“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 12, 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.
Thinking
back to the first couple computers I owned, hand me downs from my
father and father-in-law, I remember that it took a bit of time for them
to get fired up and ready to go. I don’t remember thinking that it was
such a terrible hardship. It took a minute or two for the system to
boot up, run through it’s checks and then I was off an running. Or so I
thought. None of those programs worked real fast. By today’s
standards they were positively glacial in fact.
In
fact we are expecting things to move faster and faster. Some folks
have noted that our attention span seems to be decreasing right along
with the increase in speed. Others scoff at that we watch lots of long
form programming all the time.
Well
maybe it’s time to sit back and think again. Certainly the folks at
Google have been re-considering the idea of how fast fast really is.
Online experts have noted that web surfers are growing ever more
impatient. If a web page takes too long to come up to running speed
we’re just as likely to go elsewhere.
Here’s
the fun part. Care to know just how fast we now expect our web pages
to function? Let’s put it this way – the literal blink of an eye is
about 400 milliseconds. Literally, a blink of an eye. The current
yardstick for how fast that page should function based on Google’s
latest studies of consumer use? 250 milliseconds. About a half of an
eye blink.
Seriously?
I’ll admit that I get frustrated when pages take forever to load.
Forever in my computer lexicon is anything over 2 seconds. Literally.
If the page loads in one thousand one, one thousand two or less I
probably don’t think twice about it. Our instant gratification society
is rapidly arriving at the point of ridiculousness. The reality of the
situation is that most of us are in fact NOT doing anything particularly
important online, even at work. If it takes an eye blink and a half
that is more than sufficient to keep the world moving along quite
nicely.
Demanding
more than that is a level of narcissism and self- centeredness that
really ought to give us pause. In fact a pause now and then would
probably do us all a great deal of good.
I’ve
talked before about the apparent inability of many old line media to
come to grips with some of the new media. To my eye it simply appears
that the old timers are so locked into the mind set of “what we’ve
always done” that they can’t think outside the box. Plus there’s real
resistance to letting a new generation come in and try some new ideas.
The result has been severe diminishment of some media (hello newspapers
and magazines) and certainly some massive monetary losses.
So
imagine this – in an age when video has become a huge media with a
massive and growing audience a largely visual art form simply can’t
figure out how to get on board. Someone pointed me in this direction
this past week and I spent some time nosing around. Theoretically this
art form is perfect to link into the YouTube generation. It’s got
spectacle, story telling, incredibly talented performers and huge name
recognition. And yet the videos I found were dull and uninspiring.
The
culprit this time is Broadway. Think about it. The holy grail of the
video world is great content. Broadway has content out the ears. Think
of all the lame-o videos you’ve watched with second rate stories and
third rate performers. Broadway’s promotional videos ought to blow them
into the weeds.
But
my quick and dirty search revealed exactly the opposite. Rather
pedestrian videos that really felt like TV commercials and not
especially compelling ones at that. They tried to go for the spectacle
aspects but completely abandoned any sense of story telling. Clearly
they assume you already know what the show is about and don’t have to
sell it to you.
And
that I think is a terrible mistake. Exactly how well Broadway is doing
is a matter of conjecture. It’s always a high cost, high risk
situation. So I would think that they’d take advantage of any
opportunity to reach out to new audiences and their money.
Instead
what I see is another old line media that is certain they’re just fine
where they are, that everybody knows who they are and the “we’ve always
done it” is just fine. That kind of complacency hasn’t worked out very
well elsewhere in the media world.
There’s
a well known “secret” in the media world that doesn’t get nearly the
discussion it should. A recent story out of New York City helps drag it
back into the spotlight whether the powers that be like it or not.
Sue
Simmons, long time news anchor at WNBC, is getting cut loose by the
station. Now news anchors get dropped periodically, even ones with
track records almost 3 decades long. Sue Simmons has been working next
to Chuck Scarborough for years. Simmons is a native of The City and is
recognized by fans and critics as honest and a true original.
And
that’s where the trouble begins. Why she is not being renewed by the
station isn’t clear. Ratings for the 11 PM newscast which she does with
Scarborough are a healthy #1. Both of the veteran news anchors are
getting a little long in the tooth, they’re both 68. But Scarborough
got a 3 year contract extension and Simmons is being shown the door.
In
the end there’s only one reasonable explanation. She’s a woman “of a
certain age”. Any woman on TV or in the movies can tell you that after a
certain age the industry turns its back on you. Sooner for movie
actresses than news anchors but it’s there never the less. If 68 is too
old for Simmons why isn’t it for Scarborough? Easy. He’s a guy. Guys
get distinguished as they get older. Women just get older.
It
would be easy to just point the finger at the corporate types and sit
back feeling smug. The problem is that we the media consumers buy into
it. Our culture has a completely unhealthy fascination with youth.
Both men and women can feel the impact of that foolishness but in the
media the women pay a decidedly higher price. And it’s wrong. An
intelligent, experienced authoritative voice should be valued and
respected whether that voice is male or female. A skilled actor is a
skilled actor at 30 or 70. Gender shouldn’t enter into it.
It’s
time for us to demand the end of the media’s discrimination against
older women. We can do that by closing all branches of the “No Girls
Allowed” club in every aspect of our lives.
Call that the View From the Phlipside.
Stories Are My Life 
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