“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 25, 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!
I have confessed here before that when it comes to Christmas media, I am a Scrooge. I don’t do Christmas stuff before Thanksgiving. When I was the music director at the radio station, Christmas music was largely banned until December 1st. Even at home, the Christmas stuff doesn’t go up for another couple weeks.
I know, some of you think I’m a terrible person. I can live with that.
Like it or not, I am confronted with a growing volume of Christmas media. Stores have been playing the music (in case you’re wondering, I stick my fingers in my ears and go lalalalalalala), and there are more and more holiday commercials showing up on the television. I will admit that there are commercials that I consider part of my Christmas tradition. The chocolate kiss bell choir, the palm tree with christmas lights are things that I look forward to each year. Yeah, I know. Now I’m both a terrible person and weird. Again, I can live with that.
It is possible that we saw holiday related advertising even earlier than ever this year. The folks at Zypmedia, an advertising platform aimed at local businesses, have noted that the best time for online advertising response, known as “click through” begins the first two weeks of November, based on data from 2017. The rate may be as much as 125 percent higher than any other time of the year. This ties in with consumer preparations for the shopping season. According to the National Retail Foundation, 70% of shoppers start planning up to two and a half months in advance. So getting your advertising in front of them while they are still planning would seem to be an excellent plan.
Based on last year’s advertising, you should expect to see lots of car dealers and lawn and garden advertising. Those were the leaders at the end of last year’s advertising season. The first category doesn’t surprise me. In fact, thinking about what I’m seeing so far, it looks to be right on the nose. I’ll admit the second did. Unless furniture and décor are included in that category, then it’s also right on the money.
This is a vital time of year for many businesses, large and small. Expectations are that consumer spending will rise from $717 billion to $720 billion from last year to this one. So getting the advertising programs right is an important part of the any business model.
It doesn’t mean I have to like it, one little bit.
Not Like A Boss
The internet has become a vital and everyday part of life for the majority of us. It is a source of information (and misinformation), entertainment, friendship, annoyance, outrage and mind dulling junk. In its early days, we called it the world wide web, a phrase that sounds antiquated and quaint almost twenty years into the 21st century. But I still will hear people refer to it as the web on occasion. I will sometimes use the comic term “interwebs” as a nod to that older language.
There is one place where the word web still comes up. That’s in the discussion of either the “deep web” or the “dark web”. If you’ve heard the term, you understand the basic concept, even if you don’t exactly understand it. It’s the “bad neighborhood” of the internet, and a place that most of us steer away from. Before I jump to the story that brought this to mind, I thought we ought to explore the meaning of the terms first.
I always assumed that “deep web” and “dark web” meant the same thing. While similar, they are slightly different. On the light side of the interwebs, everything is indexed, which means that they have been tagged by the major search engines so people can find them. For those of us old enough to remember, they have entries in the internet’s card catalog. But not everything is indexed. That’s not an accident. Some people, for a wide range of reasons, don’t want their sites and information logged into that database. This can include legal documents, medical records, financial records, some subscription based information and more. So all items left un-indexed are what make up the “deep web”. Some estimates put as much as 96% of all information on the Web in the Deep Web. The “dark web” is the part of the Deep Web made up of information and web sites involved in socially unacceptable activity. Everything from illegal substances, to disturbing images to hired assassins. It is the baddest of all the bad digital neighborhoods.
And thus, stories like this shouldn’t come as a surprise. One of the most popular Dark Web hosting services, Daniel’s Hosting, was attacked by hackers earlier this month. Over 6,000 sites were erased. Since this is the Dark Web, there is no backup, because folks from that digital neighborhood don’t want any kind of record kept. As of the moment I write this, no one has any idea who might have done it. Could be black hat hackers, or it could have been law enforcement.
Turns out this neighborhood isn’t safe for anyone.
TV is Killing You!
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
Stories Are My Life 
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