“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 July 8, 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.
Skynet Commercials
Long time listeners to this program are aware of my almost unhealthy affection for radio and television advertising. From my fascination with Super Bowl ads to my periodic rants about campaigns that work well or fail utterly, the great American art form has been a focus for me.
So I was interested in a program that is being ramped up in England. Channel 4 in the U.K. is a publicly owned, commercial national television network. It gets its name from being the fourth national network over there, following BBC One and Two, and the independent commercial network, ITV. Channel 4 is looking for partners to try a new program that uses AI to match advertisers with programs on the network.
That may not sound like anything particularly exciting or innovative. It’s a pretty simple idea that if you are selling cars, you might want to advertise on networks that have a lot of shows about cars. But that’s not what this program is aiming to do. This is next step stuff.
What the AI program is designed to do is is, in a techno kind of way, watch the show along with the viewer. What it is looking for are scenes inside each show that can lend themselves to sponsor advertising. So if the character is in a bar and orders some adult beverage, the AI will identify that as a “Contextual Moment”, that is the technical term, and move advertising for that kind of beverage into the next commercial break. Some of the early categories for the “contextual moments” will be food, mobile phones and hot drinks.
Channel 4 is pitching the concept to advertisers based on research they have done that says this kind of advertising-to-program-content-adjacency works to the advertisers advantage. Viewers are twice as likely to remember the product when it has been placed in context, rather than just airing more randomly. The research also indicates that positive brand perception goes up by twelve percent, and purchase intent goes up by thirteen percent.
The AI also has routines to avoid negative contexts for the advertising, and the final approval is done with human supervision.
And I am caught between the wonder and potential horror of it all. Given the current level of incompetence from computer programs showing me advertising on the internet, this doesn’t feel very Skynet just yet. But I find myself wondering how long before the computer stops just watching the show, and starts watching me as well. That is just a little too close to Orwell’s “1984” for my tastes.
Zombie Augmentation
For most of us, augmented reality (AR) entered our consciousness with “Pokemon Go” craze of a couple summers ago. “Augmented reality” are games or apps that use smartphones or other devices to combine the “real world” with video games elements. It differs from “virtual reality” or VR, which creates a world separate from reality. It’s a field that continues to grow at a dramatic rate.
There are a lot of folks looking to continue that growth. Amusement parks have already experimented with VR on some of their rides, and bought into the “Pokemon Go” craze as well. The industry is looking at expanding the possibilities. Facebook added some AR features to its apps like Instagram and Messenger earlier this year. And at the University of Washington, they are working on an algorithm that would allow us to watch the next World Cup in a three dimensional augmented reality environment. Like on your desk at work, if you were so inclined.
All of which sounds like fascinating new technologies and options for our future lives. But then I hit the one that makes me stop and go, Uhhhhhhh…
Later this week the folks from the AMC network and Next Games will launch an AR game of…”The Walking Dead”. Like Pokemon Go, the game will be location based, meaning that you will play the game wherever you are. At home, at work, at school, at the grocery store or walking down the street.
Now I want you to think about the show itself. Set in a post-apocalyptic world, humanity is fighting to survive the horde of homicidal zombies that are to be found everywhere. It’s tense, it’s violent and it’s filled with surprises.
Now imagine someone playing this game as they make their way through everyday life. This won’t be the sometimes annoying, but usually civil process of locating the rare wankosaurus pokemon and capturing it. This will be suddenly confronting a shambling, drooling, murderous undead thing and trying to shoot it before it bites you.
I’m sure nothing could possibly go wrong with that setup. Other than possibilities of people shouting in surprise, fear or anger; leaping up or sideways or any of the other full body motions that seem to occasionally be involved in video gaming. Which should be great fun at the supermarket or the local coffee shop.
Sure, you could do a very calm, restrained version of the game. But, as we say here at the International Broadcast Center, where’s the fun in that?
Sounds like everyone’s reality is about to get augmented.
Just Stop!
I have to admit there are weeks when reading through the news about the media is just depressing. So many of the old line media that continue to decline. In many of those cases, they have been victims of their own stubbornness, a lack of vision, or just simple arrogance. Reading about the carelessness of some of the modern media, messing with the lives of their users by not being attentive to issues concerning information security. And the blithe ignorance of too many in the general public who seem perfectly content to pretend that the digital world is an amusement park rather than a place with serious potential threats.
It could make a commentator cynical and grumpy before his time.
But of all the statistics I’ve come across over the last decade, none has made me crazier than this one.
Let me set it up for you. Confidence in the objectivity of the news media is at an all time low. A survey of Americans done by the Knight Foundation found that 39% of the news on the radio, TV or in the newspaper is misinformation. We believe that almost two-thirds of the news found on social media is the same. The same survey said that we believe that 62% of the news in the old line media is biased and that 44% of all news reporting is inaccurate.
Like I said, reading this stuff will depress the heck out of you. But with all of that as a background, we come to the statistic that literally, yes, LITERALLY, made me shout in anger. Ready for it?
Even when using an app which correctly identifies that a story comes from an unreliable news source, 34% of Americans would share it anyway.
Let me say that again. More than a third of us will share a news story knowing that it comes from an unreliable news source.
I am dumbfounded. And infuriated.
Please, please, PLEASE, don’t do this. You may think that you are just pointing out that the story is inaccurate, but here’s the problem. Too many folks out there aren’t reading anything other than the headline. Just look at the comments section of far too many posts and stories. The commenter has no idea what was actually said. Inaccurate stories and dubious news sources need to be treated like the vermin that they are. We need to work together to exterminate them. That will leave plenty of room for diverse views and news sources.
Focus on the real news, and let the real journalists flourish again.
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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