“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 August 19, 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 Coming Battle
There is a huge battle coming in the media world. If it continues on the track it is today, we will start hearing about it in October. That’s when the two sides are expected in court to try and work out some of the details.
I can’t tell you the outcome, but I’m pretty sure I can tell you the cause.
Ego.
One man’s desire to control an empire even when he is no longer able to do anything or even much care about what happens to the company that he created.
The name of the man in question is Sumner Redstone. If you’re into the media that name may ring a bell. Redstone is the media giant who is the majority owner of a company called National Amusements. They began life as a theater corporation but are currently the majority stockholders in both CBS and Viacom, which is the parent company of a whole bunch of media companies including Paramount Pictures. The boss man was worth about five billion dollars as of 2015, according to Forbes.
Here’s where it starts getting sticky, or interesting, depending on your point of view. Redstone is old, 95 in fact, and his health appears to be in decline. I say appears because he has made few public appearances over the last couple years. That’s a problem because he also hasn’t bothered to make clear who will take over his seat at the top of the corporation when he becomes incapacitated or dies. His daughter, Shari Redstone, is seen by some as the designated heir apparent. But the elder Redstone has made moves that indicate that’s not his wish.
What he has made clear is not actually clearing anything up. He’s been married twice. Part of the first divorce decree was the requirement that all his stock holdings are in irrevocable trusts for his grandchildren. The trusts control the stock, and as long as he is alive, Redstone controls the trusts. In the first phase of the court wranglings, it also turns out that the trust can not sell off CBS or Viacom unless National Amusement maintains at least 30% ownership of the resulting company. That’s a major problem, especially since both entities are considered takeover candidates in the current media environment. It’s going to be a major mess.
In addition to the family intrigue, there will be mentions of Redstone’s younger girlfriends, the battle between Shari Redstone and now embattled CBS top dog Les Moonves, and so much more.
It will be time to sit back and grab your popcorn. All because of one man’s ego.
On Influence
One of the biggest trends in marketing over the last couple of years has been something called “influencer marketing”. That’s a really cool, 21st Century, new media kind of name but it’s really a very old concept. It’s a celebrity endorsement. In this case, celebrities from the social media world, most especially Instagram celebs. Nothing new here, the assumption goes – this person has lots of followers, so if they endorse our product or service, their followers will give us their money.
I’ve never understood why that works, but it has for generations. I tend to file it under the category of “there’s a sucker born every minute”.
Think about it. The vast majority of celebrities are not, in fact, experts. Most of them are just people with an interest in the subject and who are fun to watch on the computer screen. Yet year after year we continue to think that they have the inside scoop on what is the best product for us to buy.
There’s a potential, serious downside to letting folks like that influence our decisions.
Blogger and Instagram star Johnna Holmgren is renowned for her posts on living outside of the urban landscape with her husband and daughters. Moving back to nature, that kind of thing. The problem arose over a new cookbook she had published, titled “Tales From a Forager’s Kitchen”. Inside the book was recipes calling for the consumption of raw Morel mushrooms, elderberries, and unleached acorns. Holmgren notes on her website that she is not, quoting now, “…a health professional, medical doctor, nor a nutritionist”. The note goes on to say that readers are on their own when it comes to safety.
Well, the actual experts were less than thrilled, noting that safety was, in fact, a problem with some of the food recommendations. The publisher, Rodale Press, has withdrawn the book from circulation.
For as long as I can remember, folks have been shaking their heads about a lack of common sense. Usually in the context that “once upon a time”, that commodity was in greater supply than it is today. I’m not so sure that is true. Given decade after decade of people being influenced by the latest fad, fashion or celebrity, it may be that common sense isn’t as common as we would like to believe.
Or maybe it’s just a matter that we all need to take a step back, take a second look and a longer thought about who and what we are going to allow to “influence” us.
The Greatest of All Time
I’m going to say this now and then repeat myself at the end of the program. What follows is not intended to diminish or malign the talent and brilliance of Aretha Franklin. Her death is what got me started thinking about this.
Why are we so hung up on naming the GOAT, the Greatest of All Time? I don’t remember this kind of conversation coming up when I was a kid. There were plenty of arguments about whether there was a better right fielder in baseball than Roberto Clemente, but I remember it as a here-and-now argument. Now, in sports and entertainment, politics and you-name-it, there seems to be this mania for naming someone “the greatest”.
Following Franklin’s death, there were almost immediate proclamations that she was the “greatest singer of the 20th Century”. Any discussion of the greatest singers of those hundred years would have to include her. The popularity, the innovation, the impact on society as a whole puts her head, shoulders, knees, and elbows above the vast majority of her peers. But somehow that wasn’t enough.
Which got me thinking, how would you even make that kind of judgment? At some point, you will have to come up with some set of criteria, hopefully, open to logical analysis, that will make the decision. For something like music, I’m not sure how you create that list without it being colored by our own personal biases. A writer for one major national magazine maintained that while Franklin was good, she wasn’t as good as Kelly Clarkson. I’m not a devotee of either singer, but that’s so profoundly idiotic as to beggar description.
But how would you compare the “Queen of Soul” with the greatest singer from the start of the century, Enrico Caruso? With the help of the latest technology of the day, Caruso was a household name all around the world. It’s way too easy to fall victim to the “latest and greatest” syndrome or to the “all nostalgia” rule, and declare that everything was better in the old days.
So let’s just say that we will pay tribute to the greatness of the artist, whoever they are. That we will remember and rejoice in whatever skill and talent an artist shared with us. That, especially at the end, life is not all about competition.
Aretha Franklin was a brilliant singer and performer and talent. That should be enough. Shouldn’t it?
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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