View From the Phlipside – Intellectual Failure, Reality TV, TV Commercials

 “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

Program scripts from week of March 5, 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.

I
need to be a little careful with this comment.  There are all kinds of
mines in this field that I’m not interested in taking on as I try to
reach my goal.

This
past week saw two major events on the media playing field.  The first
was the death at 43 of conservative blogger Andrew Brietbart.  The other
was Rush Limbaugh’s calling of a Georgetown graduate student a “slut”
and a “prostitute” following her attempt to testify before Congress on
the subject of her university health insurance covering birth control.

Let’s
be upfront about two things.  My politics don’t agree with either of
these two guys.  That’s number one.  Number two is that this isn’t about
politics.  It’s about journalism and commentary.

Andrew
Brietbart maintained he was a journalist.  The poor quality of his work
on the Shirley Sherrod story a couple years ago shows that he really
wasn’t.  Journalism is a hard taskmaster.  It’s attempting to get the
facts right up front.  It’s trying to get as close to the truth as
possible.  Brietbart was an advocate and there’s nothing wrong with
that.  But when your style is the kind of slash and burn approach to the
facts you’re not a journalist.

As
for Rush somewhere along the line the idea of an intelligent commentary
on the issues seems to have been buried by a kind of intellectual bully
boy-ism.  A reasoned critique is rejected for personal attacks and
vilification.

Neither
of these guys are stupid.  Yet they insisted on following an approach
that not only made them look bad (just ask Rush what happens when you
finally step over the line) but brings their point of view into
disrepute as well.  In both these cases I wonder if intelligence didn’t
get drowned out by the ego boost of celebrity.

I
want to note one last point.  This is not a “conservative disease”.
 There are progressives who can be just as idiotic.  At the moment none
of them have achieved the media pinnacle to which Brietbart and Limbaugh
have risen.

If
there is good to come out of all this let’s hope that we can begin the
process of walking away from the personal vitriol and back towards
something radical, like issues.

I
have a guilty TV pleasure.  It’s reality TV.  Not the most intellectual
or artistic of television I will grant you but I watch it.  I even
watch a lot of it.

I’m
trying to think of what got me started.  Thinking back the first one I
watched was “Cops” on Fox.  Then the early seasons of “The Real World”
on MTV.  But in the last decade it seems like they are everywhere.  Ice
Road Truckers, The Osbornes, Deadliest Catch, Dog the Bounty Hunter.
 Most recently I’ve really gotten into Storage Wars and Swamp People.
 I’m trying to resist watching Axmen or Parking Wars but I’m not sure
how long I’ll be able to resist.

It’s
a little embarrassing to admit how many of these I actually watch.  It
doesn’t even include the ones I only sort of graze by like Pawn Stars or
American Pickers.  But recently I’ve come across one that just
bewilders me.

In
sitting down to write this commentary I had to do some self analysis
about the ones I like.  I’m much more a fan of ones showing people using
skills usually related to their work.   American Pickers and Storage
Wars have a large slice of luck involved and that just doesn’t seem to
grab me as deeply.

Then
we have “Full Metal Jousting” on the History Channel of all places.
 I’ve watched a couple episodes and just don’t see the charm.  The show
is just what it sounds like if you haven’t experience this gem yet.  It
is jousting.  Armor, lances, horses the whole nine yards.  The idea is
to knock the other guy off his horse with a big long stick.  This was
state of the art entertainment back in the 1600s.  I’m just not sure
what the allure is today.  You can’t see the contestants because they
are covered head to toe in armor plate.  The collisions are generally
visually uninteresting until someone goes flying.  At which point the
medical staff has to unbolt them from their personal canning so we can
see how much blood may be flowing.  There’s no connection to life in
this millennium, it’s a blood sport where you can’t even see the blood
most of the time.

I
truly don’t understand why this would be considered entertainment.  If
you’ve got nothing better to do than watch this show than you really
need to take a look at your life.  Of course the same can be said for
just about any of these programs.  Storage Wars?  Really?

 They
are uniquely American even though we’ve shipped them all around the
world.  And it’s one of the few things that almost everyone agrees on.
 They are TV commercials and in general everyone hates them.  But our
question for today is what would you be willing to do to get rid of most
if not all of them?

There’s
an interesting story that’s just come out that newly elected Russian
President Vladimir Putin is one of us.  He HATES TV commercials.  Now
one of the advantages of being a semi-legally elected leader of a major
nation state is that you could actually DO something about them if you
wanted.  Putin claims that some state owned stations in Russia are so
focused on their commercials that they aren’t giving enough time to
important stories like murder, burglary and rape.  I’m not making that
up that’s what the Russian President said.

Now
Russian TV averages slight FEWER minutes of commercials per hour than
here in the U.S.  The question is how to keep the money flowing that
actually produces the TV shows we want to watch?  We have commercial TV
and the public TV model, there are hybrid models to consider.  In
England each TV owner pays an annual license fee for each TV set they
own.  End result – no commercials on the networks owned by the British
government.  Any of these models really appealing to you?  Didn’t think
so.  In fact any Ron Paul type libertarians out there probably just had
heart attacks.  My apologies.  

How
about this one? In France, now everybody simmer down, French President
Nicholas Sarkozy  announced that he intended to eliminate ALL TV
commercials by next year.  Parliament said “Non” and limited them to
just 5% of airtime, that’s about 3 minutes per hour.

The
reality is that you have to pay for your TV one way or the other.  Back
in the days when we all got our TV “broadcast” it felt like “free” TV
but it never was.  Whether it’s membership fees or taxes or commercials
in the end you pay the piper.  

So
the question is which is more fun?  Reaching into your pocket to pay
for TV one more time or watching the latest from Farmers Insurance?  Bum
da bum bum, bumbumbum?

Call that the View From the Phlipside.