“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 the week of May 20, 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.
The Abby Effect
Being good at anything for a long time is hard. Doesn’t really matter what you’re talking about. Being good for fifteen years is pretty amazing in any line of work. So the run of success at CBS’s hit series “NCIS” is worthy of as much applause as possible. A long time favorite in the Phlipside household, the show appears to have recently hit a very disturbing bump.
One of the favorite characters on the show is forensic scientist Abby Sciuto. Abby, played by actress Pauley Perrette, is a woman of unique personal style, a big heart and very high intelligence. Only star and now executive producer Mark Harmon’s lead character of Leroy Jethro Gibbs can shine with Abby. At the end of the most recent season, Abby’s character left the show. When a show runs for 15 years, cast turnover is a normal part of the television industry. But some of the questions around this departure are a little disturbing.
Perrette has been rather vague about the issue that made her decide to move on. It has become clear that she’s not mad at the network or her crew. Early concerns that it might have been sexual harassment also appear to be unfounded. While nothing official has surfaced, the best information seems to be that Harmon insists on bringing his dog onto the sound stage, despite the fact that the dog has bitten at least one member of the crew. Perrette appears to have stood up to him, and things went sour between the two members of the cast.
On set, squabbles are rarely mentioned here, but there are some other factors that make this dispute a little more noteworthy.
Turns out Abby Sciuto had an impact beyond the screen. The character’s impact on young women and girls as an inspiration to go into STEM fields has been large enough that it has it’s own name, the “Abby Effect”. It allows “NCIS” to rise above being just another police procedural. Not many shows can make that claim.
You have to wonder at the logic of choosing a dog over a fan favorite in a professional arena. I get that you love the dog. But reports say the dog has multiple attacks on its record. How much money is the dog earning you on the show? The loss of Perrette is a huge one for the fandom of the show. A lot of girls lost a role model as well.
If it’s really all just about a dog, that just doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Change Continues
The most prestigious film festival in the world just ended. And in all likelihood that’s news to you, unless you are a hard core movie fan or work in the industry. The Festival de Cannes, what most of us just call the Cannes Film Festival, wrapped up over the weekend. In an industry that loves the glitz and the glamour, there may be no glitzier or more glamorous week and a half in the year. Cannes makes the Oscars look like a trade convention.
And really, that’s kind of the point.
Cannes was started after World War Two as an international cinematographic festival. That’s not my term, that’s thiers. In this case, “they” being the folks at the French Ministry of National Education. Working with the British and the Americans, the idea was to create a festival to celebrate the very best in movies. Not just anyone can get their movie into the schedule at Cannes, it is invitation only. And that exclusivity, with a goodly dose of good old fashioned French snootiness, has long been a selling point for the festival.
Before anyone accuse me of ant-French leanings, let me note that Phillippi is a French name. My family came to this country from eastern France.
But let’s face it, Hollywood may be the nine hundred pound gorilla in the film making world, but it’s always had a reputation for being commercial and shallow. More emphasis on sizzle than on steak. So a snooty French film festival is exactly the kind of thing they (and most Americans) always yearn for.
The festival has grown with the years, adding more awards and breaking some ground. An official jury makes decisions about the movies selected. Cannes added a woman to that jury for the first time in 1957. The first female president of the jury was Olivia de Havilland in 1965. It was also the first international marketplace for great movies, with the Marche du Film (literally the Film Market) debuting in 1959.
The movie world continues to change. Netflix made a stink this year about French streaming laws and held out several films including Orson Welles’ final film “The Other Side of the Wind”. The highest prize, the Palme d’Or, went to Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-edo for his film “Shoplifters”.
As with any old line media institution, there are questions about the future of the Cannes Festival. In the end, I would never bet against the ability of my ancestral nation to carry the flag for great movies into the 21st Century.
A Question of Transparency
So did you get up early for the Royal wedding on Saturday? I will admit that I did not. Saturday is my only morning to sleep in these days, so not even the promise of a sermon by the Presiding Bishop of my own denomination (more on him in a minute) was enough to pull this media boy from his pillow.
The whole thing is really rather amazing. They are talking about something like one point nine billion people watched this wedding around the world. That’s pretty amazing. The worldwide numbers are significantly better than any other royal wedding in history. A large part of that has to do with people who watched it all via streaming media on the internet. (I’m going to circle back on that later too).
So how has the media coverage of royal weddings changed in just a couple generations? Let’s jump a generation back. The wedding of Prince Charles, the heir to the British throne and Diana, the People’s Princess in 1981. That was a much bigger event in many ways and drew, in that pre-internet age, an astonishing seven hundred, fifty million viewers. The total audience with radio listeners was probably about a billion people, all around the globe.
The generation before that is the marriage of Queen Elizabeth II and Philip of Greece, who would take the name Mountbatten just before the wedding in 1947. That’s pre-television, so about two hundred million people listened in via radio. The rest of the world would have to settle for newsreels at the movie theater and newspaper reports.
Jump back one more generation and things change dramatically. It’s 1923 and the man who would eventually succeed his brother to become King George VI, Prince Albert, Duke of York marries Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon. The fledgling British Broadcasting Corporation requested the opportunity to record and broadcast this momentous occasion to all of the subjects of the realm. And was turned down flat. Not so much by the royal family, but by the folks in charge at Westminster Abbey. This new fangled technology had no place in the august settings of a royal wedding.
I wonder what those gentlemen would have thought of the multi-camera, hours long broadcast extravaganza the world was offered by all the major networks in the UK, the United States and many other nations around the world?
Oh, and I did get the chance to hear Bishop Curry’s sermon finally. I streamed the video, on my phone.
It really is an amazing world we live in. Best wishes to the young couple.
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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