“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 August 6, 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.
Holographic Entertainment
Technology has changed how we can interact with our favorite performance media over the last century plus. Once upon a time, if you wanted to see or hear your favorite artist, you had to physically go and be in their presence. There was no other option. Then audio recording meant you could at least listen to them whenever you wanted. Add in video and now you were able to see them as well. Putting those images up on the big screen even let you see them in something akin to the old live performance. You in the audience, them up on “the stage”. With virtual reality, you were given the feeling that you could step into that picture as well. It now appears that the next big step in that process may be about to spring into our lives.
Holographic entertainment. Any “Star Trek” fan knows all about the wonders of the holodeck, an expanded, even tactile form of virtual reality. We’re not quite up to that from the technology standpoint, but it may be getting closer. So here’s the question for this week:
Would you pay for a ticket to a holographic concert by a beloved performer? You may get the chance in the next year.
The estate of heavy metal icon Ronnie James Dio debuted a holographic version of the singer in Germany last year. Dio died in 2010. It, or is it he, will be touring in Europe during the rest of this year, and then is scheduled for tours in North and South America in 2018. While the lead singer will be a holograph, the backup band, Dio Disciples, will be live. I’ve seen a video of the inaugural performance in Germany and it’s interesting. The stage has to be kept very dark with only minimal lighting of the band to insure maximum visibility of the singer.
I am torn on this. It may surprise some to discover that I was a fan of Dio back in the Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow days. He had one of the ultimate rock and roll voices. It was a band I never got to see live.
But would this qualify as actually seeing him live? Dio Disciples appear to be essentially a tribute band, and members of the singer’s actual bands have made sneering remarks about the tour.
While there is a certain novelty to the idea, in the end I think I fall on the side of real live, live shows. There is a chemistry between performer and audience that can raise a concert beyond just a performance. Those legendary nights that only those who were actually there can talk about. Nothing new or exciting can happen at a concert like this.
Unless the power goes out, and the star of the show disappears into thin air.
Ronnie James Dio holographic performance
in Germany.
Media Rules
There are few things that astound me more than watching high profile people implode in the media. I’m talking about people who have spent some time in the spotlight, who are in positions where they should have people to advise them on dealing with the media. There will be times when those advisors choose to tell their principals, meaning that person in the spotlight, to say nothing. That doesn’t impress me either because I think it’s lazy and defensive. I don’t see any advantage in letting your boss seem lazy or defensive. That’s a topic for a different day.
Watching Anthony Scaramucci come apart at the seams in a phone conversation with The New Yorker’s Washington correspondent Ryan Lizza got me shaking my head again. It’s not like the man known as “Mooch” had never had a conversation with a reporter before. If you’ve managed to avoid hearing the whole ridiculous mess, let’s just say that Scaramucci said things that the newly minted Director of Communications for the President should never say, let alone say on the record to a reporter. He lost his job ten days later.
A couple years back, I was given the chance to work with a group of teenagers who were stepping into high profile leadership positions in the Episcopal Church. I was asked to share with them my advice for dealing with the media, based on my two decades of being a member of the media. I had a great time working with them and ended up with a simple document outlining some straight forward concepts. Concepts that Anthony Scaramucci apparently could have used. As a public service to anyone out there who might find themselves in the same situation, let me share the basics here.
First, assume that there is no such thing as “off the record”. Yes, if you’re working with an honorable member of the media, and you both agree explicitly, there can be “off the record” discussions. Unless you can check all those boxes, assume otherwise.
Second and third, the media is not your friend. And, the media is not your enemy. Their job is to report the story, including the parts you’d rather they ignore. That’s the deal. Treat the media with respect and civility and generally, they’ll treat you the same way. Yes, there are partisan reporters out there and ones with axes to grind. I believe they are the minority.
Last, but not least, is Pay Attention. To where you are, who is listening, and what you’re saying. Just a little bit of this rule would have saved Mooch a lot of trouble.
You can’t blame the media if they simply report the fact that you willingly made an idiot of yourself.
Give me a call if you’re looking for a media advisor.
Confederate
“Alternate History” is a category of fiction that can raise a variety of issues about actual history. If you’re not familiar with the genre, it’s quite simple. You choose a focal point in history and ask “What if?”. What if that person didn’t die, or did? What if some event never took place? How might history have been changed? The earliest example of this is probably the Roman historian Livy’s book “Ab Urbe Condita”, written around 15 B.C. The book asked the question what would have happened if Alexander the Great had turned his empire building west instead of east.
HBO announced a new series called “Confederate”, which will examine what might have happened in the Confederacy had won the Civil War. An enormous furor has arisen around the series, which probably won’t air till 2020.
There are lots of legitimate stories to explore. Would the southern states manage to hold together for more than a few years? Even during the war, the South was not particularly unified. Could the confederation governmental model actually work? It had been tried before in the earliest days of our nation and failed abysmally. How would the South deal with an aggressively expansionist Union that no longer had to negotiate slave versus free? Would there be more “Bleeding Kansas” border wars? How could the CSA function economically as an independent nation? Just fifty-two years later would there be a sufficient American military presence to tip the scales in World War One? Or to serve as the “Arsenal of Democracy” in World War Two?
The problem here is that one of the heaviest of heavyweights in television production is getting behind a program that shows slavery as an established, modern institution. Whatever progress we have made as a nation in race relations, the subject remains a central dysfunction in our culture. Add in the rise of a virulently racist segment of the alt-right, and people are concerned. Concerned that the program will give comfort and support not to what President Lincoln called “…the better angels of our nature” but to our darkest demons.
These days I live just outside the historic capitol of the Confederacy, Richmond, VA. One of the most beautiful streets in this fabulous city has statues to Lee, Davis, Jackson, Stuart, and Maury. It also has one to African American tennis star Arthur Ashe. Last month Richmond mayor Levar Stoney announced that a city commission would look into ways to make sure the context of what those statues represent is clear. Context is always vital.
The context of this series remains unclear and that is troubling.
HBO wants us to give the series a chance. My question is – a chance to do what?
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
Stories Are My Life 
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