“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.
Programs from week of October 10, 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.
What Are We Owed?
A director makes a movie. A musician records a song. An author writes a book. We, the public, see the movie, hear the song and read the book. Is there anything else to the relationship between the artist and their audience? Do they owe us something else? Beyond the financial transaction that may take place between the two parties, we, the audience, may also bestow fame on the artist. Do they owe us anything in return for that?
This isn’t a new question but it bubbled back up in the news last week when an Italian financial newspaper reporter by the name of Claudio Gatti announced that he had discovered the real name of the international best-selling novelist known Elena Ferrante. I have no idea why a financial newspaper would be interested in the story. It is well known that Ferrante is a pseudonym. The author, who only gives interviews via e-mail and written correspondence, believes that the work should stand on its own. That books do not require their author after they are published. Gatti believes that Ferrante’s readers have a “right” to know who she really is. His story has resulted in a huge explosion in the media.
There’s a long history of people writing under other names. In America, the best known is probably Mark Twain, whose real name was Samuel Clemens. Pseudonyms are used for a variety of reasons. Famous authors like Stephen King or J.K. Rowling use them so they can expand beyond their normal routine. The Reverend Charles Dodgson wrote under the name “Lewis Carroll” as a way to maintain his privacy. Women have often turned to male pen-names because writing wasn’t something women were supposed to do. The Bronte sisters wrote as Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, the first two instances most college freshmen learn about are George Sand, real name Amantine Lucile Auror Dupin and George Eliot, real name Mary Ann Evans. In the course of researching this story, I discovered that science fiction author James Tiptree, Jr. was, in fact, Alice Bradley Sheldon.
And there’s the real kicker in all this. What difference does it make who the author really is? Does it affect how much you enjoy the story? I love knowing Jo Rowling’s story (she is J.K. on the books to hide her sex), but written by a man, woman or a little green alien from Mars, they are fun books.
While I don’t completely agree with Ferrante’s idea that the creator of an artwork should be utterly divorced from our enjoyment of it, I am completely against the idea that the author doesn’t have the right to privacy. The level of that privacy is up to them.
In the end, a creator owes us their best effort. And not a single thing more.
News From Hulu
There is a lot going on at Hulu these days.
Hulu is the video on demand service, founded in 2007, that has long served as one of the places to go to see original programming from the major networks on a delayed basis. It has operated with two tiers of service, a free service with supporting advertising, and an ad-free subscription service. In the last couple years it has moved into original programming, like many of its competitors, but so far Hulu has not landed a big hit for itself.
So what’s changing? Well, first is that the free service is gone. Hulu made a deal earlier this year with Yahoo to include the new Yahoo View service in a distribution deal. Yahoo View is a free online streaming service that promises to do a lot of the things that long time free service users have used over the years. This allows Hulu to focus on its subscription-based service.
And there’s a change there as well. Hulu is offering their basic subscription at just eight dollars a month. That makes a competitive price point for people looking at things like Netflix.
In the finest advertising tradition, I can also say, but wait, there’s more!
Hulu has announced that it is moving into competition with the cable and satellite service providers. Sometime next year, they aren’t being much more specific than that, Hulu will launch a live TV-streaming service. It’s interesting in a variety of ways.
First, it will have by today’s standards, a limited selection of channels. In this case, we’re talking about a number around seventy or eighty. The price for this service is supposed to be around thirty-five dollars. With investments from major content providers like NBCUniversal, Time Warner, Disney and Fox that means that all four major networks will be included along with many popular “cable” channels like ESPN, TNT, and AMC.
Here’s the note that struck me. Unlike a lot of media innovations, younger viewers are not seen as the primary target audience for the new service. Where this service is expected to thrive is in an older demographic, in their forties and fifties, who are looking for their favorite programs and looking to save some money versus cable fees, which average over one hundred dollars nationally.
Thinking back a couple months or so, I talked about a survey of TV subscribers that asked what they really wanted. The answer was basically this service. Just the most popular programs at a mid-thirty dollar price.
Every market has high and low ends. But there also a broad middle where money can be made as well if you’re smart.
There are still lots of questions to be answered about this service, but it looks like Hulu has got a plan that just might work.
What’s Wrong With the NFL?
Just a few years ago, it was generally believed that there was one kind of television programming that was bulletproof. Nothing could touch it, nothing could slow it down. It was in a category of its own. That programming was football at the professional level. That was the NFL.
Every time I heard a pundit say something like that, I cringed. Nothing is the king forever. Let’s face it, once upon a time, pro football was not that big a deal on television. We’re so accustomed to the post-Super Bowl sports dominance by the boys of the gridiron, that some folks may not be able to grasp a world where that might not always be true.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that the NFL is going anywhere, any time soon. It’s a beast, with an enormous viewing audience. But things started to tremble a little when this past Super Bowl didn’t set a new viewership record. And the first several weeks of this season have shown a ten percent decline in viewership across all times. When you consider what a huge part of the TV networks budget is tied to advertising during football games, there is a reason why they are concerned.
The obvious question is “why”? There are lots of reasons being floated. The Presidential debates (which have been scheduled against Sunday night football) have drawn away viewers. Of course, that doesn’t explain drops in Sunday afternoon and primetime Monday and Thursday games. Maybe more people are streaming games on their mobile devices, which traditional ratings don’t catch, or maybe more of us are watching from our favorite pub.
I’d like to suggest a different reason. And one the folks at the league may not like.
I think the product is inferior, and fans aren’t as dedicated to it because of that. With increasingly byzantine rules about things like what a catch is, what a fumble is or even what a pass is or isn’t (tuck rule anyone?), I hear more and more fans just getting frustrated with the game. Most of us have played the game, whether it was organized sports, or just a pick-up game in the backyard. It was a pretty simple game. And one we loved.
Now it’s a game that grows increasingly bizarre at times, as the tiniest of hairs get split over things that seem pretty clear to most of us. It’s frustrating, and it grows increasingly less fun. That was always the center of the game. It was fun. You’d watch the game and then go out and play.
Maybe someone at the home office needs to consider this. If the audience is turning to other programming, maybe it’s because yours isn’t as compelling as it used to be.
Just a “Hail Mary” kind of a thought.
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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