“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 November 18, 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.
Cassettes Return!
When I got started in radio, I had already begun what turned out to be a multiple decades-long relationship with audio tape. Magnetized ribbons of plastic tape covered in some kind of metallic powder had been the go-to recording material for decades. In the 1970s, I was one of the millions of teens making mix tapes from radio or vinyl source materials. The audio cassette was at the center of that universe. Then recordable CDs came along and after that simple digital recording, and audio cassettes were ancient technology. My bet is that most people had the cassettes long after they no longer had the machinery to play them on.
Then an amazing thing happened. Old technology started making a comeback. We’ve talked before about the resurgence of vinyl. With the shift to digital, even CD sales had fallen off, but vinyl showed growth. But the folks at Buzzangle, a research company focused on the music industry, released a report last year that says cassette sales have outstripped even vinyl’s return. Cassette sales were up 136%.
The “compact cassette” (the original named) debuted in 1962 and by the late ‘70s was one of the top two formats for prerecorded music. It was also a star for home recorded audio of all kind, and every radio announcer of my generation had stacks of them, usually filled with airchecks.
So what is bringing cassette tapes back? It started with a promotion for the 20th anniversary of Pearl Jam’s “Ten” album. They wanted to include cassette versions with a CD, vinyl album and scrapbook as a special package. Every one of the limited edition packages sold in presale. A few other acts followed suit, then labels realized it was a cheap way to get new artists some exposure. Suddenly, National Audio Company, the last U.S. company still making audio tape was fielding plenty of calls. Enough that they went back to the drawing board to create a better sounding version of the base tape. For the audiophiles out there, that would be Type I tape that the company claims now performs slightly better than the old Type II.
Folks who worry about these things have long argued about whether analog recordings like vinyl and tape offer superior harmonics and frequency response to digital. Without argument, there is a nostalgia aspect to analog that can not be denied.
And for once, here’s a technology blip that the old folks know better than the youngsters do.
Not Like A Boss
One of the things I have told the young people that I’ve worked with over the last several decades is that they should enjoy the time they have BEFORE they become adults. Teenagers have always been in a hurry to “grow up” because they are certain that all the fun begins once you hit adulthood.
Oh, if only that were true.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m fine with being an adult and having grown up privileges. It’s that I also know that being an adult comes with a lot of tiresome, un-fun aspects as well.
I thought of that as I saw that yet another video gaming company was closing its doors. The folks at PC Gamer have been keeping track and say that the last year has seen ten major game studios close. The one most recently in the news is Telltale Games. The award-winning company had several big-name hits, most especially “The Walking Dead”. But it announced in September that it was closing and laid off all but a relative handful of employees. The folks who worked there had no idea it was coming and left with no severance or other benefits.
What brought the lesson about growing up to mind is that so many companies start off with such bright visions, only to stumble but the going gets hard. Being the founder of the “next big thing” can make your star as big, or bigger than the company itself. That sudden influx of big bucks that comes with success in the digital age makes it all seem so easy. But being a grown-up isn’t easy.
The stories coming out of Telltale are echoed in many other gaming studios. Mismanagement, abusive work environments, demands to work longer and longer hours at the same pay with no benefit to the worker at the end. The other image it brings to mind is the worst of the scenarios in the world that Charles Dickens wrote about over a century ago. Like the beginnings of the Industrial Age, the early decades of the Digital Age have been marked with far too much executive egotism and exploitation of the folks who do the actual work of the company.
Being a grown-up means that we have delay personal gratification in the best interests of the larger group. Otherwise, things have a tendency to crash and burn.
Part of the solution to what ails the gaming industry may turn out to be that it still needs to do a little growing up.
Christmas Tech
Black Friday is this week and the holiday shopping season is off and running. In addition to all the media topics, we cover here, once in a while I step over into the tech side as well. And what better time to take a peek at the great toys out there that lets our tech and media come together.
Now holiday shopping should be about dreams. There’s a whole other conversation about the consumption economy and being overcome by “stuff”, but once a year it’s fun to spend a little time dreaming about things that are above and beyond our day to day life.
So I didn’t want to do simple, everyday tech kinds of things. I went looking for some out there ideas. How about high tech yoga pants and mat? These are products from two different companies. The Nadi X Responsive Yoga Pants from Wearable X have built-in “vibrational technology” designed to help you go through your routine. I have no idea what that means. But you could team it up with Backslash Fit’s Smart Mat that can connect to your Amazon Alexa. It can even roll itself up apparently.
I was tempted to pass this one over as too “every day”, but what can you say about a $400 hair dryer? Dyson offers one with a microprocessor to check air temps 20 times a second to avoid heat damage to your hair.
A gift that does nothing for me, since I drink neither coffee nor tea, but how about the coffee and tea alarm clock from Barisieur. It’s just what it sounds like, a high tech brewing machine designed to wake you up with your first cup close at hand. If that’s too functional for your tastes, the wonderful folks at Hammacher Schlemmer have an espresso machine that includes a Swiss made music box that plays 11 different 36-second music pieces (the time needed to brew an espresso). The music ranges from Vivaldi to “Smoke On The Water”.
My personal favorite is the Meural Canvas, which is a smart frame that can display your personal art and photography or images licensed from museums and other places of all kinds of images. Want your own Van Gogh for the living room? This can make that happen.
Oh, those holiday dreams. Here’s hoping you don’t wake up to find socks and underwear waiting under your tree.
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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