“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 June 25, 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.
The Cosby Question
When all is said and done, after the accusations and the trials, both judicial and public opinion, after everything, we are left with the question.
What to do about Bill Cosby?
Cosby stands accused of sexual assault, and has accusations from dozens of other women of the same behavior. Seven men and five women deliberated for fifty-two hours before reporting to the judge that they could not agree on a verdict. After a two week trial, the judge declared a mistrial. Which leaves the long time entertainer neither vindicated nor convicted.
Celebrities that do stupid things and throw away their lives and careers are not particularly novel. 1921 saw charges against silent movie star Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle in the death of actress Virginia Rappe. After TWO hung juries, the comedian was acquitted, but his career was over. There have been plenty in between then and now.
Bill Cosby is not just any entertainer. The 1960’s saw him gain immense popularity for his stand up comedy, which led to Cosby becoming the first African-American actor with a lead role in a weekly network drama, co-starring with Robert Culp in “I Spy”. In 1984 he starred in one of the most popular shows of the ‘80s, as Cliff Huxtable on “The Cosby Show”. It reigned as the number one show in America for five of its eight year run. That means an awful lot of us, myself included, have a lot of positive memories of Bill Cosby.
So what do we do with the growing list of accusers? What do we do with the very unsavory accusations, and the equally unsavory admissions the comic has made over the years in police statements and court records. Americans tend to make our media favorites into perfect paragons of virtue, no matter how many times we discover that they have human failings just like us. It makes the disappointment all the more painful.
The team working with Cosby have begun talking about “reclaiming his legacy”, which strikes me as a ludicrous undertaking at the moment. Without being exonerated, the questions will remain hanging over his head. Trying to shout down his many detractors, or to divert attention is guaranteed to fail. If I were one of his advisers, I would tell him to make a brief statement saying he wanted to be with his family and drop off the radar as quickly as possible. They may wish that this was over, but the prosecutors have already announced an intention to try the charges again.
What do we do with Bill Cosby? We pray that the truth comes out in full and that justice is served for all.
History will take care of the rest.
Disruption
When I was growing up “being disruptive” was usually followed by the statement “we’ll see what your father has to say about that”. Over the years I can not think of a single instance where being “disruptive” got a good review from my father.
In today’s world, “disruptive” is among the ultimate accolades. You will hear tech folk and media folk talking about how much they are looking for the next big “disruptive” concept, service or program. In the modern usage, disruptive means that you change the face of the environment in which you are competing. Back in the day “reality TV” was disruptive because it shifted the emphasis away from scripted TV. Netflix continues to be disruptive, first with streamlining the movie experience, then with streaming media and now with top quality original programming. The list goes on and on. Disruption isn’t anything new, it’s just a new way of talking about businesses taking advantage of holes or weaknesses in their industry.
And that’s the key to being disruptive. You need some kind of opening. Stable situations that are meeting the needs and desires of their customer base are rarely good candidates for disruption. So the ability to recognize those opportunities is a vital part of the process.
Of course, recognizing when things work is also a vital business skill. Disruption may be all about finding your way into the cracks, but there is still some truth to the adage “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.
The CBS network is a prime example. In an age of change, innovation and disruption, they’ve just renewed “The Bold and the Beautiful”, “The Young and the Restless”, “The Price is Right”, “Let’s Make A Deal”, and “The Talk”. A daytime talk show, two games shows that are more than forty years old, and two SOAP OPERAS, for Pete’s sake! This is the age of disruption?
Actually, it’s the age of smart programming. CBS knows that daytime television watching numbers are in decline. It’s been happening for decades. But they also know that their audience likes these shows and that they can make money producing them. CBS does very well in the ratings for daytime programming. It knows the audience and it gives them what they want.
That’s the key to long-term success down through the years in television. And it’s a concept that translates very cleanly. The longest running syndicated program in U.S. television has done the same thing since 1969. “Sesame Street” knows it’s audience and gives them what they want.
I’m not sure what Big Bird would think of all this disruption talk.
Blade Runner
This week marks the thirty-fifth anniversary of the premiere of the movie “Blade Runner”. Today the movie is almost always in the discussion for best science fiction movies of all time. I had forgotten that it was something of a turkey when it first opened in 1982. It would make twenty-six million dollars that summer. Which left it some four million dollars short of its budget. Even among science fiction movies, it had a rough time. It finished behind “Tron”, “Star Trek- The Wrath of Khan” and “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial”. But then, everybody finished behind “E.T.”, which was the number one movie of the year.
As hard as modern viewers might find it hard to believe, “Blade Runner” got some very mediocre reviews. The combination of film noir and the unrelentingly grim dystopian vision of Los Angeles was more than the average summer blockbuster viewer was ready to see. Remember this was the year that audiences made “E.T.”, “Tootsie”, “An Officer and a Gentleman”, “Rocky III”, “Porky’s”, “The Wrath of Khan”, “48 HRS”, “Poltergeist”, “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas”, and “Annie” the top ten movies of the year.
Over the last 35 years, the audience and the critics have changed their minds about “Blade Runner”. Philip K. Dick, the author whose work provided the concept for the movie, was largely unknown except to sci-fi fans. It was director Ridley Scott’s second big movie, after 1979’s “Alien” another common nominee for best science fiction movie of all time. It was a movie that had a hard birthing, going over budget, getting the director and producer fired. The movie has gone through seven edits with one declared the “Final Cut” in 2007. People hate the beginning, and the ending, and various pieces in the middle. I don’t believe that it was ever intended to make the viewer feel comfortable or safe. That’s a courageous goal for a movie maker.
In the end, “Blade Runner” achieves something most science fiction films never do. It is complex, and challenging and never gets lost in the special effects. The movie brought a truly original universe to the big screen, then immersed the viewer deeply into that world. You may not like the movie, but you will never forget it.
A sequel, “Blade Runner 2049” is scheduled to hit the screen in October of this year. It will have enormous shoes to fill.
Oh and one final thought. Do you remember what year the movie was set in? The year of all that unrelenting grimness? 2019.
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
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