“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 and hear? Drop me a line and we can talk.
Programs from week of April 30, 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.
Death of the E-Book?
There has been a lot of talk flying around about the demise of e-books. Long time listeners will know that I was very excited about eight years ago when I got my Nook Color to begin exploring the world of electronic books. I continue to read them and be a fan. So I was troubled when I began reading the stories of year to year declines in e-books sales.
I was even more troubled by the celebration these stories met with in certain quarters. Readers who believe that print books are the only “real” books took great enjoyment in the news. While the traditional publishers didn’t come out and say it, the numbers that were being quoted tended to be from their industry groups. The other group that cropped up was of people advocating for “free reading”. The concept is to increase reading worldwide (a laudatory goal) by making books free. In this case, especially e-books.
First, let’s take a look at the statistics. A first glance showed me a serious issue. The statistics focused on traditional publishing companies. Independent authors are either overlooked or undercounted (more on that in a minute). E-books sales for the big five publishers have declined steeply. As of a year ago or so, the big five made up less than a quarter of e-book sales, with indie authors climbing toward fifty percent. One of the real issues there is that e-books from the big boys tend to be priced the same as a paperback book. In an era where the folks at Smashwords, one of the leading indie book sale sites, say that the sweet spot for e-book prices is between 2.99 and 3.99, it’s clear that the old line publishers are still stuck in their old mindset.
So why are indie authors being undercounted? Sadly, it’s because so many folks are self-publishing without any clue on how to do it right. Beyond the vast number of badly written, badly edited and badly presented books, many do not bother to obtain an International Standard Book Number or ISBN. This free identification code allows much better tracking of sales and is the standard identifier for libraries and booksellers.
As an indie author who self-published a book just last year, I can tell you that I’m saddened by the volume of bad writing that this golden age of self-publishing has unleashed. I can also tell you that there’s a lot of great writing out there to be discovered.
Like any new system, it will take a little time to shake out the wrinkles. Rest assured that the e-book isn’t dead yet.
Twitter Twits
There are times when I see what is happening in the media world and just wonder what people are thinking. Social media isn’t a “new thing” anymore, it’s been around long enough that the basic concepts of doing it right have been pretty well established. So doing the basics ought to be something that anyone can do. Especially a large corporate entity with the financial wherewithal to hire qualified people to do it.
And then you have the Toronto Maple Leafs.
In case you’re not a hockey fan, Toronto is one of the “Original Six”, the six founding teams of the National Hockey League. They are the sports obsession of that great city to the north. And in the last twelve seasons, they have made the playoffs exactly twice, including this year. Leaf fans do not take losing lightly, so working hard to maintain good relations with their fanbase would seem to be a vital part of their work.
Which makes what they did last week so utterly inexplicable. They unfollowed everyone’s Twitter account, except team president Brendan Shanahan. I am not positive, but one writer out of Toronto says that the Leafs had one point five million accounts that they were following. Not that were following them, but they were following. That number, if correct, is mind blowing. Looking at the other Original Six teams, you find a spread from five thousand seven hundred for the New York Rangers to a baffling thirty-four for the Boston Bruins. Once the clear-out was done, the fans were upset. It really felt like the team had turned its back on them.
The best explanation that has emerged is that the team was doing an end of season review, decided the number was unwieldy and hit the re-set button. The problem is that by doing it without warning, the backlash was inevitable.
The essence of social media is making it feel social. I’ve had great experiences with big corporate accounts who respond quickly and personally to questions and comments. It makes me feel like the company cares about whatever my issue is. And that makes me want to do business with them again.
Just dumping fan accounts, when you have fallen as far short of their expectations as the Maple Leafs have over the last decade, is a recipe for disaster. Make the announcement and then slowly work you way through the list. Yes, it will take a long time. Maybe that’s what you get the interns to do for a week.
Anything has to be better than just dumping everyone, including players, and leaving just the big bosses account. Proof positive that they don’t really understand what they’re doing.
Too Big To Fail
Back at the beginning of the Great Recession, you heard people talking about some institutions being “too big to fail”. The idea was that after you achieve a certain size, a certain prominence in the market, an institution can become something that simply can not, or at least can not be allowed to fail. Whether or not that was really true in the financial markets is a matter of some debate. If the media has proven one thing over and over, it’s that there is no such equivalent here.
A couple of media giants find themselves facing that painful truth. While certainly not on the verge of collapse at the moment, ESPN finally acknowledged some decidedly bad news recently. The kind of business hiccup that a company that likes to call itself the “World Wide Leader” did not have in its master business plan. Last week they starting making the calls to let almost one hundred employees know that they were now former employees. While most of the folks were low-level reporters, some bigger names got the axe as well. That included anchor Jay Crawford, NFL correspondent Ed Werder, former NFL quarterbacks Trent Dilfer and Danny Cannell, and baseball writer Jayson Stark. The reasons behind the sudden employee purge got a standard corporate speak explanation from the network. I mentioned here recently that networks like ESPN are among the most expensive to keep on cable packages. The networks have seen dramatic declines in the numbers of subscribers as the cord-cutting movement continues. When weighed against record high dollar contracts with various sports leagues, that’s a tough economic model to make work.
The sports network isn’t the only giant with problems. The folks at iHeartMedia may have even bigger issues. iHeartMedia is what used to be known as Clear Channel. After absorbing a number of smaller broadcast groups, they changed their name and became the largest owner of radio stations in America. Having made that aggressive move is also what’s come back to bite them in the butt. When the company bought out Clear Channel, they took on over twenty billion dollars in debt. Three hundred fifty million of that comes due later this year and another nine billion comes due in 2019. And they are not sure they will be able to refinance or pay that debt. Which is why they are considering telling their investors that they may not survive into 2018.
In our culture, we have a thing for the concept of “bigger is better”. The reality is that in the media world at least, you’re never too big to take a fall. And if either of these two giants fall, there are going to be some massive reverberations.
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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