“The View From the Phlipside” is a media commentary program airing on WRFA-LP, Jamestown NY. It can be heard Monday through Friday around 7:30 AM. 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 moment’s 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 2013-16 by Jay Phillippi. All Rights Reserved. You like what you see? Drop me a line and we can talk.
Program scripts from week of February 15, 2016
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.
Radio LIves!
Over the years of this program I have spent a fair amount of time lamenting the decline and, I assumed, the eventual demise of some of my favorite media. Newspapers, magazines, print in general including books, and the one to which I have the deepest personal attachment. This one, right here, radio. Radio has been a part of my life since I was a kid listening to Jack Bogut on KDKA in Pittsburgh. I’ve been a part of radio since the fall of 1977 when my younger brother convinced me to go with him to audition for the college radio station, WCCB, at what was then Clarion State College. They hired us both.
Of course the pundits have claimed that radio has been on life support since the ’50s when TV took off. For more than a half century the medium has done OK for itself. But certainly today things have seemingly never looked worse for the first electronic, mass communication medium.
At least that’s what I thought. The folks at The Neilsen Company, the media measurement giant, have a slightly different view however. The experts have been working on a way to look at all the media in our lives and compare them on an equal footing. The result of that search is what they call a “Comparable Metrics Report”. This new tool looks at radio, TV, connected TV devices, computers, smart phones, the whole shooting match. What they are looking for is called “reach” in the industry. Basically it’s just what it sounds like. How effective is any given media in reaching the total audience. For advertisers this is a vital metric. The greater reach the more productive your advertising dollars can be.
So for the third quarter of 2015 care to take a shot at who finished numero uno for reach among all media? The leader among all media and in all demographics was…radio. They combined AM and FM and found that radio reached ninety percent of all adults in a given week. What may be even more astounding is that TV finished five points behind that and smart phones came in third at seventy four percent.
Bookend that with research done at Google that shows that broadcast media (TV and radio) improves the performance of your online presence. For mid-size and smaller businesses that is another important bottom line advertising indicator. And great news for local media outlets.
Could it be that once again radio may find a way to keep on? I’ll be honest and say there are few things that would make me happier.
Who knew? There’s still life in the grand old lady yet.
NBC is Back
After a good many years of doing these commentaries I periodically have to stop and think “Have I talked about this before?”. Some topics obviously keep coming up, but sometimes I’ll hit a specific story that rings a bell.
This story rang such a bell. When I looked back I discovered that the story had rotated one hundred eighty degrees on me. And it seemed like it was worthy of updating.
Seven years ago, on this very program, I noted the sad state of NBC. The VERY sad state of the Peacock Network at the time. Let me quote myself:
“The days of “Must See TV” are long gone apparently. Overall NBC is now the number four network in the land and it’s a fairly comfortable number four.”
I went on to note that the corporate owner of the network, at that time it was General Electric, was very interested in ridding themselves of this colossally under performing former media giant. It was pretty much as grim as anyone could imagine for what was once considered one of the “Big Three” networks.
That’s what made the story that popped up on my screen so interesting. Seven years later the chairman of NBC Entertainment, Robert Greenblatt, announced that the Big Bird network was number one in the 18 to 49 demographic for non-sports programming. It’s the first time they’ve been able to make that claim since 2003. That was back when “Friends” was still on the air for them.
This is part of a positive trend that has been going for a while now. When you include sports programming, NBC has held the number one slot for four years now. The highest rated sports program is also the most watched series in any category and that would be Sunday Night Football which airs, you guessed it, didn’t you, on NBC. In overall viewers they still trail CBS, but only CBS. They are comfortably ahead of ABC, Fox, and Univision.
Curiously, seven years ago, there was only one bright spot for NBC and that was their online presence which had a consistently large audience. Today that trend has continued, with digital video consumption up fifty percent in 2015. That puts them in the six billion view region.
As I look back on that previous commentary, I am just amazed at how far NBC had fallen. That put them in the midst of the ill-fated Jay Leno prime time experiment. An idea that managed to fail in its own right and poison the programming around it.
Seven years ago the network looked like a Dodo bird. Today, it’s soaring like an eagle.
That’s a pretty impressive turn around.
And that was worth a moment’s reflection.
Danger in Cast Changes
There comes a tough moment for hit TV shows. That’s when one of your core cast decides to move on. Some shows make the right casting decision and move on just fine. Others make the wrong decision and quickly begin to die. I’m not sure any show ever replaced as many core cast members as M*A*S*H did and they not only survived but thrived.
But what is happening with the BBC’s international hit car show “Top Gear” may be unprecedented in television history. The show originally launched in 1977 had a good run till being canceled in 2001. At that point a complete re-make of the show brought together acerbic automotive writer Jeremy Clarkson and popular television host (what the English call a “presenter”) Richard Hammond. A year later they were joined by another TV host and journalist, James May. The chemistry between these three turned “Top Gear” into a worldwide sensation.
The show began to develop problems with Clarkson’s behavior, on and off the air, in 2004. His sense of humor constantly walked the edge of what the network saw as appropriate. The final straw came in March of last year when it has been alleged that Clarkson hit one of the show’s producers. At that point the BBC fired him resulting in his co-hosts quitting in sympathy. The show has been largely in re-runs since then.
Last week, the network announced who will step into the host’s shoes as “Top Gear” moves forward. I was a little stunned when I saw SEVEN names on the list. The hosts list will more than double, starting this spring.
“Top Gear” is facing a variety of issues with this, I believe. First, in an hour long program dividing up the air time with seven hosts is going to be a challenge. When you deduct commercial time you’re probably down to just forty six minutes between seven people.
But the real issue is finding the kind of stellar chemistry that the original hosts had. Creating that with such a large cast is a monumental challenge. The American spin-off version of the show failed because that chemistry never happened.
Add in that Clarkson, Hammond and May are working with Amazon to create their own version of the program and it’s going to be interesting.
It’s possible that, like “M*A*S*H”, “Top Gear” will survive and even thrive with the new cast. My bet is that the roster of hosts will be reduced, sooner rather than later. A core of American actor Matt LeBlanc, German driver Sabine Schmitz and former Formula One team owner Eddie Jordan could be a fabulous and fun new show.
As with all things automotive, you won’t know until you put the rubber to the road.
Call that the View From the Phlipside
Copyright Jay Phillippi, 2016
Theme music for “The View From the Phlipside” and “TVFTP – Podcast” is “Hustle”
Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0
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