“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 August 22, 2016
This Week’s Podcast:
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.
Television Values
Let me confess right at the start. I do not get along with mathematics. I know why but I will spare the long, boring story. Just leave it this. Numbers are not my friends.
So the growth of the use of statistics in seemingly every decision makes my head hurt, more than a little. No sport has plunged more deeply into statistical analysis of performance than my beloved baseball. Other major sports are following along behind.
Television has long had some form of statistics floating around. The most straight forward come in the form of ratings. What percentage of viewers were watching such and such a program, and how many total viewers were there? Even I can wrap my brain around concepts like that.
But the statistics in the media have been growing over the years. You may have heard someone refer to an actor or product’s “Q Score”. These have been around since the early 1960s. The idea here is chart the familiarity and how well the audience likes that person or product. Instead of just bulk numbers, this begins to add an emotional value to the popularity numbers. A recent set of Q Ratings put NCIS’s Michael Weatherly (who has now left the show), and “The Big Bang Theory” ‘s Jim Parson in the top two slots. I would imagine that US Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte’s Q ratings since last week’s fiasco at a Rio gas station have dropped like a stone. That kind of drop can have a real impact when it comes to sponsors.
So I was interested in a new study done by the media research and consulting firm Frank N. Magid Associates. They took the ratings one step further. In a study they released this past spring, they began to explore what kind of emotional attachment viewers have for the shows they watch. This “emotional signature” was then turned into a “value” for the program. The highest valued program was HBO’s “Game of Thrones”, while at the bottom “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” only managed to rise above Caitlin Jenners’s now canceled show on the E! Network and infomercials. It’s an interesting new addition to the statistics of television that can help separate the TV junk food (which we eat but don’t really care about) and the top quality shows that we have a deep, emotional attachment to.
Getting your product or service associated with those top value programs becomes one more way to maximize the advertising dollars.
The research showed the end may be in sight for what they termed “guilty pleasure” programs like the “Real Housewives” series. Scripted shows seem to be on the rise with the audience.
It’s got to be tough, though, to be told that that the audience only considers you a cut or two above infomercials
So the growth of the use of statistics in seemingly every decision makes my head hurt, more than a little. No sport has plunged more deeply into statistical analysis of performance than my beloved baseball. Other major sports are following along behind.
Television has long had some form of statistics floating around. The most straight forward come in the form of ratings. What percentage of viewers were watching such and such a program, and how many total viewers were there? Even I can wrap my brain around concepts like that.
But the statistics in the media have been growing over the years. You may have heard someone refer to an actor or product’s “Q Score”. These have been around since the early 1960s. The idea here is chart the familiarity and how well the audience likes that person or product. Instead of just bulk numbers, this begins to add an emotional value to the popularity numbers. A recent set of Q Ratings put NCIS’s Michael Weatherly (who has now left the show), and “The Big Bang Theory” ‘s Jim Parson in the top two slots. I would imagine that US Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte’s Q ratings since last week’s fiasco at a Rio gas station have dropped like a stone. That kind of drop can have a real impact when it comes to sponsors.
So I was interested in a new study done by the media research and consulting firm Frank N. Magid Associates. They took the ratings one step further. In a study they released this past spring, they began to explore what kind of emotional attachment viewers have for the shows they watch. This “emotional signature” was then turned into a “value” for the program. The highest valued program was HBO’s “Game of Thrones”, while at the bottom “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” only managed to rise above Caitlin Jenners’s now canceled show on the E! Network and infomercials. It’s an interesting new addition to the statistics of television that can help separate the TV junk food (which we eat but don’t really care about) and the top quality shows that we have a deep, emotional attachment to.
Getting your product or service associated with those top value programs becomes one more way to maximize the advertising dollars.
The research showed the end may be in sight for what they termed “guilty pleasure” programs like the “Real Housewives” series. Scripted shows seem to be on the rise with the audience.
It’s got to be tough, though, to be told that that the audience only considers you a cut or two above infomercials
RIP John McLaughlin
If you are somewhat younger than your humble correspondent here, you may not know that talks shows have not always been what they are today. Once upon a time they were NOT bombastic, invective-filled tirade fests. It’s not that they didn’t occasionally attempt to assassinate some public figures character, rather that the assault was done with a scalpel rather than a chainsaw. All of that changed in 1982.
That’s when the “McLaughlin Group” hit the air on public television.
John McLaughlin was a former Jesuit priest and Nixon speechwriter. He held two Master’s Degrees, in philosophy and English literature, and taught for several years at a Jesuit high school. According to legend, his nickname among the students was “Father God”.
As you look at his life story, it becomes apparent that McLauglin never lacked for belief in himself. When the Jesuits refused to give him permission to run for U.S. Senate in 1970, he ran anyway. And was crushed by the incumbent. According to conservative political commentator Pat Buchanon, a long time McLaughlin friend, the Jesuit simply informed Buchanan that he should arrange for McLaughlin to get a job speech writing for President Nixon. The job was found and the President gained a loyal and vocal advocate.
For all that, McLaughlin left his greatest media legacy through the half-hour television talk show he created in the early days of the Reagan administration. The big difference was that the conversation carried much more the tones of a boisterous debate at the corner bar, than the measured tones of academia. Panel members were to bring both the facts and their opinions. And they had better be ready to defend them against the bulldog host. McLaughlin even had a female regular, Eleanor Clift, who got treated very much like one of the boys.
But as much as the establishment of the day sniffed that his show was all shouting, the former Jesuit made sure that he had top flight commentators on the panel. Yes, they barked, and growled and talked over top of one another, but they were smart and they knew what they were talking about.
By all accounts, John McLaughlin could be just as acerbic off the air. Both of his marriages ended in divorce, and several regulars quit over the years because of his treatment. “Father God” apparently came with him out of his teaching days.
The generation of screamers that followed him shouldn’t be his legacy. McLaughlin should be remembered for making political talk and commentary much more honest and real than what had gone before.
If that first group would just pay a little more attention to the second part, we’d all be better off.
After missing his first broadcast in 34 years, John McLaughlin died last week. He was 89 years old.
That’s when the “McLaughlin Group” hit the air on public television.
John McLaughlin was a former Jesuit priest and Nixon speechwriter. He held two Master’s Degrees, in philosophy and English literature, and taught for several years at a Jesuit high school. According to legend, his nickname among the students was “Father God”.
As you look at his life story, it becomes apparent that McLauglin never lacked for belief in himself. When the Jesuits refused to give him permission to run for U.S. Senate in 1970, he ran anyway. And was crushed by the incumbent. According to conservative political commentator Pat Buchanon, a long time McLaughlin friend, the Jesuit simply informed Buchanan that he should arrange for McLaughlin to get a job speech writing for President Nixon. The job was found and the President gained a loyal and vocal advocate.
For all that, McLaughlin left his greatest media legacy through the half-hour television talk show he created in the early days of the Reagan administration. The big difference was that the conversation carried much more the tones of a boisterous debate at the corner bar, than the measured tones of academia. Panel members were to bring both the facts and their opinions. And they had better be ready to defend them against the bulldog host. McLaughlin even had a female regular, Eleanor Clift, who got treated very much like one of the boys.
But as much as the establishment of the day sniffed that his show was all shouting, the former Jesuit made sure that he had top flight commentators on the panel. Yes, they barked, and growled and talked over top of one another, but they were smart and they knew what they were talking about.
By all accounts, John McLaughlin could be just as acerbic off the air. Both of his marriages ended in divorce, and several regulars quit over the years because of his treatment. “Father God” apparently came with him out of his teaching days.
The generation of screamers that followed him shouldn’t be his legacy. McLaughlin should be remembered for making political talk and commentary much more honest and real than what had gone before.
If that first group would just pay a little more attention to the second part, we’d all be better off.
After missing his first broadcast in 34 years, John McLaughlin died last week. He was 89 years old.
Gawker
I suppose that I should be feeling some sympathy for the folks at Gawker.com. That this battle between the corporate billionaire and the news website should inspire the inner Frank Capra in me. That I should be outraged by the injustice of it all. Given my long-standing advocacy for journalism and the importance of the First Amendment, you might expect just that.
Yet I don’t feel any particular sympathy for them at all. Here’s why.
First, this isn’t really First Amendment issue. As much as we all want to pretend that our civil rights protect anything we say or print, it’s just not true. Never has been. You are always responsible for what you say.
Second, while some folks are outraged that billionaire Peter Thiel quietly bankrolled Hulk Hogan’s (yes, THAT Hulk Hogan) suite against them, in the end, Gawker got their day in court. And they lost. The jury awarded Hogan one hundred forty million dollars. That decision resulted in the parent company, Gawker Media, being sold and the Gawker site being shut down.
The reality is this, the only difference Thiel’s money made was to allow Hogan to pursue the case to the end, and not have to settle. Instead of corporate deep pockets being able to outspend and outlast a single person, they fought on even terms. And Gawker lost.
Gawker poked the billionaire bear one time too many. This all began because, despite all their protestations about being journalists, Gawker felt free to dive into the gossip pool whenever it served their purposes. They “outed” Thiel and published a video of Hogan having intimate relations with someone else’s wife.
My question, as always, is – what was the journalistic value of those stories? Unless there is some criminal aspect to it, the intimate lives of public figures aren’t news. They are ways to attack people whose politics you dislike, or that you may just not like in general. Neither of those are proper journalistic goals. Politics, business practices, the use of power and wealth, any of these are legitimate journalistic topics.
Smugly peddling gossip while attempting to hide behind the Constitution and assuming you can outlast your critics in court isn’t worth defending.
So, no, I’m not feeling a whole of sympathy right now.
Yet I don’t feel any particular sympathy for them at all. Here’s why.
First, this isn’t really First Amendment issue. As much as we all want to pretend that our civil rights protect anything we say or print, it’s just not true. Never has been. You are always responsible for what you say.
Second, while some folks are outraged that billionaire Peter Thiel quietly bankrolled Hulk Hogan’s (yes, THAT Hulk Hogan) suite against them, in the end, Gawker got their day in court. And they lost. The jury awarded Hogan one hundred forty million dollars. That decision resulted in the parent company, Gawker Media, being sold and the Gawker site being shut down.
The reality is this, the only difference Thiel’s money made was to allow Hogan to pursue the case to the end, and not have to settle. Instead of corporate deep pockets being able to outspend and outlast a single person, they fought on even terms. And Gawker lost.
Gawker poked the billionaire bear one time too many. This all began because, despite all their protestations about being journalists, Gawker felt free to dive into the gossip pool whenever it served their purposes. They “outed” Thiel and published a video of Hogan having intimate relations with someone else’s wife.
My question, as always, is – what was the journalistic value of those stories? Unless there is some criminal aspect to it, the intimate lives of public figures aren’t news. They are ways to attack people whose politics you dislike, or that you may just not like in general. Neither of those are proper journalistic goals. Politics, business practices, the use of power and wealth, any of these are legitimate journalistic topics.
Smugly peddling gossip while attempting to hide behind the Constitution and assuming you can outlast your critics in court isn’t worth defending.
So, no, I’m not feeling a whole of sympathy right now.
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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