“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 October 29, 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.
Trivial News
The Internet has brought a lot of things into our lives. Some good, some bad, lots trivial. And it’s the trivial that are grabbing my attention this week. It’s not that we didn’t have trivia before the Internet. I have always had a soft spot for those tiny little pieces of inconsequential information. So much so that my family has referred to me as the “Fount of Useless Knowledge”. Certainly having quick and easy access to that kind of information has made it more widespread, but that’s not what interests me today.
It’s how wound up we get about… trivia. Once upon a time that would have been the purview of the geekish among us. It seems to have drawn us all into it these days.
I see that the battle continues over the pronunciation of certain terms. Especially for the image file known as the “graphics interchange format”. Well, that’s its full name, which no one uses. Most people refer to it by its initials – G-I-F. Simple enough, right? Until you have to say it out loud. Is it a hard “G” – gif, or a soft “G” – jif? The answer to that question raises quite a few hackles. There are plenty of words that use the soft g sound: general, gerbil, gerrymander, and a word that my contemporaries and I hear with increasing frequency, geriatric. Steve Wilhite, who created the file type, comes down on the side of the soft g. Most dictionaries, including the august Oxford dictionary, have thrown in the towel on this one and simply list both. But the denizens of the Interwebs aren’t willing to let that go quite so easily. In a world where the Oxford comma will raise blood pressures to cardiac event levels, this is a hill folks are ready to die on.
The latest insanity involves an emoji. That’s one of those cute little, annoying images used in text messages of all sorts. In this case a cheeseburger emoji. Yes, that’s what I said. Seems that Apple and Google have come up with cheeseburger emojis that do not match. (Why is matching important? Don’t interrupt the trivial with more trivia) Apple put the cheese on top of the burger and Google has it on the bottom. In fact, of all the cheeseburger emoji (is emoji singular or plural? Or is it like sheep? An inquiring mind wants to know), only Google has it on the bottom.
All of this claimed a fair amount of attention out in the world.
Personally, putting the cheese under the burger keeps the bottom of the bun from getting soggy.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled life.
NFL Ratings, Examined
One of the most common statements, when the whole NFL-National Anthem discussion comes up, is – “Their ratings are dropping, so that proves that…” the audience hates them, or whatever. That kind of blanket statement always makes me twitchy. Unless you can back it up with some facts, it’s just “fake news”. So now that we’ve got a bit of the season on the boards, I thought I’d take a closer look and see what’s really going on.
Here’s the first thing to note. Television ratings for NFL games so far are, in fact, down from the same time last year. The drop is right around five percent to the corresponding time in the 2016 season. So at the surface, it would appear that the argument has legs. A little deeper look shows just how short those legs are.
If you look at the ratings for network programming overall (that’s all programming including sports), you discover that ratings are down there as well. On average, for the four major networks, ratings are down eight percent. That span ranges from a four percent drop for NBC to a twenty percent drop at Fox. That’s over the first month of the fall season, according to the folks at Nielsen. So compared to the wider numbers, the NFL is actually outperforming the industry as a whole. That puts a serious hole in the argument.
We do know two things that are generally credited with lower viewership. The first is simple overexposure. More voices are being raised, including with the broadcast partners, that the NFL is on the air too often. Sunday afternoon, and evening and Monday night and Thursday night. Once college football is over we’ll start seeing them on Saturdays too. Sunday afternoons used to be special. Not so much anymore.
Then there’s the whole cord-cutting problem. People watch television differently than they used to. Viewing of sports events on streaming platforms is up. Last year NFL streaming on Twitter averaged just under a quarter million views for Thursday nights. This year on Amazon has shown over three hundred seventy thousand on average. Those people don’t show up as TV ratings. But they’re still watching. Another hole in the argument.
Finally, it’s worth noting that the networks pulled in more advertising dollars for the NFL games than last year. Not a lot more, but more. That number has some wiggle in it, but it shows the advertisers still believe.
Some folks claim they’ll “never watch the NFL again”. I think once the current kerfluffle passes, the habits developed over the last fifty years will return.
The NFL may have 99 problems, but the ratings really aren’t one of them.
The End of Local Broadcasting
Last Tuesday the Federal Communications Commission, the FCC, made a change in a rule that has been around for almost eighty years. There have been a lot of changes to the broadcasting industry over the last couple decades. This rule change may bring about the most dramatic change in local broadcasting in our lifetimes.
The rule being changed is the “Main Studio Rule”. In simplest terms, the rule required the station owner to have a full-time office in or near the city of license for the radio or TV station. The goal was to ensure that the local community’s needs were heard and, presumably, filled by a true “local” broadcaster. If you had a concern, you could go to the studio and meet with someone from the station to discuss it.
According to the decision by the Commission, that is no longer a concern. Because social media provides alternate ways to communicate with your local station.
Broadcasters, including the National Association of Broadcasters, a broadcasting trade association, and lobbying group, have been advocating for the elimination of the rule for years. The argument says that by not requiring the additional overhead, the rule change would allow them to transfer financial resources to equipment or programming needs.
Other voices, coming from across the political spectrum note that the change may speed the consolidation of the industry by a few large corporations.
My concerns come down to a single concept. Local. Obviously, I made my career in local broadcasting. It made me a dyed in the wool believer in the importance of a connection between the station and the community it serves. Without a local studio, it seems obvious that there will be a further decrease in the number of local broadcasters. While it may make business sense to consolidate regional operations, if all your “local” programming is centered in Erie, Pennsylvania, is it really “local” anymore? Will you be satisfied that your local needs are being met when all the decisions are being made in a corporate office in a major metropolitan center, hundreds or even thousands of miles away? While that process has already made considerable inroads, this decision would finally sever any mandatory connection between operator and audience. It also increases the likelihood of only limited points of view being presented.
In the end, I find myself very concerned with this rule change. While it will be a financial boon for station owners, I don’t see much of a benefit for anyone else. The elimination of local studios and staff will have a negative effect on the local tax base and local involvement.
And that is a problem.
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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