“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 13, 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.
Too Smart to Fail?
There is a concept that came into our common awareness back in the days of the Financial Crisis of 2008. It is “Too Big To Fail”. In case you’ve blocked those days from your memory, and who could blame you if you did, the idea is that some companies are so large and so deeply involved in our national financial network, that they can not be allowed to go out of business. There continues to be a lot of discussion about whether or not it’s useful financial concept. It did pop into my head when I started following the financial issues surround Soundcloud, the music streaming service that looked like it was going out of business just a month ago.
Let me start right off by saying that I am NOT saying that Soundcloud has anywhere near the financial size to be “Too Big To Fail”, but when it comes to its place in the independent music scene, it does cast a pretty big shadow. It is one of the premier locations for independent artists to distribute their music. So the potential loss of the service sent a shudder through that portion of the industry.
Soundcloud launched in Germany nine years ago. Originally intended as a way for musicians to share among themselves, it quickly moved to being a music publishing tool. It offered a better opportunity for musicians than the dominant service of the time, MySpace. Growing quickly, Soundcloud has managed to remain independent of the big boys. The good news is that it allows them to go their own way. The bad news is that when money gets tight, you don’t have a big corporate parent with deep pockets.
And money has gotten very tight. The service closed two offices and laid off almost half of its workforce earlier this year. Reports of a lack of vision and general disorganization followed. At the last minute, investors agreed to put one hundred fifty million more dollars into the company to keep it afloat.
Industry experts seem to be pretty solid on what needs to happen now. Soundcloud needs to focus on doing what they do best, and what makes them unique in the market. The company recently began making moves that would put them in competition with better funded folks like Spotify. Instead, they need to put their time and money into the independent music community that has always been the company’s core. Make the experience better for producers and consumers. It’s exactly what the new management team at Soundcloud did when they ran Vimeo. And it worked.
But to continue to be independent, they need to be a business too smart to fail.
Local News
Who we trust when it comes to the news is a lot more complicated than it used to be. A broad consensus among viewers was generally the accepted norm when I was growing up. It was never universal, and I don’t believe you will ever get all Americans to agree on pretty much any topic. It kind of makes us who we are.
In fact, a recent study done by the folks at Pew Research reiterated what they had found back in 2014. We have definite opinions on news media. Unsurprisingly, we tended to trust those sources that came closest to our stated political views and distrusted those that were the farthest from them. So liberals liked CNN, while conservatives liked Fox News. Only two news outlets got “perfect” scores. Everyone generally trusted the Wall Street Journal, and everyone generally distrusted Buzzfeed.
Buried down in those studies was an interesting item. When the question came down to local media versus national media, more people preferred local media as a political news source. There’s a certain logic to that. The national media never manage to feel as “in touch” with our day to day lives as the news people who actually live where we do. They drive the same streets, endure the same economy, deal with the same weather as we do.
With all that said, there is great concern for the local news. Unsurprisingly, at the top of the list is economics. News departments are expensive to run.
There’s another concern, however. This past spring the FCC loosened the rules on the total number of television stations that can be owned by a single entity. That becomes an issue with the proposed merger between the Sinclair Broadcast Group and Tribune Media company. Sinclair is already the largest owner of local TV stations in the nation. The merged company would cover over 70% of the viewing audience. The folks at Sinclair a vision of television markets dominated by only one or two “big players” and with consolidated news coverage within those groups. There is a federal cap on the percentage of the total U.S. audience that a single owner can have access to. The Sinclair/Tribune merger is almost double that limit. So there are still regulatory issues to be worked out.
The vital question has to do with a decreased number of points of view in our local news. A few ownership groups could mean news coverage that lacks breadth.
The most important question is this. Are we, the consumers, best served by hearing from as few voices as possible? In our history, we’ve done very well with a diverse marketplace of ideas. Let’s not hurry to leave that behind.
The Kids Will Kill TV
The end of television has been a recurring theme in the media for about a decade now. In the last five years, that discussion has increased with more streaming options and the whole “cord-cutting” movement. For me, I think the people who made television the next big thing will be the ones who finally kill it.
Back in the day, there was one specific group that tipped the balance between just a nice technological innovation and an integral part of our family life. Children. And I believe that in the end, it will be children that finally put a stake through the heart of television as well.
There are lots of wonderful adult type programs that made a huge impact on American culture in the early days of TV. But it was the generation that grew up in front of it, the Baby Boomers, my generation, that took it to the next level. Early on parents learned that TV could buy them some quiet time with the kids. Sure, folks worried that it was turning our brains to mush, but we were the television generation. We were every bit as hung up on the “boob tube” as the current generation is on social media and the web.
That’s why I believe that it is the current generation of children that will finally kill TV as we have known it. Think about the little kids you see on a daily basis. I’m thinking ages roughly three to seven. How many of them do you see with some kind of screen out in public? A tablet or a smartphone? It’s the parental equivalent of the “boob tube” in the 21st Century.
And we are about to see a big movement away from television for that generation towards streaming video. Disney is reporting that viewership for its cable channels is sliding on many of its networks, including the ones aimed at kids. That’s part of the reason they just announced they will pull all future Disney product from Netflix and move it to their own streaming site. Google saw the potential for this when they launched “YouTube Kids” back in 2015. But here’s the real kicker in this story. No less a children’s mainstay than Mattel has decided they are seeing the writing on the wall. For the first time, the toymaker has announced that some of its “upfront” advertising monies will move from television to YouTube Kids. Word is that it’s an eight figure deal and that Mattel’s digital advertising has increased forty percent in the last year.
This generation of children’s parents are very comfortable with streaming, and their children will treat it as a standard, ordinary part of their lives moving forward.
And that, I’m afraid, is very bad news for television.
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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