“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 27, 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.
Audiobooks On The Rise
Over the years, my attitude towards audiobooks has changed quite a bit. Of course, virtually all books were audiobooks when we were small children. Parents, teachers, older siblings or whoever read our books to us. Since the time I could read myself, I’ve pretty much been against being read to. Then, about fifteen years ago, my job called for regular, long drives from one end of New York state to the other. While the scenery is beautiful in central New York, there’s not a lot of interesting radio to listen to while driving for hours. So I gave audiobooks a try. And discovered that a well-read book is a joy in those circumstances.
Turns out I’m not the only one to make that discovery. A recent Pew Research Center study shows that while print and e-book usage is about the same as in 2016, audiobooks have shown a small but statistically significant increase. Over the last two years, audiobook usage has increased four percent. That means just about one out of every five American readers are using audiobooks. The folks at the Audiobook Publishers Association puts the number even higher. They say just over one out of every four members of the U.S. population has listened to an audiobook in the last twelve months. That may sound like small potatoes but it still means big numbers when it comes to sales. Total sales rose from 2.1 billion dollars in 2016 to 2.5 billion in 2017.
Lots of folks have taken notice. Spotify is making the biggest move into audiobook sales. With 157 million users and over 70 million paid subscribers, they have the critical mass to make a difference. Spotify has recently signed deals with Bloomsbury (yes, the folks who brought us “Harry Potter”) and with the folks at Scribd, who is a big wheel in various forms of digital books.
All of which is fascinating to me as I move into the audiobook narration business. With a theater and radio background, it seemed an obvious move. What has interested me so far is that it’s actually a lot harder than even I imagined. Reading out loud is different than reading a book silently. Making sure you get the emphasis right to tell the story is a big part too. Plus there are technical specifications that can be very rigid. Which means you spend hours and hours doing the primary recording, done all the necessary editing and submitted your work, only to hear: “Um, we need you to fix chapters 3, 7, 9,12,17, 19 and 24 before the book can be produced”.
But if it keeps people books, I’m all in favor.
On Wasting Time
How do you waste time on your computer? Come on, let’s be honest here. Every minute of every hour online is not spent in productive activity. There are, in fact, studies that claim even trying to be productive all the time is, well, unproductive. As a general rule, we are better focused and produce higher quality work if we take occasional breaks from the work to let our minds do other things.
Now maybe you’re one of those people who do useful, intelligent things that make you a better person in your spare time. You read the news, or study a subject to improve your place in the world, or are just generally do serious, grown-up stuff.
I’m not talking to you.
I’m talking to all the rest of us. I fervently believe that the vast majority of the rest of us, who have some silly thing we do to waste time when there is time to be wasted. Not that I’m suggesting you should ever waste time during productive business hours. Nope, not me. I leave that to everyone’s individual conscience.
The granddaddy of computer time wasters just had a birthday. The Solitaire game has been included in the Windows program since May 22, 1990, back in the days of Windows 3.0. Its original intent was not to waste time but to help us learn how to use the new graphical user interface, like mousing skills and drag and drop.
For most of us, it was a familiar game. I learned solitaire from my mom, who learned it from hers. We filled a lot of boring hours with the snap of playing cards through three generations. It wasn’t until I started playing on the computer that I discovered there were more games than just the classic Klondike version or pyramid solitaire.
Today I still play it on a regular basis. But other time wasters include things like Angry Birds, sites dedicated to misdirected or auto-corrected text messages, there are a couple webcomics I follow, various blogs I read, oh and Facebook.
As mentioned before, time wasting is an activity that needs to be used strategically and with restraint. Not all bosses understand the value of resting the brain with mindless fun every so often during the workday. Then mayor of New York City Micheal Bloomberg once fired a city employee when he saw Solitaire on the employee’s computer monitor.
Talk about a no fun boss.
The Threat To Journalism
The relationship between the press and the people and institutions they cover has always been a tense one. That is absolutely the way it ought to be. The role of journalism in a free society is to shine a light into the dark corners and to ask those in positions of power uncomfortable questions. Unsurprisingly some of those folks don’t like it and try to push back. Historically, this is a bad idea. When the Miami Marlins of Major League Baseball pulled the credentials of radio host Andy Slater after he investigated a story that the Marlins claim to be owned by a foreign corporation to avoid paying some U.S. taxes, it didn’t make the story go away. It just made them look bad.
Politicians have always had a fractious relationship with the press. None more so than the current President. But when a sitting President begins talking about intentionally attacking the press to discredit them, and basing coverage credentials on whether the White House approves of the coverage, we are moving into different and dangerous grounds. Dangerous enough that even right-wing reporter/commentator Matt Drudge, a Trump supporter, has expressed a fear that we are moving towards licensing reporters. Under such a system, if the license were revoked, the licensing authority would have editorial control of the news. Drudge, along with reporters from all across the political spectrum, see that as a very dangerous concept. You can count me in that group as well.
Beyond the structural and financial challenges, this is a very difficult time for journalism. Challenges to a free press have been on the rise worldwide, and the United States is not excepted. A Gallup-Knight Foundation survey found that fewer college students believe that their rights under the First Amendment (which includes Freedom of the Press) are more secure than a year ago. Meanwhile, the World Press Freedom Index, an annual survey done by Reporters Without Borders, showed the United States continuing a decline that began under President Obama. We are currently ranked 45th in the world. They went so far as to say “Hatred of Journalism Threatens Democracies”.
A free press is a vital part of a free society. Our Founding Fathers believed it. It is one of the first five freedoms they gave to us in the Constitution. Anyone or anything that attacks this foundational part of our society is a threat to everything this nation has ever stood for. It is a gift that we must pass along to our children.
Otherwise, we may only have chaos, destruction, and dictatorship to leave them.
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
Stories Are My Life 
Leave a comment