“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 December 12, 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.
Spectacles
Ready for the next “hot” media technology? Unless it becomes the next passing fad or never quite made it at all. It’s off to an intriguing start, however.
For example, when the product was launched it attracted both Esquire magazine and Sour Patch Kids candy to give them a high profile trial. What is it? How about Snapchat Spectacles. Seriously, that’s the name. Kind of sounds like my grandmother’s eyewear but it’s not.
Snapchat is launching these new video glasses that are designed to allow you to make hands-free, ten second long videos of your life. At the moment, they are incredibly hard to get. You have to track popup vending machines called “Snapbots” to find where you can buy them. Reports say that once a location is announced, lines can last for hours. Needless to say, I do not have a pair, nor am I likely to get one. The images of them show large round lenses with a small video camera at one corner.
With Vine have just announced it was going to curl up and die in the new year, you may wonder what the allure of the uber short video concept is. Snapchat is counting on its core audience of 18-24-year-olds to be very interested.
Snapchat hit two billion videos posted a day last year, and ten billion views per day this year. Their users like videos. Spectacles is designed to create a more personal style of video. I saw one comparison that called it “Go-Pro for everyday life”*.
Snapchat is planning to offer stock for the first time early next year. So generating some excitement about new concepts and products is a good idea right now. They have managed to sidestep the most obvious problem, which is privacy concerns. When you are recording there is an obvious flashing light that lets people know that life is being recorded at that moment.
Usage stats show that Snapchat is used on a daily basis by around seventy percent of people between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four. It has a growing number of celebrity and corporate users as well. The question is whether this will the game changer as the app moves into the new year. While the basic concept of short videos seems to have legs, the question has been what is the next step.
Could it be the new fangled technology with the old fashioned name? Only time will tell.
Cost for the Spectacles is starting at $130.
I think I’ll wait just a little on mine.
Advertising Don’ts
Once upon a time there was at least one thing that you absolutely, positively never, ever could do in the media. That was upset the sponsors. The folks who buy air time and pay for the programming. Oh, and your salary along the way. Trust me, if a sponsor gets mad at you, you WILL be reminded about the whole “paying your salary” thing.
If you say something that upsets one of the advertisers you will be called into an office where you will find an advertising sales person who is positive you are trying to destroy their lives and a boss of some level who will question your sanity, possibly your heritage and definitely your desire to continue working there. And yes, I speak from personal experience. It’s amazing how innocuous an action can trigger that whole series of events. I have been called in when I had absolutely no idea what I’d done.
So color me puzzled. No, color me astonished at what is happening out in the media world right now. Specifically at the ultra-conservative media site Breitbart.com. As always, I’m not entering into the politics here. Breitbart is in a long tradition of advocacy journalism. And the history of that term includes folks who have worked at the extremes before. One of the challenges of any kind of advocacy journalism is that you will, inevitably, tick off the people who pay for advertising. I mean, let’s be honest, that’s the idea more often than not. Traditionally, you shrug it off, perhaps denounce them for failing to be a true believer and carry on whatever crusade you’re involved in.
But then the folks at Breitbart aren’t interested in doing what has been done before. As we used to say back in the day, they roll their own.
Which is why when a major sponsor, in this case the food manufacturing giant Kellogg, the website went on the attack. They “declared war” on the former advertiser and began a “boycott Kellogg” campaign.
Think about that for a second.
What are they hoping to achieve? Do they believe that they can damage the bottom line of a one and a half billion dollar multi-national business? Surely they don’t think this will convince the food company to come back, do they? Or maybe this will impress OTHER advertisers to jump on the bandwagon and advertise with them?
It’s an astonishing business move in a world where sponsor relations can be a full-time job. In the end, business is a relationship. And in a relationship, there are some things you should simply never do.
Facebook 2016
I’m hearing a lot of people talking about how they can’t wait for 2016 to end. Whether it’s the politics you’d like to put behind you or the seemingly endless list of beloved artists and public figures that passed away in this calendar year, folks seem to be pretty ready to put 2016 in the rear view mirror.
Well, I’m pretty sure you can put the folks at Facebook right there in line with you. Like the rest of us, they can only hope that next year is better.
There have been several major issues this year. Two of the biggest involved the news showing up in trending topics. First, there was the is issue of contract employees being instructed to alter what appeared. This was especially problematic since they were making decisions with a bias against politically conservative items. Then came the question of fake news items, especially leading up to last month’s election. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg went from denying that there was a problem to promising that they will figure out some way to fix it. In the end, I have to wonder if, deep down in their heart of hearts, the real problem is that they don’t really still think of themselves as just being for “fun”. The reality is that Facebook has become a primary news source for a growing number of people. The challenge for the folks in the kingdom of Zuckerberg is realizing that they have to take their game to a whole new level.
Of course one of the other issues of 2016 is when Facebook declared we were all dead. Ok, not all of us. Somehow I, at least, was never included in the social media rapture. The explanation amounted to little more than “we had a glitch”. I haven’t heard about any more deaths by newsfeed in a while, so maybe we have put that one behind us.
The latest annoyance is having posts from weeks or months ago suddenly appear as new items in the newsfeed. Reactions range from annoyance to concern. Once again Facebook hasn’t been able to explain what’s going on. There are some whispers that it has to do either with the Year in Review option recently introduced or the update to the smartphone app. Facebook assures the world they are looking into the issue.
I’ve said many times before that I’m a fan of Facebook. I’m on it literally every day. In the ten years since the social media service was opened up to everyone, they’ve gone from fun little idea to being traded on Wall Street. There were bound to be growing pains.
Let’s hope that next year will be less painful for us all.
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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