“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 December 9, 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.
A Tough Week
I spend very little time talking about the financial side of the media. The numbers are ridiculously large and the financial stuff is beyond my expertise and experience. But what happened last week on Wall Street deserves a look.
Last week was a tough week all round for the stock market. There were several days when the market lost huge values. Among the groups hit hardest were the media companies. What is also interesting is that it was almost universal in the category to post negative numbers. The average drop was four percent. Some companies did much worse.
There were only a few companies that showed any significant growth last week. Tribune Media and Nexstar Media Group both had positive weeks. Tribune stock rose by over eleven percent while Nexstar rose just over three percent. The numbers are related because Nexstar made a deal to buy Tribune Media and the investors seem to like the idea.
As for the rest? Not so good. Commentators are putting 21st Century Fox’s decline of only four-tenths of a percent as one of the “better performing” stocks of the week. Meanwhile, Apple dropped almost six percent, Amazon three point six, Walt Disney down three, Google at five point seven, Comcast down four point one, and Facebook two point three, to give you a taste of the devastation. Given what’s still going on with Facebook, I’m amazed they did that well. I’ll take our final look at the Facebook dumpster fire next week.
So what’s going on? It’s a bunch of things. Fears about the economy seem to lead the way. The on-again/off-again trade talks with China and the related tariffs have put a scare into the investing community. Advertising revenues suffer in hard economic times, and some of those numbers are looking a little fragile already. The economic struggles also affect interest rates. When you are looking at borrowing billions of dollars as part of your business plan that makes people nervous too. Don’t count out numbers that show a continuing decline in television ratings, or the ongoing struggles in social media circles as factors. For the investor, it must seem like no matter what direction they look in the media landscape, there are obstacles.
But let’s try and end on a happy note. There were two other media companies that put it into the positive numbers. One traditional escape for the American public in troubled times has been the movies. Both AMC and Cinemark showed some positive growth last week.
Baby, It’s Old
In what may be a foolhardy move, I’m going to take a dip in the controversy surrounding the song “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”. If you’ve missed this seasonal tempest in a teapot, the details are as follows. Radio stations in the United States and Canada dropped the 1940s hit tune from their holiday rotations when some listeners commented that the song was kind of creepy. The lyrics involve a conversation between a woman who says she needs to leave and a man who is trying to convince her to stay. It has been a holiday time standard for quite a while.
Here are my thoughts on the song.
First, it’s not a Christmas song. It has nothing to do with anything related to the holidays or the season. So if a station decides to drop it from their holiday rotation, I see no issue there.
Second, it’s not censorship, the inevitable cry at times like this. Every radio station in American has a list that contains millions of songs, literally millions of songs, that they do not play. Most of them are because they don’t fit the format. But there are songs that fit the format, were hits and have an audience that would love to hear them, that they don’t play. It’s a normal part of the music policy at EVERY STATION IN AMERICA. So let’s stop pretending that some great philosophical offense is taking place here.
Finally, the creepiness factor. The fact is that in its original social context, the song is a sly commentary on the morals of the day. At that time, there were no socially acceptable reasons for a woman to stay long into the night with a man who was not family or their spouse. It’s clear that there is a social negotiation going on here as the two try to find a way around the societal norms of the time.
And that’s the real point in 2018. We no longer live in those times under those norms. In a time when we are trying to make clear that “No means no”, this song is an anachronism. We are trying to create a world where this kinds of coy game playing is not only unnecessary but unwanted. The modern conversation in the song should be that it’s cold outside, do you want to stay? Her response is either yes or no, and he accepts the decision.
I find it hard to believe that anyone wants to return to the days represented by the song. So we hardly need to memorialize it with a song that has no other redeeming values as part of a modern radio station playlist. If you like the song, listen to it. If it bothers you, then don’t. But let’s not pretend that this is any kind of big deal.
Self Promotion
Five or six years ago I talked about the lost art of the apology. The modern inclination is to try for the non-apology-apology. Given the dismal track record of this, I am not sure why anyone still does it. Admit your mistake and apologize. It can’t be any worse than what will follow you when you try some other approach.
Year after year, we see public figures trying to find some other way out. And it never works. Two football players and a comedian have all hit the headlines for tweets they made years ago. Some folks argue that it’s not fair to bring up things from the distant past, but I don’t agree. What we did back in the day is part of our history, and it needs to be faced. How we face it makes all the difference.
There is a difference as well between the cases of the football players, the Baltimore Ravens Pat Ricard and the latest Heisman Trophy winner, Oklahoma quarterback Kyler Murray, and comedian Kevin Hart. The two football players have responded to comments they made as teenagers. That doesn’t excuse the tweets, but allowances need to be made for being young and stupid. We were all there once upon a time.
Hart is in a different position. These were comments he made as an adult. To his credit, he has rejected them before. His problem here was that he didn’t want to deal with it again. His response was seen as surly and drew his previous rejection into question. And it cost him the chance to host the next Oscar broadcast. I can sympathize with his frustration when these tweets resurface. But rather than say “I’ve talked about this before”, he should have apologized again.
I still don’t understand why agents and other advisers don’t get out in front of these issues. Hire someone to go back through all the social media of your clients, identify the problematic issues and take care of them NOW. In fact, there could be a whole industry waiting to take off on this subject. Don’t try to hide the issues; that never works and makes you look worse when you get caught. Find it, fix it and own it. Problem resolved.
I still believe the best way to face an event you regret or a statement you no longer support is to come right out, take ownership of what you did and apologize without qualifiers. Stop the media fire by depriving it of oxygen.
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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