“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 2013-18 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 January 21, 2018
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.
CVS and Real Beauty
There is a growing trend in the commercial advertising arena that I am completely on board with these days. The movement is away from doctored photographs in marketing campaigns, and towards ones that show how real people look.
Today we call the process of altering an image to remove blemishes, or to re-shape the models body as “photoshopping” for the most popular piece of software that does this kind of work. But the concept has been around for decades. Older photographers would know the process as “air brushing”, a process done in the dark room in the creation of the final print. You couldn’t do as much back then, but the impact on an image could be dramatic.
The drugstore chain CVS has announced that starting in April they will stop “materially” altering images used in their marketing for beauty products both online and in their stores. While the initial move deals only with their own product lines, CVS is asking their partners like Johnson & Johnson, and L’Oreal, to do likewise. Since they are the largest drugstore chain in the nation, with over nine thousand stores, it’s a request that will be taken seriously.
This may sound trivial but it’s not. Things like the difference in how before and after photos are shot can be seen by even the most inexperienced eye. Where it really strikes home is the unrealistic body images that are shown to all of us, including impressionable young people. Quite simply, the vast majority of the “people” you see in advertising photographs, most especially beauty products, don’t exist. There’s a person out there who looks kinda like them, but the body or face you see has been altered in ways no human being can replicate. It is false advertising of a most pernicious type. The result is that we can’t look at ourselves or each other honestly, because our “standards of beauty” have been so badly distorted.
CVS is not the only company to move in this direction. Dove’s “Campaign for Real Beauty is over a decade old. Proctor & Gamble have followed suit. Just last year, France required any commercial photograph that has been digitally retouched to carry a label to let the viewer know. The fine for violating that law can run over forty five thousand dollars.
The move by the drugstore chain is a first step and one that will take time. They are hoping to have 80% of their stores in compliance with the new directive by sometime next year.
It will be nice to see a movement toward a realistic and natural understanding of beauty. It’s a win for us all.
RIP Hugh Wilson
I don’t even know how to begin this program. There are so many emotions, mostly joy but tinged with sadness, all wrapped up here. Last week saw the passing of writer and director Hugh Wilson. Most people probably won’t recognize the name. Wilson was never a “star”, though he had some commercial success. On the big screen, he created the script and then directed the iconic Warner Brothers movie “Police Academy”.
But his best known work is one that is near and dear to my heart. Hugh Wilson created “WKRP in Cincinnati”. And that is reason enough to hang his name among the stars.
It’s funny, as much as radio was a central part of our media life for decades, the number of movie and television offerings about it are rather slim. There are more movies, ranging from “Pirate Radio” to “Play Misty For Me”. On TV the pickings have always been very slim. There were radio themes in “Northern Exposure” and “Beverly Hills 90210”, and shows where it more at the center of the story like “Frasier” and “News Radio”. But the first one that most people mention is “WKRP”. The show ran for four seasons. Virtually every radio person I know will tell you they worked with someone just like one or more of the characters on the show. While I decline to point fingers, I worked with every single character on the show at some point. In fact, when asked who my radio influences were, Dr. Johnny Fever was always mentioned.
Wilson was born in Florida, went to the University of Florida and graduated with a journalism degree. After a stint writing commercial copy, he moved into television with Mary Tyler Moore Productions where he would work on “The Bob Newhart Show” and “The Tony Randall Show” before pitching the idea for “WKRP”.
I have to admit being surprised to find Wilson’s name connected to two other efforts that are personal favorites. He created the short lived “The Famous Teddy Z” TV series that starred Jon Cryer, and the wonderfully demented parody cowboy movie “Rustler’s Rhapsody”. His later carrer continued his work as both a writer and movie director with credits including “The First Wives Club”, “Stroker Ace” and an indie film with novelist John Grisham about Little League baseball titled “Mickey”.
Now that the time has come to write his final tribute, it’s inevitable that “WKRP in Cincinnati” led every headline. It is classic television and a loving tribute to the industry. “As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly”
Hugh Wilson was 74 years old.
YouTube Changes The Rules
I have spoken many times over the last few years about how I believe this is the “golden age” for creative types. There are more ways to get what you do in front of an audience than ever before. And there are more services dedicated to helping you do just that.
That particular line of thought may have taken a step or two backwards last week. At a time when YouTube has been facing a lot of criticism about what is going out on its service, its first step strikes me as an odd choice.
As we mentioned here a couple weeks ago, YouTube came under scrutiny following the Logan Paul fiasco over the video posted of a presumed dead body in Japan (among other things). It took the Google subsidiary almost a week before the video was pulled.
YouTube, and many other huge social media sites have an ongoing problem keeping an eye on what is posted. The process is called “moderation”, meaning an outside moderator is supposed to keep an eye out for violations of the community standards. Unfortunately, this is commonly handled by low level and low paid staffers working with a vague set of guidelines, or left to computer routines programmed to look for specific issues. The video-sharing website has promised to increase the number of moderators to ten thousand this year. Given that YouTube has a financial interest in creating channels like Paul’s with enormous followings, it will be interesting to see which ideal comes out on top.
The first move is puzzling. YouTube has increased both the number of subscribers and viewing hours for channels to become business partners, called “monetising”. This is a blow not to the big channels like Paul’s but many, many smaller channels who were able to make some money before but will be frozen out now. The rules for smaller channels have changed twice now inside a year, with the standards getting tougher to reach each time.
The problem is that the solution doesn’t actually match, well, the problem. YouTube’s high profile problems come from high profile channels that easily overtop the new standards. While the website hasn’t made a response to the uproar that has greeted the change, the initial statement on their Creator’s blog appears to equate less popular channels with bad behavior. They claim that a core value “…is to provide anyone the opportunity to earn money from a thriving channel”.
Given that all of their recent problems have come from the channels that seem to be thriving best, the solution seems to be upside down.
But at least they’ve taken the Tide pod challenge videos down.
Call that the View From the Phlipside
Copyright Jay Phillippi, 2018
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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