pay off on a long running gag about having Matt Damon on the show.  And that’s exactly what he should be doing.

The hotshot young host says there will never be another king of late night like Carson.  He might be right.  But someone is going to be the new top dog.  That just might be him.

Musberger Mess                                                                                                          

It never ceases to astound me with all the REAL problems that exist in the world of the media when so much energy gets spent on a non-problem.  Like the tempest in a tea pot that erupted over comments made by ESPN sports commentator Brent Musberger.

In case you somehow missed all this let me offer a quick summary.  During the college football national championship game between Alabama and Notre Dame, where Musberger was one of the broadcast team, there came a moment when the camera found the family of Alabama quarterback AJ McCarren.  Sitting with the family was McCarren’s girlfriend, Katherine Webb, who also happens to be the current Miss Alabama.  Musberger commented on how good looking she was, noted that quarterbacks always seem to get the good looking girlfriends and recommended that young men should polish their football passing skills so they could get such good looking girlfriends too.  The whole thing took just over 30 seconds.  And the Mrs. Grundys of the Twitterverse promptly lost their minds.  ESPN displayed a complete lack of guts and apologized.

My question is - for what?

Let’s review the facts.  Miss Webb is by pretty much any contemporary standard a beautiful young woman.  And at least based on my experience quarterbacks DO tend to have good looking girlfriends.  Add to this the fact that not Miss Webb, her father OR her boyfriend were offended in any way shape or form.  They’ve all said so publicly.

Let’s also remember one other fact.  TV is about the picture.  And when a game gets as far out of hand as that did the director starts looking for other stories.  So there was exactly ZERO chance that they weren’t going to show the beauty queen girlfriend.

Did Musberger do anything wrong?  Yeah, he’s a 73 year man who came off as a little bit hummina, hummina, hummina because he went on past the first obvious comment.  He should be a little embarrassed.  His network should have said nothing.  And all those self appointed guardians of public morality, all the Mrs. Grundys of the world?  They need to go find something serious to worry about.

When The News Is The News

As a general rule there is one story that no news organization ever wants to have to report.  It’s the story when the news organization itself becomes the story.  Unless it’s crowing that you’ve won a Pulitzer Prize news organizations don’t want to be in the news.  Let’s face it, they know as well as we do that the vast majority of the news is when something bad happens.  And the mythology of the news biz is that all the bad stuff happens outside the newsroom.

That strange noise you just heard was every single person who has EVER worked in a newsroom snorting in derision at that last thought.

Never the less the Journal News, a newspaper serving the lower Hudson Valley, recently became the story when they ran article and accompanying map that showed the names and addresses of everyone in their region that had a legally registered gun.  Needless to say those folk did not appreciate the attention.  In fact some folks went so far as to threaten violence against the newspaper resulting in the paper hiring, ironically, armed guards to protect their building.

So what’s really the issue here?  Let’s review the facts.  The story ran shortly following the tragedy in Newtown.  In a time when gun violence, gun ownership, and gun regulation are major topics the question of how many legal guns are in the paper’s readership area is legitimate news.  The information they published was legally obtained from public records.
All of which has been met with a certain level of hysteria.  There are claims that gun owners were treated like sexual predators which seems a stretch to me or that they will be targeted by burglars.  White Plains police note that no such pattern has emerged.

So what then to say about the Journal News story?  I’m not sure I see the news value of printing the names of people involved in a perfectly legal activity.  There is a question of privacy.  While there may be a right to know about total numbers of guns or even areas of especially high concentrations the individual owners names strike me as an especially poor editorial decision.

Call that the View From the Phlipside

Rock Can Kill You, College Bowl Games and The Great Experiment Fails

 "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 2012 by Jay Phillippi.  All Rights Reserved.  You like what you see?  Drop me a line and we can talk.

Program scripts from week of December 31, 2012



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 Great Experiment Fails                                                                                   

I’m not sure there’s another aspect of our relationship with media that continues to struggle more in the transition to the digital age than how we get our news.  Once the printing press started making print materials easier to produce something very much like our modern newspapers came into being.  For centuries this was the primary way, beyond word of mouth, that most people found out about what was happening in the larger world.  As the years went by the newspaper got bigger and offered more and more news.  Not just the local but the national and the international.  Feature stories, sports stories and my personal favorite - the funnies.  I remember waiting till my Dad got home from work because he always brought home the afternoon paper.  I could lay it out on the living room floor and read about all kinds of things.

I’ve talked before about the challenges facing newspapers, magazines, radio and TV news before.  Studies I’ve seen say that there is still a desire for that kind of information.  At the same time people are expecting a different approach that makes use of the technology that has become a larger and larger part of our lives.  Finding the way forward through all those questions has been a challenge.

You had to wonder if Rupert Murdoch had dealt himself the winning hand in February of 2011 when he launched “The Daily”.  The Daily was intended to be the newspaper of the future.  In its initial form it was for the iPad only and was designed to make use of the multi-media abilities of the world’s first successful tablet computer.  Murdoch’s News Corporation would seem to have been just the kind of organization to make it work.  Long history in the journalism field (admittedly not all of it of the highest calibre) and the deep pockets to fund it till it got rolling.  Turns out that became the problem.  It never got rolling.  Which is why they pulled the plug on The Daily December 15.

So the journey will continue into the new year.  How do we want our news delivered?  What business model can be found to make it work and show a profit?

As we watch the launch of a new leadership right here at our hometown newspaper we’ll have to see if there’s some bright business person out there with the idea to launch the next generation of the news.

College Bowl Games                                                                                                          

Once upon a time, a very long time ago, college bowl season was something special.  The college bowl games were the icing on the cake, the tinsel on the Christmas tree, the great way to kick off the New Year by watching the kickoffs of some of the best college football teams in the land.  Those days are dead, dead as a doornail, dead as Marley’s ghost.  What we have in its place is just about as welcome as a visit from Scrooge’s late partner as well.

As is my custom let me be clear - I am not a great college football fan.  I didn’t attend a college with a great football tradition.  I watch one game a year - the Army/Navy game.  Attending that game in person is on my bucket list.  Outside of that I have no use for the college game.  But back in the day I watched a great many of those bowl games.  They were an event back in the day.

Not so much today.

Here’s a quiz for you.  How many bowl games are scheduled for the 2012-13 football bowl season?  10? 20?  Not there yet.  25.  Nope.  30.  Nope.  35 bowl games between December 15 and the so called National Championship on January 7.  Among them you will find such luminaries as the Beef O’Brady bowl, the Kraft Fight Hunger bowl, the Famous Idaho Potato bowl, the Military bowl not to be confused with the Bell Helicopter Armed Forces bowl, the Buffalo Wild Wings bowl, the Belk bowl, the Franklin American Mortgage Music City bowl and the San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia bowl.  But all of this leads up to the big game, the National Championship, right?  So you’d expect the bowls to slowly crescendo right?  So explain to me why the last bowl game before the big one is the GoDaddy.com bowl featuring Arkansas State against Kent State.  Other than folks with bets on the game and alumni who watches these games?  I have a friend who is a huge college football fan.  The rule is don’t call on Saturday during football season.  You can visit as long as you sit down and watch the game.  He probably watches all them too.  I just can’t imagine why.

Once upon a time these games were special.

Today let’s just call them all the Irrelevant Football Cash Bowls and move on.

Rock Can Kill You

The New Year is always a time for me to sit back and re-assess my life.  Time to take a look at the goals I want to set for myself.  Plus a time to look at the things I’ve managed to tick off my Bucket List along the way.  This past year for example I finally managed to go to Europe for the first time.  I hope it won’t be the last but I can at least say I’ve done it.

Along the way there are also some things that you just have to admit you’re not ever going to do.  I am never going to play second base for the Pittsburgh Pirates.  Or any other professional baseball team but my goal was always the Pirates.  For a lot of us on that dream list included singing or playing with a rock band.  The good news is that as Baby Boomer rockers continue to play well into their geezerhood there may still be hope for me on this one.  A recent academic study out of the United Kingdom may make me re-consider however.

The study was done by the British Health Department and the folks at Liverpool John Moores University.  They studied rock stars from Elvis Presley to the Arctic Monkeys (I looked them up, current English indie rock group).  What they discovered is not surprising and yet a little daunting all at the same time.

Over fourteen hundred stars from rock, punk, pop, R&B, rap, electronica and New Age who worked between 1956 and 2006.  Of that number 137 or just over 9% have died which is a higher percentage of the overall age demographic.  That’s right being a rock star is bad for your health.  Curiously North American music stars seem to live longer than their English cousins, 45.2 years versus 39.6.

Speaking of ages the study debunks the popular 27 year old myth.  While Joplin, Hendricks, Morrison, Cobain and Winehouse all died at that age they are the exception rather than the rule.

The other thing the study saw was that solo acts tend to die younger than members of groups.  It could be that having some support from your band mates make a difference.

Guess it’s true, you can get by, with a little help from your friends.

Call that the View From the Phlipside

RIP Richard Zanuck, Wearing Technology and Learning the Ropes

 "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 2012 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 16, 2012

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. 

Learning the Ropes

Once upon a time in the news biz you started at the bottom.  If you were new kid, the junior most member you got the police blotter calls.  Calling every police department in every dinky little burg in your paper’s coverage area and seeing who got arrested for what.  It’s boring, it’s tedious and you never get your name on the story.  That was always the holy grail of a reporter - the byline.

In this new age of news gathering the reporting staff is getting smaller and smaller.  Which means that there are fewer “cub reporters” to do the dirty work.  Newspapers are trying to find the best way to cut expenses without cutting too many corners.  And it doesn’t always work.

Recently there has been a bit of a hoo haw over the work of a company called Journatic.  The furor is over the fact that the company outsources some of their reporting (meaning that an employee in the Far East may be gathering information about Jamestown NY) and then providing the stories with fake bylines to make it look more local.

Now newspapers have always relied on outside news reporting services like The Associated Press, United Press International or Reuters.  But these were all for news OUTSIDE the local area.  The hometown paper was supposed to be the expert on its community, the definitive voice of information.  Journatic was originally intended to help small papers stay competitive.  The dismay has grown when it became obvious that major papers in cities like Houston, Chicago and San Francisco are using the service.

So what’s the real problem here?  There are ethical questions to be answered about using fake bylines.  At the bottom line there is nothing more important to a news outlet than it reputation.  Especially at a time when there is more and more stress on the industry it must do everything it can to maintain its credibility.  There is an importance to having reporters who part of the community they cover.  If only because if they get it wrong they will hear about at the corner bar or over lunch out and about.

I understand the need to keep costs down.  I also know that there was a benefit to making all those tedious calls in the old days.  You got to know the community you were reporting on. 

Wearing Technology

A couple times every year it seems like I come across an idea that just boggles my mind.  We’re talking shaking your head in disbelief kind of amazement.  Some times it’s a bad idea, sometimes its bad production and sometimes it’s just bad.

Let me ask you a question.  Have you ever been walking in public, could be at the mall, or on the sidewalk, and had someone bump into your or nearly bump into you because they were so absorbed in their smartphone?  Seems like it’s happening to me with increasing regularity.  People are so wrapped up in their own stuff that they just kind of lose track of the rest of us.  The world kind of fades away for them and suddenly they walk right into you.

Well I’m certain that the folks behind this next great idea will claim that they will help eliminate that problem.  I’m afraid they’re wrong.  The new idea that has me scratching my head is called “wearable technology”.  We’re not talking Walkmen or iPods here.  One of the first examples will be eyeglasses that will be able to project the World Wide Web onto the lens before your eyes.  If the possibility of even more distracted driving and walking doesn’t worry you then think about how much more data could be collected about where you go and what you do.  Integrated GPS is one of the items considered essential in most of these early designs.  Never being able to escape advertisers or the all seeing eye of data collection strikes me as several steps too far along the technology highway.

But that’s not the only idea headed our way in the form of wearable technology.  There are already patents secured on technology for clothing displays as well.  In other words whatever qualifies as obnoxious t-shirt art in your book would now have the ability to link to the web, update and maybe even offer sound to go with the video.  Imagine corporate logos that don’t just sit there but try to interact with consumers (otherwise known as your friends, family and co-workers) all from the comfort of your clothing.  That same technology is being looked at to be used on walls of buildings and carpets.  In such a world there would be no where to get away.  Look up, look down, look at each other.

If you remember the hyper advertising model of the movie Blade Runner you begin to get the idea.  And it’s an idea that I can live without.

R.I.P. Richard Zanuck

I figure that there are three kinds of movie folk - people who watch movies, then movie fans and finally movie geeks.  I fall somewhere between those second and third groups.  You probably need to have at least one foot in the movie geek world to register the death last week of Richard Zanuck.

Zanuck grew in Hollywood.  Like grew up on the back lots at 20th Century Fox.  His father was the last of the great movie moguls, Daryl Zanuck.  Zanuck the elder was the classic stereotype of the studio boss.  He was short, smoked cigars, chased after starlets and ran his studio as his personal kingdom.  Along the way he made some pretty great movies.  He also made some enemies.  For a while his son was one of them.

Richard Zanuck was everything his father wasn’t.  Quiet, intellectual and someone who respected the actors, directors and writers with whom he worked.  When his father returned to 20th Century Fox in 1962 after several years in Paris as an independent producer Richard was made the head of Production at the studio.  He was 28 years old.  He would rise to head the studio just a few years later but they were hard times for 20th Century Fox.  Hits like “Hello Dolly”, “M*A*S*H” and “Patton” were offset by too many flops.  In an internal power struggle Daryl Zanuck sacrificed his son in a failed attempt to maintain control.

In the end that may have been the best thing for the younger Zanuck.  With his friend David Brown they formed their own production company.  They took a chance on a little known director named Spielberg and a story about a big shark.  “Jaws” earned the duo their first Oscar nomination.  They would also earn one for 1982’s “The Verdict” and finally win for 1989’s “Driving Miss Daisy”.  Zanuck would be connected to other hit films including “Cocoon” plus a very successful partnership with Tim Burton that included “Big Fish”, “Sweeney Todd”, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, “Alice in Wonderland” and “Dark Shadows”.

In the end Richard Zanuck is one of the last of Hollywood heyday generation.  He was born into the movies (his mother Virginia Zanuck was an actress who worked with Buster Keaton), he was raised around the movies and the movies were his entire life.  You may not have known his name but you certainly knew his work.  And that would probably have been enough for him.

Richard D. Zanuck was 77 years.  The exact same age as his father when he died.


Call that the View From the Phlipside.

View From the Phlipside - Your News Decisons

 (My apologies for the sudden disappearance of the scripts to my show.  We've been working out a variety of issues at our new location)

 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.

A couple weeks ago I was commenting on the decision to invest many dollars and man hours into what I didn’t think qualified as a major news event, the Royal Wedding.  A friend of mine disagreed with that assessment and felt that it was worth all the time and money invested.  We’re still friends but we’ll have to agree to disagree.

But that conversation got a chain of thought going that came into full focus over this last weekend.  Your remember all the hoopla over this last weekend right?  This was the weekend that a small time Christian media mogul claimed the Rapture would take place.  At last check there don’t appear to be 200 million people missing from the world (that was his claim for how many would be going).  In fact at the moment I write this the only person who appears to be missing is Harold Camping himself.

The question for me isn’t why the media covered it.  It was worth a quick note and then move on.  No the real problem is that we, the public, didn’t move on.  So it’s our judgement of what’s news that I’ve begun to question.  Why did we, in a time when church attendance is generally down from a generation ago and edging slowly downward in most cases overall, get so hung up on this religious question?

In case you don’t really know much about the church stuff let me note that the Rapture thing is NOT supported by a vast segment of Christianity.  It’s a relatively new concept and has no roots in the original church.  In fact the support in the Bible for concept is seen as scant by most scholars.

And yet for most of last week it was a major topic of conversation and all the rage in the media.  My question is why?

Part of the reason I believe is that there is a great and unsatisfied spiritual yearning in our age.  But that’s a conversation for another place and time.  The other reason is that I think we’ve lost track of what’s really important.  Distracted by too many pieces of eye and brain candy we’re losing our palate for what the real deal tastes like.  There’s great danger in that trend.  So here’s the Phlipside test for future news decisions.  Ask yourself “How much of this is steak and how much is sizzle?”

Then order the steak.

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 2011

View From the Phlipside - Bread and Circuses

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.

I’m probably going to lose some friends over this one.  Just goes with the territory I suppose.  I could always just blame it on Dan Rather since he’s the one who got the thought process rolling for me but since I happen to agree with him I’ll just take my lumps.

The former CBS News anchor recently wrote a piece for the Huffington Post complaining bitterly that in a time when news divisions are being cut back, where fewer correspondents work out of fewer foreign bureaus the networks (and this includes all the networks broadcast and cable) saw fit to spend millions of dollars to send hundreds of staff to London to cover what is essentially a very minor news story.

Yes, we’re talking about THE WEDDING.  And I happen to agree with Rather 100%.  This was an astounding and appalling waste of time talent and money.  Let’s be upfront about this.  While the bride was stunning and the groom handsome in his uniform and the wedding was a fairy tale princess kind of thing this was not a big news story.  This is what People magazine puts on the cover, it’s what Entertainment Tonight leads with on its broadcast.  It’s a 60 second clip on any serious news broadcast.  Not continuous live coverage.

The problem is that we don’t seem to have any serious news entities left in the world today.  Not when they devote this much time to a wedding of no particular national significance (be honest, if one of the Obama girls was old enough and got married would there be THIS kind of coverage?  Almost assuredly not), or the equally useless obsession with the President’s birth certificate.  None of this is news.  Sadly it is surely “what the people want” and voices will be raised that giving the people what they want is a good thing.  Count me unconvinced.  This kind of pandering to the lowest taste didn’t work out particularly well when practiced in the final days of the Roman Empire.  It saddens me to think that we are just as likely to be willingly herded to the demise of our culture as those Romans were.

The Princess is surely much easier on the eyes than the events in Rome.  But bread and circuses and still bread and circuses.

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 2011

View From the Phlipside - Al Jazeera

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.

Over the last month there has been a little bit of discussion about whether or not more of us should have access to the Al Jazeera English news network on our cable and satellite systems.  I think that's wrong.  I think we should be having a LOT of discussion of the subject.

As always a little background - Al Jazeera is an international news network based in Doha Qatar which is one of
those very small countries along the Persian Gulf.  It's a peninsula on the eastern side of Saudi Arabia.  In 1996, following the demise of the BBC's Arabic language TV station,  the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa made a 137 million dollar loan to the network to get it rolling as part of his belief in a free press.  Over the years Al Jazeera has earned a reputation for offering dissenting points of view to the many authoritarian regimes in its region and also to the United States.  It has grown in scope from just being an Arabic language news source to having a variety of language networks including English.  During the recent upheavels in the Middle East no other network has had the kind of coverage on the ground that Al Jazeera has been able to offer.  Along the way some of their correspondents have also become targets of some of the regimes under fire.

So the question becomes why isn't this network generally available here in the most media saturated culture on earth?  Yes you can watch it online but it is only available on cable systems in Washington DC, Toledo Ohio and Burlington Vermont.  You also have access if you are a Direct TV satellite subscriber.  The reality is that's still a very small percentage of the population.  Last month they entered negotiations with Comcast to increase that coverage although there appears to be little progress on that front.

Al Jazeera has developed a very strong reputation in international news.  They are one of, perhaps the only, major news network that continues to expand their investment in international coverage.  Yes, they are sometime critical of American policy.  So does the BBC.  And the CBC.  They bring a different point of view to what's happening in the world.  That's a good thing and something that an awful lot of what passes for discussion of current events in this country would benefit from hearing.  Instead too many people insist that we should only hear more of the same, should only hear reporting that reinforces our image of ourselves.

Once upon a time we lauded American journalism for seeking and speaking truth to power.  Now we seem to want to hide away from someone who may want to continue on that tradition.

I say bring on Al Jazeera.  A better informed debate makes us a better nation.

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 2011

The View From the Phlipside - A Social Revolution

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.

It's very easy to sit back and make fun of the social networks phenomenon and the people who are deeply involved in it.  It's a kind of current cheap and easy superiority.  At least it was easy until you heard the news out of Tunisia last week.

In case you missed it Tunisia, a country on the northern edge of the continent of Africa, changed government in the most fundamental way.  The former president, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, who had held absolute power in the country for 23 years was driven out by massive demonstrations by the Tunisian people.  Now that's a real nice feel good kind of a story.  If you take a look at the details you realize that it's a rather amazing media story along the way.  Think about it, one of the advantages of being the ruler of a third world country is that it is very easy to control people's access to information.  For most of the last century you just needed control of three things - TV, Radio and the press.  The first thing most autocratic regimes do is make sure that TV and Radio are in control of the state.  Nationwide type broadcasting requires big, expensive equipment and permanent locations so they're hard for the opposition to create on their own.  Printing is a little easier but you still are tied down to your printing presses.  Just keep hunting down the printing press and you can put the alternative newspaper/magazine/pamphlets out of business.  The system has worked for dictators for decades now.

Well there's some bad news on the horizon.  Early word out of Tunisia is that much of the organization of the massive demonstrations was done by way of social media.  That's right a national government was brought down by things like Facebook and Twitter.  The government did everything it could to keep people's access to these kinds of sites but on the side of the opposition was an entire generation of young adults with considerable computer skills.  They hacked the firewalls and kept the information flowing.  The very nature of the web worked to the advantage of the opposition and the detriment of the previous regime.  I think we can rely on the fact that other dictators the world over are taking very close notice of this new concept.  That people can freely communicate, that videos can be shared showing what's really going on whether the government likes it or not.

Think about that the next time you sign in to your Facebook account.

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

View From the Phlipside - Juan Williams and NPR

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.

There’s nothing quite as fascinating as when smart people do stupid things.  If you heard about the firing of news analyst Juan Williams by National Public Radio you got plenty of that.  Let’s take a look at what happened here.

First let’s clear away the nonsense.  This is NOT a First Amendment issue.  This is and was an employment issue.  I’m so tired of people screaming First Amendment for no good reason.  It’s not.  Move on.  Williams is free to express ill conceived opinions on his own time any time he wants.

Second let’s be clear about the roles being discussed here.  The news industry basically breaks down into three primary categories.  Reporter, Analyst and Commentator.  A reporter’s job is to gather the facts and present them in an understandable form.  An analyst puts those facts into context and helps us understand what they mean.  A commentator is someone who gives an opinion.  Since I’m a commentator I’ll give my opinion.  The news industry should be mostly reporters with a leavening of analysts with just a few commentators.  That ratio is rapidly sliding in the opposite direction sadly.

It’s also where Williams ran into trouble.  He was an analyst for NPR and a commentator for Fox News.  Both he and NPR should have known that this arrangement was going to be a problem.  Williams also should have known that comments like the ones made on Fox were going to create a furor.  Maybe he did know.  He also should have known that NPR would have to react.  Based on just this episode NPR’s decision to fire him may seem extreme.  I know that they have reported that this was simply the latest in a string of problems they’d had.  In the end I think NPR is the only one who takes a hit in all this.  Williams was signed to be a token liberal on Fox News virtually instantly.  Fox News gets lots of free publicity for their new commentator.  And NPR gets showboating politicians taking aim at their budget.

Oh there is one other group that loses in this mess.  That would be you and me and all the rest of our nation being underserved by reporters because everyone wants to a commentator.  But then that’s just my opinion.

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

View From the Phlipside - When is a story a story?

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.

How big does a story have to be to be a big story?  A political assassination requires only two people, assassin and victim.  But it is inevitably a big story.  How many million people catch cold each winter?  Yet that’s not a news story 999 times out of a thousand.  The recent story about the planned Q’uran burning has me thinking about when a story makes the big time.

I’m not going to discuss whether I think it was a good idea or not, you’ll probably figure my position out for yourself.  This is about the media circus that surrounded this non-event and what we need to learn from it.

Based on the number of column inches and screen time devoted to it this was a big story.  Every major network had large investments of time and manpower in covering it.  We learned a lot about the characters involved and heard a lot of analytical embroidery around the edges.  My question is - why?

The size estimates I heard on the church is question ranged from 30 to 50.  Now I did a quick, off the top of my head estimate of how many people live on my street.  I live on a one block long street.  And there at least that many people living on my street.  Somewhere just below 50.  About 15 houses.  If we had a big bonfire in the middle of the block would anyone outside of Mayville care?  Probably not.  Nor should they.

This is an unknown pastor from a tiny church that represents a small fraction of the population of their hometown.  For whatever reason they were going to burn the holy book of another religion.  Suddenly this became of interest to the entire nation.  The only reason why this was a story was because we made it a story.  It’s a self perpetuating cycle.  If we ignore it it never becomes a story.  As soon as we make it a story then we can’t ignore it and it begins to grow.

I’m not saying to ignore the story because I believe in censoring the news.  I’m saying we should have ignored this story because it wasn’t ever a story.  Not beyond three sentences on page 27 or 10 seconds of screen time.  Whatever damage has been done in the tattered relationship between our nation and the Muslim communities of the world can not be laid at the feet of that pastor.  That blame lies firmly with the media and one other group.  That would be us the consumers of information.  If the media isn’t smart enough to know what isn’t a story then we should.

And we should have let this one burn itself out by itself.

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

View From the Phlipside - Helen Thomas

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.

Not with a bang but a whimper. The line is from T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Hollow Men” but it’s been running through my mind over the last week when I think about the Helen Thomas fiasco. Lots of people will say I’ve got it backwards, that her world ended with a bang but I disagree.

It’s easy to forget the place in history that Helen Thomas occupies. She was the White House correspondent for UPI back in the day when UPI was a big deal. Helen wasn’t just a reporter though. She served as the White House correspondent and then as the bureau chief there for a total of 57 years. First female member and first female president of the White House Correspondents Association, first female member of the National Press Club and the Gridiron Club some of the top “boys only” power clubs in the nation’s capitol. And Thomas had to do on merit because she was never, to be polite about it, going to have a career in TV. She was tough, hard nosed and relentless. You did not want to be on the sharp end of her questions if she decided to go after you. Helen Thomas was not afraid of anyone, any office or any question. Fidel Castro once said the difference between democracy in Cuba and the U.S. was that he didn’t have to answer questions from Helen Thomas.

All of which makes the firestorm over her remarks that much sadder. I’m not excusing them at all. I think there’s a chance that they’re being mis-interpreted but they are stupid never the less. First because some one with that much experience should know better than to make those kinds of remarks. And second because Israel is a political “third rail” issue. Like the electrified third rail of a subway, touch it and you die.

Sadly too many people will only remember that comment when Thomas’ name comes up. A long and distinguished career will be forgotten. Truth be told she probably should have retired years ago. Instead her career slowly diminished until it finally ended this way. Not with a bang but a whimper.

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