“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 November 5, 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.
Bad TV Ideas
Every year a new television season begins. Or several times a year a new season begins, it’s all become much more complicated than it used to be. Every year some new shows sound interesting, a whole bunch of them sound like something that has been done a thousand times before and a few are just head scratchers. The “Why did anyone think that was a good idea” category.
It’s that last category that I find myself exploring today. One proposed tv series that I don’t quite get and one that is actually launching this week.
The proposed series of the fantasy epic “Lord of the Rings” by the folks at Amazon Studios. Amazon top dog Jeff Bezos is a huge fantasy fan and is personally involved with the negotiations with the Tolkien estate and Warner Brothers. I’m just not sure where you go with this. Word is that the estate is not interested in licensing anything new and would not allow the kind of story line license that George R.R. Martin has given to the “Game of Thrones” producers. So we would get a weekly series version of a story that we’ve already seen. I have been a fan of Middle Earth for forty plus years, but I can’t get beyond the question of “why?” for this idea.
Debuting this week is a reality tv show on CNBC of all places called “The Job Interview”. And it’s about, wait for it now, job interviews. The show focuses on a business looking to hire new staff. You then get to go through the whole interview process with the various candidates, right through to the phone call to the chosen one and the painful calls to the candidates who don’t get the nod. The concept here is that this is an experience that we all share, so it’ll make good TV. I would point out that it is almost universally an experience we all HATE, so why on earth would we invest our free time in listening to people being asked questions like “What would your pet say about you if we asked it for a reference?”. Question like that make me insane. In fact, the whole process job hunting and interviews (which I am sadly in the midst of as we speak) is fairly insane on a routine basis.
Job interviews are stressful, tedious and more often than not pretty dull. But a person’s life can hang in the balance. How much entertainment value is there in listening to the folks not chosen getting the news on the phone? Yeah, that’s entertainment.
Some television concepts just don’t fly for me at all.
Age of Media Marvels
I had a memory jump up the other day. I’m thinking you need to be around forty or older to remember this. Which says a lot about my larger point along the way. So here goes.
If I say Jerry Seinfeld and “the perfect pump”, does that bring back a memory for you? I was standing at the pump at the gas station filling the tank last week, when the memory of a television commercial came flooding back. Jerry Seinfeld, at a gas station, putting gas in his car. He stops pumping JUST as it hits twenty dollars (we won’t even go into the question of filling your tank for twenty bucks) and pronounces “the perfect pump!” Now here’s the quiz. If you’re under forty, do you have any idea why that was such a big deal? If you’re older than forty do you remember why it was?
It has to do with what was a fairly new technology in our lives in 1997. Paying at the pump with our card. Let the shock of that thought hit you. Twenty years ago that technology was so novel that American Express made it the feature of a TV ad. Yet today, most of us take it for granted at such a fundamental level that we don’t even think about it anymore.
We are surrounded by media at such an amazing level, because of the advances in technology. And we have gotten so used to it that we don’t even think about it on the average day. For most of us, we have the ability to reach into our pockets, pull out a smartphone and watch television or a movie or have a video chat with someone on the other side of the planet. And we not only DON’T stand in awe and wonder of that fact, but we get peevish when we CAN’T. We don’t even have to go looking for whatever media interests us, we can just ASK for it. Talk to Siri or OK Google or Cortana. Live stream any moment in your life. By reaching into your pocket.
If that’s not an age of media miracles, I’m not sure what one looks like.
If you’re wondering what the big deal was with the perfect pump, it meant you no longer had to worry about how much change you had in coins in your pocket. Pump whatever you needed, and pay in a flash.
They were simpler days. In so many ways.
Feel free to enjoy, but take a moment to stand in awe of the world we live in.
Disney Squeezes
In all likelihood it will be one of the, if not THE, biggest grossing movies of the year. After some so-so middle movies, the recent Star Wars films have really lit a fire under the franchise once again. And the next installment, the much anticipated next installment is due in just about a month.
So if you’re a fan, it sounds like all great news. And you would assume that it’s all good news for the theater owners as well. That may be taking it one step too far. Because Disney is demanding an awful lot from the theaters in return for running the movie.
Exact figures are not generally bandied about, but reliable sources indicate that movie studios normally get between twenty-five and sixty percent of ticket sale revenues from the studios. Conventional wisdom says the local theater makes its profit on popcorn and snacks. So it was a bit of a shock when the word went out that Disney wanted sixty FIVE percent of ticket sales if you wanted to show the latest Star Wars flick. Industry reports say that’s an all-time high. And that wasn’t all.
The theaters have to show the movie in their largest theater AND it has to run a minimum of four weeks. For theaters in large markets, that’s probably not a terrible burden. But if you live in a smaller market, it may mean you will have to travel to the big city to see the movie. A handful of smaller theaters have already announced they just won’t show the movie at all. On top of it all, there’s an additional five percent penalty on ticket revenues if you don’t follow all the rules.
This has already been a tough year for the local theaters. Box office revenues are down five percent for the year so far. Disney is the nine hundred pound gorilla in the movie world. Beyond its own hits, it also owns Lucasfilm and Marvel Entertainment. It’s in a position to set the rules, and there’s not a lot of wiggle room.
That may seem like no big deal to you. But if other studios follow suit, the trickle down effect will show up in short order. With box revenues falling overall, and studios taking more of that money, theaters will have two choices, jack popcorn and snack prices even more, or just close the doors. It’s almost inevitable that there’s a major blowout coming between the studios and the theaters.
And that sounds a bit too much like the dark side for this movie lover.
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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