“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 February 25, 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.
End of Channel Surfing?
One of the great media “bad habits” of the modern age may be coming to an end. It is familiar enough that it has been a staple in sitcom story lines for decades. The practice is called “channel surfing”, that endless search through all the cable channels looking for something interesting. In the situation comedy world, it’s why being in control of the remote is so important.
The first usage of the term comes in a 1986 “Wall Street Journal article, so we tend to think of it as a television phenomenon. That’s not really true. A similar behavior has long plagued radio. Depending on who you believe it was either the cause of, or was caused by the Top 40 format that sprang up in the 1960s.
Yet studies today show that TV watchers are watching fewer networks and watching them for longer periods of time than ever before. Beyond the negative connotation of the , there are studies that claim it may be a sign of anything from laziness to hyperactivity disorders. That may sound like good news. But not everyone agrees.
There are some confusing numbers out there. Like individual show ratings are down by 25% over the last five years but individual viewing time is only down by 15%. And the total viewing audience is up by 5%. So the folks at Simulmedia, Inc., an audience targetting company working with TV advertisers, started doing some digging. What they found was surprising.
Viewers are watching fewer programs, but they’re watching them for longer periods of time. My bet is that it may have something to do with viewers using multiple devices while viewing. They don’t have to surf away from commercials, they just shift to the tablet or phone and wait them out.
The people this creates the biggest problem for are national advertisers. Simulmedia notes that several decades ago, if you bought one spot on each of the three major networks on a given night you would reach virtually 100% of the total audience. Today that same buy would net you only 5%. They estimate that to achieve a similar coverage in today’s media, you would need to buy advertising on over 130 channels!
As our media view becomes more personalized, trying to reach a mass market becomes more and more challenging. It also is going to require a more nuanced reporting on what is happening in the television industry.
But in the end, is anyone among us really going to miss the annoyance of that flip-flip-flipping of channels?
Bot News
We’ve been hearing a lot about “bots” in the news these days. Based on that you might think that they are only working on the “dark side”. Posting fake news, helping to create fake identities in social media, that kind of thing. The reality is that bots are being used in a lot of different ways for perfectly normal tasks. A bot is just a bit of automation software designed to do things like set an alarm, give you the local weather forecast or even help search engines in finding all the websites that they list when you run a search.
And now they are going to work to help us better understand the news. That’s the goal of the folks at the BBC News Labs, and the BBC Visual Journalism team. Bots can be useful to help offer details or simple explanations on articles or news stories. The problem has been that the process of creating such a bot was time consuming. Reporters are always running against time constraints, so trying to get them to add a process that could take up to seven hours to finish was simply a non-starter.
That’s why the clever folk in the computer lab decided to start the process at that end. What do the news people need from an application that will allow them to quickly create bots that will support the reporting they are already doing? It also had to create bots that readers would find useful and easy to use. The answer is now up and running on the BBC website. The process takes only a matter of minutes because it starts with the information in the story. This kind of bot is called a chatbot and you may have run into them in other places. If you click on the bot, you get a series of questions about the main point of the story. Click on a question and you get a brief answer. But that can also lead to further questions on that topic. You can click if you’re interested in more, or just return to the story.
All of this is great if you’re just discovering a story that has been running for several days, or if you’re not familiar with all the prime characters. It also has the advantage of offering in-depth coverage to users who want it while not burying the story in all those details for less interested readers.
Especially for complex stories, or very long ones, the bots are seen as a great tool. It’s a step in the right direction as we look to put the real news ahead of the fakes.
On Violence
Most parents spend at least some time thinking about what their children are watching on television and other media. We want them to see good quality programming, and we want to shield them from programming that may have a negative effect on them. But it’s not always easy to keep up with all the different ways they consume media these days. And it seems like there are more and more things to worry about.
Advertising that focuses on children is a relatively new idea. Until the 1950s, the concept didn’t exist to any great degree. With the advent of television, the child market grew at a tremendous rate and advertisers began to focus on it.
Here in the U.S. our regulatory concerns have been mostly about how many commercials can be aired during a children’s show, and that “indecent” material is not shown during hours when children may be watching. It turns out there may be more to concern us than just whether little Tommy or Suzy is exposed to suggestive scenes of violence or sex.
A new study in England has pointed the finger at television commercials for high calorie food as an important contributor to childhood obesity. The folks at Cancer Research UK did a survey last year among kids between the ages of 11-19. They were asked about their viewing habits and diet. What the survey revealed is rather frightening. Teens who stream shows with ads were more than twice as likely to drink carbonated beverages, and 65% more likely to eat fast food type meals. Cancer Research UK believes that reducing junk food advertising could cut the obesity problem in half.
It’s not the first study to suggest such a link. A Harvard study from 25 years ago connected TV viewing with obesity in children. It also pointed to a connection with obesity into middle age as well.
The obvious link is that watching television in any form tends to be a sedentary activity. Less activity is also linked to being overweight. But it’s an interesting thought about what messages our children are exposed to through the media.
Children’s brains are still developing and don’t have the cognitive sophistication to understand that commercials are different from the rest of the programming they watch.
In England the regulations on advertising are much stricter than they are in the United States. The recommendation there is to place severe limitations on that advertising. The World Health Organization has advocated for that idea for years now.
Raising a child is hard enough today, so I hate to add to the list of parental concerns. It is important to be aware of all the possible influences that surround our kids.
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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