“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.
The podcast of this week’s programs:
Program scripts from week of June 13, 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.
Maxing Out
Here’s the question for this week. How much time do you spend with media? Just thinking in general terms about how much time we spend with all forms of media in an average week. Once I got thinking about it and doing some simple math (the only kind I am permitted to do), some of the answers became rather frightening.
Let’s set the stage first. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week gives us a total of one hundred sixty-four hours per week. Now very few of us I’ll wager interact with media while we are asleep. So we need to subtract those hours. That’s the first hurdle but I settled on seven hours a day as a reasonable average and subtracted forty-nine hours from the total. That left one hundred nineteen waking hours when we might have something to do with the media.
Then the really scary numbers began. I listen to the radio every morning when I get up, on the way to and from work. On average that’s twelve hours a week. Television chews up about twenty-eight hours a week. How to figure my online time? I spend some time at work, at least an hour or two at home plus all the time I’m on my smartphone. Conservatively, that’s thirty-five hours a week. That’s seventy-five hours a week. That means only forty-four hours a week are not involved with media somehow. Over a week that’s just over six hours a day that I’m not involved with media. I will be honest and say that number sounds awfully high to me. I can’t believe there are six hours a day when I’m not interacting with some form of media. Out of twenty-one waking hours per day, I use a minimum of fifteen of them in media usage. That’s a little crazy to my ears.
The folks at Magna Global, who specialize in researching this kind of stuff, recently noted that there appears to be an upper limit for media usage. That limit is ninety hours per week. Which would mean a mere four hours and a fraction of non-media time each day. That number is even more stunning to me.
The question becomes, do we really need to use that much media? And what kinds of media are we using? Can I honestly say that all my smartphone time is especially smart? Umm, no. Won’t even try to pretend on that. Is all of my television watching limited to high quality, well-made shows of real value? No. It may be time for a little reassessment of my usage.
As is my usual stance, I’m not going to tell you to walk away from all media. The numbers would suggest that walking away from the media just a little more, might not hurt us at all.
Over The Top
Since I like to make sure that my audience is always on top of the latest concepts in the media (once they rise to a certain level at least), I’m not sure why I haven’t touched on the concept of OTT before. Since it represents a media source that has been up and coming for a while, it’s probably not a bad time to talk about it now.
OTT stands for “over the top” and you will always see it in all capital letters. It’s delivery of video, audio and other content over the Internet without the use of a traditional paid cable or satellite distributor service. This is the third wave in home media delivery. First was broadcast TV and radio (commonly called “free” even though it really wasn’t), then there were the cable/satellite delivery systems and now there is OTT.
The funny thing is that while you may not have ever heard the term before today, it’s quite likely you have been using OTT for a while. Things like Netflix streaming, Hulu, Amazon Video or HBO Now. All you need is a device that can connect you to the Internet and you are off and running.
There is more than one “flavor” of OTT as well. The differences are primarily in how they make money. There are subscriber based services like Netflix and Hulu, there is the “free” version which is actually advertising supported like Crackle and Hulu again, and finally, the on demand or transactional version, where you pay for each individual program like iTunes or Amazon Instant video.
Why all of this is important is that it is a new venue for programmers to display their products. When Netflix got into the original programming game with such huge hits as “Orange is the New Black” and “House of Cards” back in 2013, they got a lot of other folks thinking about the possibilities. Like a lot of legacy television networks the British Broadcasting Corporation is looking at creating its own OTT source, which reports claim will be called Britflix. Meanwhile, the dominant music streaming service, Spotify, is looking at expanding into original video programming to go along with all the audio that it already offers. Spotify has quietly moved into a form of audio-only OTT with radio dramas, speeches, audiobooks and more already available. The early indications are that they are looking at up to a dozen new series, none of which would have episodes longer than fifteen minutes. That’s a brilliant move for a concept aimed at a generation of users who are primarily accessing through mobile.
So now you’re ready to drop a little new expertise into your next media conversation. You can thank me later.
Election Primer
Well, the political season is about to swing into full bloom. We’ve put the silly season of primaries and caucuses behind us and begin to gear up for the big election coming in the fall. I will not offer even the tiniest inkling of advice or commentary on the various candidates but I did think that it wasn’t a bad time for a little political media review.
If you thought the media crush was bad over the last year, I’m fairly confident in saying that it’s only going to get worse over the next five months. Here are a few things to keep in mind:
Don’t get too upset with all the political ads that you are going to see and hear on broadcast television and radio. In the end, they really don’t have much choice. FCC regulations say that the stations can not exercise any form of censorship over the material offered by a political candidate. If the candidate has the cash, and there’s available inventory, then a spot goes on. The only way that the stations can control the flow of political ads is by limiting how many commercial minutes are available per hour. I won’t speak for the current industry, but several places I worked back in the day would increase their commercial limits during the political season. It was easy money. Just so you know.
On the other hand, be aware that just because it’s politics, social media doesn’t change the way they play the game. While they are not required to carry any kind of political ads, note that the folks at Buzzfeed turned down an advertising buy of over one million dollars from the Republican National Committee because they didn’t want Trump’s rhetoric on their site. At the same time, their business is about eyeballs. So the outrageous, clickbait headlines will continue. Make sure you separate the clickbait from the actual facts.
I’ve been hearing a lot of people getting upset about two words in the political media. One is “presumptive” and the other is “declared”. Two thoughts on that. Presumptive just means presumed in the absence of other facts. You may not like hearing the candidate you are rooting against being called the “presumptive nominee” but in the absence of something changing, that is the appropriate terminology.
On the other hand, I’d like the media to drop the use of declared, as in “The network is declaring Senator Puffinstuff the winner in this election”. You don’t get to do that. It’s inappropriate, dishonest and more than a little arrogant. Just take a step back to the point where you are reporting what’s happening, not declaring winners in a free and open election.
The media circus is getting ready to enter the big top. Let’s make sure we remember what is really going on.
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