“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 March 13, 2017
This Week’s Podcast:
And here is Professor Kelly and his wife discussing the whole thing.
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.
Mic Rant
I haven’t had a good rant on the program for a while. There is a phrase that has really entered the mainstream in the last couple years that has finally pushed me over the edge.
It’s the whole “mic drop” thing. And I know I’m not alone. A variety of friends and acquaintances have been flipping out over it as well.
In case you don’t know the reference, it’s pretty much what it sounds like. The earliest examples of it seem to come from the ‘80s when comedians and rappers would use it as a symbol that nothing more could be said on the subject. That their performance was pretty much unbeatable. So it was a kind of a challenge. If you think you’re hot, pick it up. It really took off in popular culture in 2012, when President Obama used it to end his speech at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Now it’s showing up in at least two national ad campaigns.
So here’s a little professional advice if you’ve ever considered taking the challenge and picking up that mic. Don’t do it. You know why?
Because it’s probably broken.
This is the part that makes every professional audio person I know crazy. There are two general rules about even half way decent microphones. One, they’re expensive, and two, they’re fragile.
I took a quick look at the cost of common microphones. Anything that’s even halfway decent is going to cost you at least a hundred bucks. Yes, you can get them much cheaper than that. And maybe you want to use those for your mic drops. Of course, you’ll only be able to do it once or twice before they’re junk. Plus, they sound awful. Once you start paying two hundred, three hundred, four hundred dollars or more for a mic, you’ll start thinking twice about dropping it.
Now in most cases, the folks dropping the mic are dropping SOMEONE ELSE’S microphone. They didn’t pay for it, and they won’t be paying for the repairs, if possible, or the replacement. This is why audio professionals hate this trope so very, very much.
Even in radio, you knew who among your co-workers just slammed the equipment around. It’s why I always tried to check every component, especially the microphone, before I left the building.
Maybe this is just an extension of Jimi Hendrix burning his guitar or Keith Moon of the Who blowing up his drum set. If you want to destroy your own stuff, go ahead, I guess.
But if you’re using someone else’s equipment, trust me when I tell you that waiting offstage for you will be a very, very angry sound pro. And these are not people you want to mess with.
Lock the Door!
As the media world continues to change, it also offers a variety of new challenges. Once upon a time, not so long ago, the media world was a pretty predictable place. As our media delivery systems have become more immediate, the predictability has gone down. When print was king, your news and entertainment arrived only as fast as delivery systems like horseback or trains could get it to you. So at best what you saw was a few hours old, at worst it might be weeks. Then radio came along. Suddenly things could be much more immediate. Think the crash of the Hindenburg. TV’s delivery rate wasn’t a whole lot faster, but it brought a greater feeling of immediacy through images. All the electronic media also allowed us to deal with experts, analysts, and eyewitnesses from all over as well. The limitation there was that you needed to be near a studio or transmitter.
With the arrival of social media and the internet, we have a level of immediacy that is unheard of in history. All you need is a laptop, a tablet or a phone and you can be “on the air” in an instant.
That’s not always a good thing.
There’s a video going viral right now about a man being interviewed via Skype when his children come charging into the room. Live. On the BBC. The man is political science professor Robert E. Kelly and he was in Korea last week when the Korean president was removed from office. That’s big time, serious news stuff. Suddenly the door behind him pops open and his two children, one in one of those bouncy chair walker things, come charging into the room. And the live interview.
In the old days, an expert didn’t have to worry about things like this. He or she would be somewhere where a professional broadcaster could help them get set up, keep the machinery rolling and tell them when it was over. A controlled environment. In the new instant media world, people are confronted with setting up something close to that environment in their own homes or on the go.
It’s actually a lot harder than it looks. Especially when it’s video, you need to consider lighting, what’s on the walls behind you, outside noises, how the audio is working (a pet peeve of mine. Looking fine and sounding awful is useless. Let’s all spend a little more time working our audio levels, people)
Our new media world means that any of us could be “on the air” at any moment.
The best piece of advice I can give you for you as become a media star? Remember to lock the door.
Here’s CNN’s coverage and video:
And here is Professor Kelly and his wife discussing the whole thing.
Review Madness
If you are trying to do business on or through the Internet, there are probably a bunch of things that make you crazy. My bet is that there is one item that sits near the top of almost anyone’s list of internet business issues, however.
It’s the review.
The initial concept was very much in the idea that the web was going to be the ultimate democracy. Everyone would have the ability to have their say, and truth would triumph over all. Ideally, a review serves two functions. First, it tells the business if there’s been a problem. The best online businesses keep an eye on them and uses them to troubleshoot issues. The other function is to give subsequent customers some idea of what works or doesn’t work with a product or service. Again, a perfectly reasonable and democratic way of expression. If you pay any attention to how people really behave online you may not be surprised to discover it doesn’t always work that way.
All it takes is one person with a vendetta against you or your company and your business can be damaged. Some companies have tried to fight back. A company called Jetsmarter, kind of an Uber for private jets, offered a journalist the chance to use the service for an article. The catch was the agreement required a positive review and would have imposed a two thousand dollar fine if a negative review was published. The reporter wisely declined the offer.
More common are what are called “non-disparagement clauses”. Buried in the fine print of the user agreement is a clause that says you give up the right to say anything negative about the product or company. Now virtually none of us read those agreements. But some folks have been sued following a negative review. In at least one case, sued for one million dollars.
The good news on that front is two-fold. A court in Texas ruled last year that reviews are protected under free speech. Then in December of last year the “Consumer Review Fairness Act of 2016” was signed into law, adding to the protection for reviews.
A bad review is just today’s version of a bad word of mouth. If the product has issues or the business offers bad service, it deserves a bad review. At the same time, nothing positive is gained by a “scorched earth” review policy.
The whole system works better if both sides of the issue takes a minute to think about what the problem is and the best way to solve it. As always, free speech doesn’t relieve us of the duty to use that freedom responsibly.
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 
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