“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 2013-17 by Jay Phillippi. All Rights Reserved. You like what you see? Drop me a line and we can talk.
Programs from week of February 27, 2017
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.
Augmented Reality
It’s hard to fathom that the Pokémon GO game is less than a year old. It seems like it’s been around forever. At the same time, you may feel like it’s a fad that has come and gone. The reality is that the hottest digital event of the summer of 2016 may have been the launching point of a whole new thing.
Pokémon GO burst was released into the world in July of last year by game development company Niantic. To say it took the world by storm is to undersell the story by several orders of magnitude. In just seven months time, (seriously, it has only been seven months) the game has registered some six hundred fifty million downloads and has generated a reported one billion dollars in revenue. All of that happening despite a variety of technical glitches and questions about having people wandering around in real life playing a video game.
That is the true beauty of the game, and the real game changer inherent in it. This is “augmented reality”, not “virtual reality”. The difference is the in virtual reality you enter another world and do everything there. For augmented reality, you begin with what we call the “real world” and the game adds to that. The game didn’t invent this, in fact, the Air Force has been using a form of AR since the 1990’s as part of their training regimen. But Pokémon GO took the concept and plopped it down right in the middle of day to day life.
Some folks wanted to believe, and probably still do, that this is just a fad. There are some big name folks who don’t seem to agree. Both Starbucks and Sprint have been running Pokémon GO related campaigns for a couple months now. Sprint led the way in December offering all kinds of game support including Poké Balls, Potions, Eggs and Razz Berries at its Sprint, Boost, and Sprint at Radio Shack stores. Starbucks offers game stuff as well as the chance to grab a Pokémon frappuccino. The goal is to make sure that the ads feel like they are a natural extension of the game itself.
While augmented reality sounds new and exciting, the concept is already familiar to us in some forms. A “Heads Up Driving” display is a form of augmented reality. Google Glasses is another. Those are relatively passive. What Pokémon Go shows us is a different, more active way to use it. Just off the top of my head, how about a weight loss app that helps you shop, with a game based application that steers you toward good food choices and away from less desirable ones? The possibilities are endless, and millions of dollars are expected to be spent this year.
A whole new world that was launched by a game.
Pretty cool.
A New Network?
It is just over thirteen years since Facebook launched. It is just about seven years since the movie “The Social Network” took us behind the scenes of how that all happened, more or less. In all that time, founder Mark Zuckerberg has been fairly adamant about the idea that Facebook is just a social medium. A place where the world can come together to share photos, connect and maybe argue a little bit.
Despite the protestations last year that Facebook was not in the news business, more people turned to the social media giant as their initial and primary news source. Now Facebook wasn’t running a news network. They were simply sharing the work done by others. But the audience still turned to Facebook first. That is an increasing concern for all levels of journalism. And it’s not just journalism. Even local television stations are beginning to worry about competing with the Kingdom of Zuckerberg.
Some of their issues are their own fault. Television has been slow and not particularly competent in moving into digital. It’s not that Facebook isn’t open to the concept either. Last year Facebook unveiled the “Instant Articles” service that gives content producers a way to tap into the social media network, but also a way to make money in partnership.
But that’s only the beginning, I am fascinated by some other new twists at Facebook that strike closer to the corporate heart of television. This year they will live stream almost fifty games of the top Mexican soccer league. Word is that they are also in discussion with Major League Baseball to stream one game a week.
Now that sounds like small potatoes, but it is the proverbial camel’s nose under the tent flap. Sports are lifeblood to the broadcast networks and the regional sports networks. If Facebook is headed into those then the television industry needs to start thinking about how they are going to respond.
For the sports leagues, it’s easy. More people with deep pockets desiring the product means more and bigger licensing agreements. Just as the NFL was happy to move some of it’s top product to cable only networks after decades of partnership with the broadcast networks, if major league sports sees a financial advantage to handing some of the product off to Facebook or Twitter, they will in a heartbeat.
So what should television be doing? Accepting the inevitable is my advice. Get better at using digital, focus on reaching people via mobile. Then make room at the table for the new money in town.
Otherwise, thirteen years from now? It might be all infomercials and re-runs of “The Big Bang Theory” for the industry.
Movies in Need of Magic
It is Oscar week. Actually, I’m recording this program before the Awards show, so I can’t tell you what I think of any of the winners. The reality is that I would be hard pressed to have much of an opinion since I have not actually seen ANY of the nominated movies. Not one.
And that’s a problem that is deeply worrying to the industry.
Not about me, per se. But the numbers for the movies are on the decline. The most significant number is also the most frightening. Fewer people are buying tickets. You can inflate the numbers for box office by simply charging more per ticket. In the end, that’s almost always a losing business proposition. For it to work, you have to be cranking out new product with increasing quality. And that’s just not happening.
In 2011, the top seven movies of the year were sequels, in 2015, the eight biggest opening weekends went to sequels. When sequels are at the center of your industry you face the inevitable challenge of having to outdo yourself every single time. The bar never gets lower, only higher. In 2016 the industry largely failed to meet that mark.
So you’ve got product that isn’t exciting. You have a limited palette of movies. The top ten grossing films of last year include four superhero/comic book movies, three children’s movies, two movies that are extensions of existing franchises, and a re-boot. And not one of them is up for a major Oscar category. I will post the list of the top movies on my website with my podcast at the end of the week.
Now add in that the Millennial generation (no, I am not joining the “It’s All the Millennials Fault” chorus), hasn’t made the connection to going to the movie theater that previous generations have, and you have the makings of a serious and long-term problem for the industry.
Seventy years ago, the average American went to the movies about once a week. Today the average is four to five times a year. Part of it is cost, part of it is quality of product, part of it is a greater spectrum of options for free time.
While ten times more movie tickets are sold in North America than the top four professional sports leagues combined, the movies have to come to grips with what is happening.
Once upon a time, going to the movies was a major social event. The movies fired the imagination of generations. Now Hollywood seems to be suffering a serious lack of imagination while training the next generation of movie goers to only watch what they’ve seen before.
I’m waiting for the best sequel category at the Oscars soon. Go with your strengths, right?
As promised, the top ten grossing movies of 2016:
As promised, the top ten grossing movies of 2016:
- Captain America/Civil War
- Finding Dory
- Zootopia
- Jungle Book
- Secret Life of Pets
- Batman vs Superman
- Deadpool
- Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them
- Suicide Squad
- Star Wars – Rogue One
Call that the View From the Phlipside
Copyright Jay Phillippi, 2017
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 
Leave a comment