“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 27, 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.
Romper Room
There are things that bring us back to our childhood instantly. Maybe it’s a certain food or smell. Certainly, it can be a favorite piece of music or television. When I asked my daughter, she talked about the music of Raffi or “Where in the World Is Carmen San Diego?”. For me, it’s Captain Kangaroo or the Pittsburgh show “Ricki and Copper”. Certainly “Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood” and “Sesame Street” would fall into that category. For children all across America, there is one more that holds that special place in our memories. Do you remember “Romper Room”?
Broadcast in a hundred markets all over the United States and elsewhere, “Romper Room” had an amazing run, starting in the ’50s and extending into the ’90s. The “Magic Mirror” will spring to mind for many of us, along with the admonition “Do be a Do Bee, don’t be a Don’t Bee”. By now, those of you who grew up with Romper Room are nodding your heads.
All of this came to mind as I was scanning the media news. I came across a story noting the death of “Romper Room” host Mary Ann King at the age of 86 last week. My first thought was how sad that news was. My second was “Miss Mary Ann? That doesn’t sound right”. It was at that point that I began to discover things about my childhood favorite that I never knew before.
There wasn’t a single program called “Romper Room”. The show was a franchise, sold to local television stations, who then created their own version of the show. And that means, yep, each of us grew up with our own beloved host. If you grew up in Rochester you knew either “Miss Rita” or “Miss Karen”. In Cleveland, it was “Miss Barbara” and in Pittsburgh, I knew “Miss Janey”. If you’re thinking that you grew up with “Miss Nancy” then you saw the nationally syndicated version.
The show was the creation of Bert and Nancy Cluster through their production company. That company was later bought out by the Hasbro Toy Company. The show was offered as the syndicated package version or with just the scripts and format allowing local versions. Until “Sesame Street” passed it in 2010, “Romper Room” was the longest-running children’s program in history. When it first aired in Baltimore in 1953 it was one of the first television programs aimed at pre-schoolers, beating “Mr. Rogers” by a decade, and “Sesame Street” by sixteen years. Versions of the program aired in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Japan and the United Kingdom. In 1981 the program was overhauled and re-launched as “Romper Room and Friends”. The show finally went off the air in 1994.
The show opened and closed with the tune “Pop Goes the Weasel”. It kind of feels like I got one last chance to take a look through the “Magic Mirror”.
Movies For the Future
While I have discussed my concerns for the future of print and radio, and even television here, I don’t think I’ve ever worried much about the future of the movies. Part of that is just knowing the history of the medium. The movies were supposed to have died off several times in my lifetime. They have shown real staying power over the years. Yet I begin to wonder about their future based on their greatest successes of today.
I recently heard some talk about what kinds of movies are the big hits these days. It’s rather interesting when you look at the top grossing movies of the 21st Century. So that we’re clear, when we talk about the gross income of a movie we are discussing the amount of money the movie earned BEFORE you deduct the cost of making and marketing it or taxes. This is the traditional way of “scoring” the success of movies. The problem is that what is bringing in the big bucks are remakes and sequels. Lots and lots of remakes and sequels.
In 2015, half of the top 20 highest grossing movies were either sequels or re-makes. Prior to last year, 8 of the top 10 highest grossing movies were either sequels or re-makes. That covered the Spiderman, Batman, Avengers, Transformers, Pirates of the Caribbean, Star Wars, Iron Man and Harry Potter franchises. And it’s not a particularly new trend either. If you look at the top grossing movies of the first decade of this century you will discover that 18 of the top 20 movies are in the sequel or re-make category. To the previous list, you can add Lord of the Rings, Shrek and Ice Age.
That’s a lot of sequels. I am less concerned about the short-term business model than I am about the long-term effect on movie goers. What happens when this generation of teen-aged and young adult movie goers grow up? After growing up with movies that re-visit the same characters and the same story lines over and over? What kind of appetite will they have for original ideas and stories? Eventually, the current franchises have to run their course, don’t they? Are we really contemplating a world where there are a dozen or more entries into the “Fast and Furious” franchise? I like a lot of the movies on these lists, but most of them are not particularly deep or intellectually challenging. There’s not a “Kramer vs Kramer” or “The Godfather” to be found.
The movie landscape I grew up in was diverse. The modern environment is anything but that. While Hollywood may be raking in the big bucks today, the question ought to be what kind of world are they leaving for themselves twenty and thirty years from now?
It’s a future where the obituary for the movies may finally come true.
Top Gear and the Shark
Sometimes you just don’t want to be right.
It’s that terrible moment when you realize an old friend has just gone off the deep end. In media, the term is “jumping the shark”. That moment when a series does something dumb, and then it’s all downhill after that. The phrase comes from the fifth season of “Happy Days”, when Fonzie, well, jumps a shark.
In this case, it looks like I was right back in February when I voiced concerns about the BBC international hit series “Top Gear”. After years of being a phenomenon, the behavior of one of the long-time hosts resulted in a complete change in cast. Out went Clarkson, Hammond, and May, the three personalities that had taken the show to icon status. And in came, six hosts? At the time of the announcement, I had doubts. I predicted that sooner rather than later, that list was going to have to be trimmed.
Just four months later, the new version of the show is on the air. I have watched five episodes so far.
And everything I feared has come true.
The show lacks the kind of focus that the old team had. It absolutely lacks any of the incredible chemistry of the previous version. While American actor Matt LeBlanc and British radio and television personality Chris Evans form the core of the show, every time you turn around it seems like there’s someone else on. Youtube star Chris Harris, automotive journalist Rory Reid, former Formula One team owner Eddie Jordan or German racing driver Sabine Schmidt. In the midst of all this merry go round television are the repeated reports that LeBlanc and Harris can’t stand each other. The latest story says the former “Friends” star has announced that he is out unless Harris is fired.
The bones of the show remain, and they are the best part of it still. But you just never seem to get the chance to connect with the team the way you did with their predecessors. The worst part may be this, as much as I naturally want to root for the only American in the cast, Matt LeBlanc is far and away the weakest link. He comes off as low energy at best, and uninterested at worst. If only one member is to go, my vote is for the Yank. But I’d recommend more than one exit.
Ratings for the program have been dismal at least by comparison to the old show. They are currently running at below half the number of viewers that the least popular episodes used to get. LeBlanc has a contract that runs two more seasons at minimum, while Evans is one of the most popular media folk in the U.K. “Top Gear” has a real problem.
We will have to see if any show can recover after it jumps the shark.
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
Stories Are My Life 
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