“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 July 3, 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.
Farewell Garrison Keillor
There’s no way to avoid taking a moment to note the end of an era in the media this past week. After a four decade long run, Garrison Keillor has stepped down as the host of “A Prarie Home Companion”, the show that most of us associate with his name.
To be that successful for that long is no small thing. The show regularly draws some three million listeners. Eighteen thousand people showed up for a live, final performance at the Hollywood Bowl.
To be successful with this kind of programming is no small thing either. While the variety show format has been around for a very long time, there haven’t been many popular ones over the last four decades. The format goes back to vaudeville shows, with a little of this and a little of that. That moved to radio and eventually to television. Keillor acknowledges that the idea for “A Prairie Home Companion” came from one of the most iconic examples of all time, “The Grand Ole Opry”. The Opry has been on the air in some form since 1925.
It seems like Keillor has been around forever with “A Prairie Home Companion”. As I looked into the show’s history it was interesting to see that its story was more complicated than memory suggested. It began as a morning show on Minnesota Public Radio. Based on the response to its first live show in 1974, which drew an audience of twelve people, mostly children, you might not have given the concept much of a chance. As the years passed it grew, the combination of small town stories and music developing an audience. But in 1987, Keillor stepped away from the program for two years. While other programs were offered in its place, many public radio stations simply went to re-runs of the show. When Keillor came back, it wasn’t to “A Prairie Home Companion” but to a program called “Garrison Keillor’s American Radio Company”. That show was based in New York City and largely left the small town vibe behind. The Home Companion format was only brought back for what were called “Annual Farewell Performances”. Finally, in 1992 the show moved back to Minnesota and the following year the old format came back.
“A Prairie Home Companion” spun off books and a modestly successful movie. It created iconic characters like Guy Noir, the private eye and memorable sponsors like the Catchup Advisory Board and Powedermilk Biscuits.
Keillor’s retirement doesn’t bring an end to the show, however. He has chosen his successor in musician Chris Thile. The expectation is that the show will shift to a more music-based format. When the show walks away from Lake Woebegone, it will be interesting to see how many fans do likewise.
There’s an old say that you never want to be the person who follows the legend. We will have to see how this legend survives.
Freedom of the Press
It’s the week of our national Independence Day. That day when we are supposed to celebrate the creation of a new way of living as a nation. A form of government that improved upon those that went before, and made sure that voice of the people not only was heard but must be heard. It just feels like an Independence Day commentary should be included this week.
With that in mind, and given my long standing preference to avoid political commentary, I’m left with just a single area of commentary. Because the Constitution of these United States only touches on the subject of the media in a single place. That’s not surprising, given that our Founding Fathers lived in a time where “mass media” would have been newspapers that were still hand pressed and then distributed on horseback. As a consequence, they restricted themselves to broad concepts, rather than micro management.
That means the section of the First Amendment that talks about the press as part of a larger understanding of free speech. It’s interesting to note that while we think of that protection as being an umbrella for journalists, that is clearly not the understanding of some early court cases. In 1938’s Lovell v. City of Griffin the then Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Charles Evans Hughes, included “…every sort of publication which affords a vehicle of information and opinion” as being the “press”. That judicial point of view was supported in 1972 decision in Branzberg v. Hayes where the Supreme Court ruled that the right was not confined to professional or institutional journalists, but was a fundamental personal right.
While the court has been pretty clear on the subject, our country has not always been very good at living up to standards. That, of course, is why the court has had to rule repeatedly on the various aspects of Freedom of Speech and the Press over the years.
There’s a lot of fuss and bother these days with what some people see as their rights being infringed. They come in a variety of levels of legitimacy. Historically, however, there can be no denying that there have been times when the government has directly and dramatically impinged on those rights. Anti-sedition laws, like those enacted around the time of the First World War as one example, are a common way of trying to legally stop free expression. Finding the balance between protection (since none of our rights are completely without some restriction) and freedom is a battle we will continue to struggle with moving forward.
The inevitable impulse is to restrict those expressions with which we disagree. If one thing is clear over these two hundred plus years, that is exactly what our Founding Fathers wanted to avoid.
A truly free press, without undue control by government or corporation, is a freedom worth celebrating.
With that in mind, and given my long standing preference to avoid political commentary, I’m left with just a single area of commentary. Because the Constitution of these United States only touches on the subject of the media in a single place. That’s not surprising, given that our Founding Fathers lived in a time where “mass media” would have been newspapers that were still hand pressed and then distributed on horseback. As a consequence, they restricted themselves to broad concepts, rather than micro management.
That means the section of the First Amendment that talks about the press as part of a larger understanding of free speech. It’s interesting to note that while we think of that protection as being an umbrella for journalists, that is clearly not the understanding of some early court cases. In 1938’s Lovell v. City of Griffin the then Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Charles Evans Hughes, included “…every sort of publication which affords a vehicle of information and opinion” as being the “press”. That judicial point of view was supported in 1972 decision in Branzberg v. Hayes where the Supreme Court ruled that the right was not confined to professional or institutional journalists, but was a fundamental personal right.
While the court has been pretty clear on the subject, our country has not always been very good at living up to standards. That, of course, is why the court has had to rule repeatedly on the various aspects of Freedom of Speech and the Press over the years.
There’s a lot of fuss and bother these days with what some people see as their rights being infringed. They come in a variety of levels of legitimacy. Historically, however, there can be no denying that there have been times when the government has directly and dramatically impinged on those rights. Anti-sedition laws, like those enacted around the time of the First World War as one example, are a common way of trying to legally stop free expression. Finding the balance between protection (since none of our rights are completely without some restriction) and freedom is a battle we will continue to struggle with moving forward.
The inevitable impulse is to restrict those expressions with which we disagree. If one thing is clear over these two hundred plus years, that is exactly what our Founding Fathers wanted to avoid.
A truly free press, without undue control by government or corporation, is a freedom worth celebrating.
TV Advertising History
One of the most enjoyable parts of this program for me is that I’ve learned a lot of things that I never knew. You would be amazed how often I begin with a seemingly, pretty straight forward story. When I dig into it a little more I suddenly discover all sorts of things I never expected.
For example, on July 1 we passed a milestone in the history of advertising. It was the seventy-fifth anniversary of the very first television ad. When I looked into the larger history of advertising to put that event in a context I found all kinds of interesting things.
Obviously, electronic advertising is a relatively recent thing, because electronic communication is still pretty young. Radio began broadcasting as we know them today around 1920. While some stations did some limited advertising type sales, the first station to really get into the practice was WEAF in New York City (that station is now WFAN). They ran a radio commercial for a new apartment complex in August of 1922.
The word “advertising” comes from the Latin ad vertere which means “to turn towards”, which is a pretty good definition of the process.
Print advertising has been around for centuries. I just didn’t realize how long we’ve had to put up with advertising. Egyptian papyrus posters have been found with sales messages on them. Political advertising (everyone’s favorite kind of advertising at the moment) can be found in the ruins of Pompeii and ancient Arabia. My favorite discovery was that lost and found advertisements have a long, long history as well. Examples of this kind of ad have been found in both ancient Greece, and Rome.
You might think that advertising would have struggled in times and places where the population couldn’t read. Never underestimate the ingenuity of folks who have some service or product to sell. In the Middle Ages, most of the population was illiterate. Signs with some symbol of the service or product offered stepped into the breach. I have always associated the “town crier”, you know the guy with the bell yelling “Here Ye, Here Ye!” with spreading the news. In fact, they were often used by business owners to spread the word of products and services. And while you may think my obsession with commercials is unique, the first compilation of town criers messages was “Les Crieriers de Paris”, published in the thirteenth century.
So what began all this research? Seventy-five years ago this week, the first television ad aired. It was a ten second spot just before the first pitch of a Brooklyn Dodgers game being shown on WNBT. The cost for that spot was nine dollars. In black and white, it showed an outline of the continental United States with a clock superimposed on it. The announcer came on to say “America runs on Bulova Time”.
Of such things is history made.
For example, on July 1 we passed a milestone in the history of advertising. It was the seventy-fifth anniversary of the very first television ad. When I looked into the larger history of advertising to put that event in a context I found all kinds of interesting things.
Obviously, electronic advertising is a relatively recent thing, because electronic communication is still pretty young. Radio began broadcasting as we know them today around 1920. While some stations did some limited advertising type sales, the first station to really get into the practice was WEAF in New York City (that station is now WFAN). They ran a radio commercial for a new apartment complex in August of 1922.
The word “advertising” comes from the Latin ad vertere which means “to turn towards”, which is a pretty good definition of the process.
Print advertising has been around for centuries. I just didn’t realize how long we’ve had to put up with advertising. Egyptian papyrus posters have been found with sales messages on them. Political advertising (everyone’s favorite kind of advertising at the moment) can be found in the ruins of Pompeii and ancient Arabia. My favorite discovery was that lost and found advertisements have a long, long history as well. Examples of this kind of ad have been found in both ancient Greece, and Rome.
You might think that advertising would have struggled in times and places where the population couldn’t read. Never underestimate the ingenuity of folks who have some service or product to sell. In the Middle Ages, most of the population was illiterate. Signs with some symbol of the service or product offered stepped into the breach. I have always associated the “town crier”, you know the guy with the bell yelling “Here Ye, Here Ye!” with spreading the news. In fact, they were often used by business owners to spread the word of products and services. And while you may think my obsession with commercials is unique, the first compilation of town criers messages was “Les Crieriers de Paris”, published in the thirteenth century.
So what began all this research? Seventy-five years ago this week, the first television ad aired. It was a ten second spot just before the first pitch of a Brooklyn Dodgers game being shown on WNBT. The cost for that spot was nine dollars. In black and white, it showed an outline of the continental United States with a clock superimposed on it. The announcer came on to say “America runs on Bulova Time”.
Of such things is history made.
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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