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~1~ MIN \COMMUNICA TIONSA New WorldHow the New Technologies Affect Hollywood Money Farming The Disabled Real Estate Trees Fascism

Undoing Democracyby Benjamin Barber

Victor Hugo (1802-1885) on the Future of Man

Direct -to -home broadcasting via satel-lite...DBS...an idea whose time has come.And as a broadcaster, you have the oppor-tunity to become a part of this powerful newfuture.

The proposed DBS system of UnitedStates Satellite Broadcasting Company, Inc.(whose application is currently pending be-fore the FCC) opens the next generation of

broadcasting to you as a member station ona participating basis. It's your opportunityto lock in first -run, top-quality program-ming and the kind of solid national newsservice you've always wanted.

Seize the future. Join us. For more infor-mation, contact Bob Fransen at (612) 642-4467 today. DBS is an idea whose time hascome. And USSB is ready.

3415 University Avenue; St. Paul, Minnesota 55114

A NN

FEBRUARY -MARCH 1982

Page 15

On Air:Wasted ImagesBY TODD GITLIN

The First Amendment's SecondChanceBY DAVID L. BAZELON

Page 34

The Local Station That Could

BY GREG MITCHELLCaught between two ages of television, aScranton/Wilkes-Barre station found theway to survive.

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Page 49

The Guilt Edge

BY CLARK WHELTONHow we were conditioned to link TVwith the decline of Western Civilization.

FEATURES

Page 21

The SecondAmerican Revolution

BY BENJAMIN BARBERThe Wired Republic may provehazardous to democracy. A politicalthinker offers three visions of its future.

Page 41

Public Broadcasting: The HighCost of Going Private

BY STEVEN BEHRENSAND BROOKE GLADSTONECongress wants the system to pay its ownway. But selling ads exacts a price.

Page 52

At Issue: Should AdvertisersBe Allowed to Sell Ideas?

BY CHARLIE DODGEVocal corporations are pressuringrevenue -hungry stations to droprestrictions against advocacy ads.

DEPARTMENTS

VOLUME 1, NUMBER 6

Page 26

A New World

The new communications technologiesare changing our society. Channelsmeasures their impact in areas as diverseas movies and real estate.

Page 45

S*M*A*S*H

BY EARL C. GOTTSCHALK JR.The syndication market is about to makea Korean War sitcom the biggest hit of alltime.

Page 55

Good Morning, Amerika

BY ARNIE WEISSMANNWhen ABC's morning program recentlytried to lay a trap for a guest, all it caughtwas a libel threat.

ISSUES AND IDEAS CRITICISM AND REPORTS

Letters Page 3 Book Review Page 58George W.S. Trow's In the Context of No Contextby James Traub

CrossCurrents Page 7 Quo Video Page 61Essays and Observations " WJIM's Long Road to the Woodshed"

by Alex Kotlowitz

The Public Eye Page 18 TV Guidance Page 64"Guilty of Innocence" by Les Brown "Commercial Expansionism" by Andrew Feinberg

Cartoonist's View-M. Stevens

Cover illustration by Andrea Baruffi

C HAW E S 1 F E B/M A R

CHA NN E I_S

The Great Experiment

Atio

LL THIS TALK of a communicationsrevolution -is it really a revolu-

n or just a figurative use of theword?" a Syracuse University

graduate student asked merecently.

The question is important, and almostto be expected these days from an intelli-gent person made cynical by media hypeand a language bent out of shape by Madi-son Avenue hyperboles - Pepsi Genera-tions, Dodge Rebellions, MoralMajorities. The student was asking if thisis a benign revolution, in the sense that theWhite Tornado is benign, or if it is a revo-lution to be taken seriously, as one thathas violent force and that will gather us inwhether or not we want to be part of it. Hewanted to know whether he was beingsold something or being given honest in-formation; it does get harder and harderto tell the difference.

Well, this is a genuine revolution: It in-volves the overturning of the existing or-der, some bloodshed (this time in a figura-tive sense), and radical change in virtuallyevery quarter of the society. Moreover, itis distinctly an American revolution. TheUnited States has invited it by lifting vir-tually all restrictions on technology andencouraging business to plunge in. Otheradvanced countries are approaching thenew communications delivery systemscircumspectly, recognizing that with eachof them something is lost for everythinggained.

Thus while Britain is bracing for thecultural changes to be brought on by thebrave step of introducing a fourth televi-sion channel, the United States is treatingitself to more than a hundred channels,some in the interactive mode, and won-dering how long before fiber -optics tech-nology provides us with a thousand chan-nels.

The other nations are trying to holdback these forces of change until they canadopt sensible policies for the new elec-tronic media. But the United States, onthe premise that more is unfailingly better,and consistent with our laissez-faire pre-cepts, is pursuing a single policy in this

area-to get out of business's way so thateach new technological development has achance to prove itself in the marketplace.Both the Carter and Reagan Administra-tions have endorsed this principle, in thehope, apparently, that the explosion intelecommunications will revitalize theeconomy and make America the worldleader in a whole new industrial sphere.We have in this way volunteered topioneer the new territory at the risk ofvisiting change on every one of our in-stitutions from sports to religion.

Dedicated to covering the revolution,Channels begins a series, "A NewWorld," detailing how the confluence ofcable, computer, telephone, and satellitetechnologies have already begun to makean impact on the American scene. Whathappens to Hollywood, the capital of thefilm industry? How is money affected?What do these changes in information -delivery systems mean to agriculture?Why are real estate values influenced?What are the advantages for the disabled?Can it be that even America's forests,those glories of the natural environment,have a stake in the new electronic envi-ronment? The editors report on widelydifferent facets of American life, pointingout who benefits and who may suffer.

But nothing counts as much to all of us,and to the rest of the world, as the effect ofthis revolution on the American demo-cratic system. This is where the boldAmerican experiment with new com-munications technology runs its greatestrisk. We must ask, while there is still time,whether we will truly be a better countryfor our pioneering effort, or whether weare gambling with the ideals the countrywas built on. Political scientist BenjaminBarber examines this issue, and outlinesthree scenarios for the nation's future, inour lead story, "The Second AmericanRevolution."

This new television is not a White Tor-nado that comes to clean kitchens but onethat will rip structures from their founda-tions. As America plays host to the newage, the rest of the world is watching tosee what becomes of us. L.B.

EDITOR -IN -CHIEFLes Brown

MANAGING EDITORAudrey Berman

SENIOR EDITORMichael Pollan

ASSOCIATE EDITORMichael Schwarz

DEPARTMENTS EDITORSavannah Waring Walker

CONTRIBUTING EDITORSJeanne Betancourt

Jonathan BlackBen Brown

Brian Winston

CONTRIBUTING WRITERSMary GaitskillJames Traub

Ross Wetzsteon

ART DIRECTIONBee Graphics

CHAIRMANDavid B. Hertz

GENERAL MANAGERBart Rubenstein

ASST. GENERAL MANAGERKim Heron

ADVERTISING DIRECTORScott Haberman

ADVERTISING SALESRalph Papaccioli

PRODUCTION MANAGERCynthia C. Kling

OFFICE MANAGERCate Dolcater

STAFF ASSOCIATESBrad Jaffe

Peter RollinsCIRCULATION CONSULTANTS

The Circulation Dept. Inc.ADVERTISING SALES OFFICES

New York: 1515 Broadway, New York, NY10036,212-398-1300

Midwest: Fox Associates Inc., 200 EastOntario St., Chicago, IL60611,312-649-1650

West Coast: Fox Associates Inc., 4032Wilshire Blvd., Suite 306, LosAngeles, CA 90010,213-487-5630

Media Commentary Council, Inc.: David B.Hertz, Chairman; Les Brown, President;Michael J. Arlen, Eleanor Elliott, Mary Mil-ton, Thomas B. Morgan, Lloyd Morissett,Jack Nessel, Jorge Schement, George Stoney,Lionel Van Deerlin, Albert Warren, HerbertWilkins.Editorial Advisory Board: Erik Barnouw,George Bonham, David Burnham, John MackCarter, James Chace, Jean Firstenberg, FredW. Friendly, David Lachenbruch, MichaelRice, William Sheehan.CHANNELS of Communications (ISSN 0276-1572) is published bimonthly by the Media Commen-tary Council, Inc., a not -for-profit corporation.Volume 1, Number 6, Feb. /Mar. 1982. Copyright1982 by the Media Commentary Council, Inc. Allrights reserved. No part of this magazine may bereproduced in any form without written consent.Subscriptions: $18 a year; Canada and Mexico, $21;all other countries, $25. Please address all sub-scription mail to CHANNELS of Communica-tions, Subscription Service Dept., Box 2001,Mahopac, NY 10541.Postmaster: Send address changes to CHAN-NELS of Communications, Subscription ServiceDept., Box 2001, Mahopac, NY 10541. Editorial andbusiness offices: 1515 Broadway, New York, NY10036; 212-398-1300. Unsolicited manuscripts can-not be considered or returned unless accompaniedby a stamped, self-addressed envelope.

C Fi A F I. 2 FEB/MAR

1 f

Looters of Beirut

To the Editor:A Palestinian fleeing a refugee camp in

Beirut clasping his prized possession, atelevision set. Seemed like a good peg fora lead (or a leader, as the British say), soLes Brown used it in his Editor's Note ofthe December/January issue. But to any-one who knows the Middle East, it wasgrossly naïve.

The Palestinian refugee camp in Beirutalso is a fedayeen training camp. Thosefleeing Palestinians you see in the APphoto, when they're not being bombed bythe Israelis, are out in the streets of Beirutin their camouflage suits and carryingtheir AK -47s. They ransack desertedapartments in the middle-class residentialzones. Sometimes they're not desertedwhen they enter them; they're pretty quietwhen they leave, though.

The results of their forays end up on theflea market on Hamra Street -televisionsets, radios, whatever can be carried fromthe ransacked apartments.

Those "refugees" you see fleeing withthe radio and television set aren't fans ofthe communications world. They're loot-ers saving their most precious loot -thetelevision set will keep that young manalive for another couple of months even ifhe doesn't burglarize another apartmentin the meantime.

I doubt if he ever saw Archie Bunker inhis life.

RICHARD PATRICK WILSON

Mobile, Alabama

Wide World Photo

Flight or Felony?

To The Editor:I guess it's all in how you look at things.

I viewed that AP photo of PalestinianArabs running with a television set and aportable stereo as looting, not savingeither their lives or their own posses-sions - one person was running in thewrong direction and a cab driver wasparked and observing the scene. It lookedlike hundreds of photos in this country ofpeople taking advantage of broken storewindows to help themselves.

LYNNE IANNIELLORockville Centre, New York

I The photograph is certainly open to in-terpretation, but readers should note thatAP photos come over the wires with APcaptions attached. In this case, the cap-tion reads: "Residents of Beirut's SabraPalestinian camp flee down the street be-tween Israeli air raids Friday as RedCrescent, the Islamic equivalent of RedCross, ambulance enters from sidestreet." -Ed.)

Nader on Schmertz

To the Editor:In your August/September issue, Char-

lie Dodge declares that Schmertz's pub-lic -relations strategy has paid off forMobil Oil. His evidence: Many of BigOil's policies have been written into law,critics are on the defensive, ABC may beonly the first network to start allowingcorporate issue advertisements, andstockholders approve of Schmertz's ad-vocacy op-ed pieces and advertising.

Another view is that Schmertz is surfac-ing the hard edge of corporate power andneedlessly antagonizing people in gov-ernment (President Carter called Mobil"the worst"), in labor, and throughout theconsumer and environmental movements.Ask elderly people what they thoughtwhen Mobil Oil wrote that oil pricesshould be higher than they are now.Schmertz may think he is gaining pointsfor Mobil in an ongoing debate. What he isreally doing is destroying the blandanonymity that has so carefully camou-flaged the historic power of Big Oil. In thisrespect, Exxon remains far and awaymore politically astute than Mobil. It rulesquietly, while Mobil wants to rule as aboxer in a sports arena. On Capitol Hill in

the late seventies, Exxon's style of lobby-ing would have had an even easier time ofit if so many members of Congress werenot riled up by Mobil's extreme prop-aganda in the newspapers week afterweek.

Having read his devastatingly deprecat-ing novel on the oil industry, I ambeginning to wonder whether HerbSchmertz could be the smartest Trojanhorse in corporate history. Keep it upHerb; you've even stimulated some con-scientious oil -company insiders to sharetheir information with outsiders. If con-sumer groups did not have Schmertz, theywould have to invent him.

RALPH NADER

Washington, D.C.

Hard Questions

To the Editor:Clearly, you know a good story when

you see one. Michael Mosettig's piece["Ninety Seconds Over the Economy,"Channels, December / January] is firstclass, and the graphics treatment is in-spired. It has a breezy, easy -to -read style,yet it deals in depth with the tough issue ofwhat makes good economic journalism ontelevision. If there is a weakness in it, it isthat it raises hard questions that are neveranswered. The "troubling questions" onthe first page (omitting the first question,which is of a different order from the rest)are at the core of the problem: Televisionnews is so busy telling today's big eco-nomic stories that it may be overlookingtomorrow's important economic ones.

Mosettig's questions-about Rea-ganomics, social security, the relationshipbetween domestic and world economic af-fairs, and the cities - are keenly percep-tive, and he's performing a service simplyby asking them. The answers perhaps arefor later pieces.

As Reagan's new federalism makespainfully clear, the important stories forthe economy and the society in the nextseveral decades will take place not inWashington but in state capitols and cityhalls-even in communities and neigh-borhoods. The significant public -policydebate will center on which urban pro-grams are worth saving and which ought

C H Aw E I. s 3 FEB/MAR

to be shut down; on where cities can findnew sources of funds; on how cities canform new partnerships and coalitions be-tween the public and private sectors.Television's dilemma is that its journalis-tic resources are clustered in Washingtonand New York, while the important sto-ries are taking place in the states, cities,towns, and hamlets across the nation.

With the burgeoning of special -interestgroups and the waning of political partiesand other consensus -building mecha-nisms, local television can be a pace-setting influence as a medium of com-munication and mediation.

SOL HURWITZ

Senior Vice PresidentCommittee for EconomicDevelopmentNew York City

Porn Primer

To the Editor:I thought the December/January issue

was great. The piece by James Traub["Porn on the Fourth of July"] was one ofthe best discussions of the issues of por-nography on cable I have ever read. If Iwere still teaching, I would make it a re-quired reading.

MARCUS COHN

Attorney, Cohn and MarksWashington, D.C.

Births of a Nation

To the Editor:Kudos to Channels for its "Should

Contraceptives Be Advertised on Televi-sion?" article in the October/Novemberissue.

Several years ago, The Population Insti-tute issued a "white paper" on this sub-ject entitled "The Right to Know." This isthe heart of the question. It is clear thepublic has a substantial need to knowabout the specifics of contraception. It isour position that under the Constitution,it also has the right to know. Broadcasters,who are the licensed stewards of the pub-lic's airwaves, are under the injunction tobroadcast in "the public interest, conve-nience, and necessity." The incidence ofunplanned and frequently unwanted

pregnancies, together with the personaland social consequences that they bring,is of a sufficient magnitude to make thisissue a matter of public necessity.

Channels is to be congratulated for ad-dressing this subject of vital national con-cern. May your tribe increase.

DAVID O. POINDEXTER

The Population InstituteNew York City

The Man Behind Moyers

To The Editor:In your recent article, "The Perplexing

Mr. Moyers" [Channels, October/November], I found one intimation veryperplexing. Producer Marty Koughan andthe author, Ann Crittenden, suggestedthat the award -winning documentary TheFire Next Door was "pure Moyers." Ofcourse Mr. Moyers adds a certain qualityto the programs he stars in, but whatseems to have been forgotten is the dedi-cation and hard work put into his showsby the producers and their teams. TomSpain, who spearheaded The Fire NextDoor, spent many long hours with hiscrew documenting the destruction in theBronx, without Bill Moyers' presence.

It has become clear that some televisionnews people have become "stars," andthat their information -gathering abilitieshave become secondary to their glamourroles. In the race for viewers and gettingthere first with the fast -breaking story,news departments at times overlook theirprime function to inform accurately. Andwhen emphasis switches from informa-tion -gathering to stargazing, we forget thehard-working, dedicated people like TomSpain, out there doing most of the workwhile others get the accolades.

BILL NEFFDepartment of Film andTelevision ProductionMontana State UniversityBozeman, Montana

Loud & Clear

To the Editor:I read with interest your October/No-

vember issue and was intrigued by theconvoluted reasoning of Mr. Walter Karpin his article, "Big Business and the Little

Minister." He sees a wonderful nobility ofpurpose in the networks utilizing "the sit-coms, the specials, and the shoot -'em -upmelodramas-the entire province ofprime -time network television ..." topropagandize against free enterprise,smaller and less expensive federal gov-ernment, lower taxes, fewer freebies forthose who prefer welfare to work, lessgovernment interference with business(which furnishes the jobs and the incomesfor the taxpayers), a respectable interna-tional posture, and all those other heinousrevolutionary ideas that got Mr. Reaganoverwhelmingly elected by the voters ofthe United States of America. He wouldprefer that we accept the strident socialistadvocacy by the networks in prime timeas vox populi.

Sorry, old buddy, but your network"news" people, your Norman Lears, andabout nine -tenths of the people in the en-tertainment industry that produce or per-form for prime time, live in their own littlecloistered inbred fairyland. And afterbuying Jimmy Carter from the networks,the electorate seems to have wised up. Ifyou think that hasn't terrified the net-works, just listen to the nightly barrageagainst Reagan that is peddled as "news"in prime time.

Yes, Mr. Karp, the people voted loudand clear for Ronald Reagan and hisclearly enunciated political beliefs. Pleasestop trying to tell us that they voted for thenetwork's weird precepts,and that viewersshould be denied any other fare.

J. M. COFFIELDShreveport, Louisiana

True Grits

To the Editor:What a welcome addition to your jour-

nalistic menu Mimi Sheraton's "Break-fast at Southfork" was! [Channels, Octo-ber/November]

It's quite clear that Channels does anexcellent job in covering the communica-tions industry, but the icing on the cake isMs. Sheraton's musing on what heartyvictuals lie secreted on the sideboard.

HARRIET NOVETManhattan Cable TVNew York City

C H A N'. E I. S 4 FEB/MAR

VIER'ERS ARE THE STARS OFSOME OF OUR BEST PROGRAMS.

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Some of the best programs we're involved in never get on TV. That's because they're communityprograms. And the only stars are the people we help.

Whether it's dealing with the problems of the Black and Hispanic communities, or making Christ-mas a reality for needy children, or running a marathon to aid retarded citizens, or helping promote commu-nity health centers-RKO television stations know that some of the best programs we run happen when thecameras aren't rolling.

So at RKO, there's always something good on TV-even when it's off.

RIKCTELEVISIONDIVISION OF RKO GENERAL. INC

WHERE TELEVISION IS A TWO-WAY MEDIUM.

Q n 1 13WOR-TV KHJ-TV WNAC-TV WHBQ-TVNEW YORK LOS ANGELES BOSTON MEMPHIS

A VE R I C A N

PLAITIO11American Playhouse, a new 25 -week PBS television series of outstanding drama, comedy and

musical entertainment, premieres January 12. With internationally celebrated actors anddirectors in works by writers that include John Cheever, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. and Ray Bradbury.

Closed -captioned for hearing impaired viewers.Produced by KCET Los Angeles, South Carolina ETV, WGBH Boston and WNET New York. Andmade possible by grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Endowment

for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities andAtlantic Richfield Company.

ARCO

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Sounds Silly, but .. .N N E JONES, a conservative Repub-lican on the Federal Communica-tions Commission, mentioned to

a reporter recently her wish toabolish the regulation that

makes broadcast licensing conditional ongood character. The focus of her concern,she said, was the RKO General case. RKOis threatened with the loss of all its sta-tions, some $500 million worth, just be-cause of misdeeds several years ago byexecutives of its parent corporation, Gen-eral Tire & Rubber Company.

The reporter reminded the commis-sioner that good character became licens-ing criterion partly to keep the electronicmedia out of the hands of organizedcrime.

"How would you feel if the Mafiamoved in on television and radio?" thereporter asked.

"Well," the commissioner replied, "ifthey provided a good service ..."

"If you really mean that, I'm going toquote you," the reporter warned.

"I'm afraid," she said, "it's going tosound silly."

Zap

TARI, lntellivision, PlayCable-watch out. There's a new game intown, and it's free. Electronic

games may have topped thecharts this Christmas, but

the new age of cable has fostered anothervideo diversion that could some day top-ple the pay -to -play games.

Ironically, this is one game that's madepossible by the very advertisers whosecommercials so persistently and madden-ingly interrupt regular programming.Only this time the advertisers don't reap apenny for their services.

The name of the game is "Zap."Brought to our attention by MelissaMoore Wilson, a California -based writer,Zap is in fact not just a game but a wholenew use of the television set. It's simple,infinitely variable, even children can learn

it, and it's guaranteed never to breakdown.

The players gather around a televisionset, pick a channel that doesn't have acommercial on it (if one can be found),and watch. Each person then spins thedial or switches channels by remote -control tuner. The first to land on a com-mercial is zapped and out of the game.(Certain afficionados reverse the game,jumping from commercial to commercialand declaring players zapped when theyinadvertently land on a program.)

The rules are flexible, but the very exis-tence of this new game points to a frag-mentation in the nature of our nationalpastime. There was a time when peoplewatched programs from beginning to end.But now, the onslaught of new viewingopportunities has spawned Zap - perhapsan oblique commentary on the media ofabundance.

Man Bites Media

own catchy phrase, "uses themedia as a medium." He does notoperate a television camera. Hedoes not set up video screens in a

gallery, like some impenetrable darling ofthe French avant-garde. No, Joey Skaggslets the media come to him. What he doesis stage elaborate and highly publicizedhoaxes -"plausible but nonexistentrealities," in the phrase he used to wring agrant from the New York State Council on

the Arts -and permit print and televisionreporters to make utter fools of them-selves by their lurid coverage. He simplyfakes them all out. In his most recent"performance," last May, he posed as ascientist, Dr. Joseph Gregor, whosewidely distributed press release claimedhe had "synthesized a super -roach ex-tract" to "save the world-from hunger,radiation, pollution, and disease."Though Skaggs strewed the ensuing pressconference with hints of his duplicity -plays upon Franz Kafka's "Metamorpho-sis" -almost everyone was taken in. Dr.Gregor's story found its way into 200newspapers, courtesy of UPI, and anumber of television news shows. Skaggscame clean soon afterward, but neitherUPI nor any of the programs offered aretraction.

But Skaggs, ironically enough, feelsmisunderstood. For almost fifteen years,ever since he organized a hippie bus tourof Queens, he has been treated as a far-ceur, a gadfly. To his own mind, and that,apparently, of the New York State Councilon the Arts, he is a "performance artist."He organized the "Metamorphosis" hoaxas a painstaking, if hilarious, piece of the-ater. Seventy friends and students fromthe School of Visual Arts were involved,and Skaggs played to the hilt his own roleas cult leader. More important, he insists,"I was saying something by creating a lie:Big business tells lies to the media, themedia buy lies, we buy lies from politi-cians, from government." The art formconsists of arranging a situation in whichthe media will betray their own nature:their banality and flair for the sensational.

Skaggs, who is neat and trim and wearsa deadly earnest Fu Manchu mustache, isquick to point out that a less dedicatedsoul would find an easier way to make aliving. This last nonexistent reality cost inthe neighborhood of $3,000 and nettednothing, save publicity. A less tangible butmore damaging cost is to Skaggs's goodname as a serious artist. He is also apainter, and though he calls his canvases"imaginary landscapes," and claims theyconcern "multiple horizons, time andspace, infinite motion," they are quiteconcrete. But all the notoriety, saysSkaggs, "affects my painting in a negativeway. It's very easy to be labeled a liar or a

C H A NN F I. y 7 F E B/M A R

hoax. And it's a cheap word."Hoaxing does have its compensations,

however. Skaggs probably has a lot morefun than your average studio artist. Hegets to sleaze it up a bit, as when he posedin 1976 as owner of the "Celebrity SpermBank," wearing rhinestone -rimmedsunglasses and unbuttoned shirt, to an-nounce to a largely bogus audience thatthe sperm of certain famous rock stars hadbeen stolen. But in his better moments hehas managed to hold up a mirror to mediareality, and reveal it for the flashy,thoughtless, superficial thing it often is.

Skaggs's most telling moment of deceitmay have come when he wound up in anABC documentary in 1976. The storybegan when he placed an ad in The Vi!-lage Voice describing his "Cathouse forDogs, featuring a savory selection of hotbitches-from pedigree (Fifi the Frenchpoodle) to mutts (Lady the Tramp)."Another well -written press release pro-duced an avalanche of wide-eyed cover-age of a performance involving fifteendogs and twenty-five actors.

But that was only the beginning.Skaggs loves telling the rest of the story."As a result of articles and televisioncoverage, ABC became interested in in-terviewing me and visiting the bordellofor dogs. Rather than re-create it againand again for every media source, I toldAlex Bennet [who had filmed the per-formance for cable television's MidnightBlue] it was a hoax, and he went in on itwith me. We provided ABC with a copy ofBennet's "Cathouse for Dogs" video-tapeperformance." Video is reality, and ABCwas duly convinced of Skaggs's authentic-ity, despite his utter lack of credentials."ABC interviewed me in WashingtonSquare Park, and I again supported thatthere was a cathouse for dogs."

ABC was working at the time on a doc-umentary on cruelty to animals, and thevideo tape and interview were included inthe somber It's a Dog's Life. Other seg-ments included dogs tied to railroadtracks, beaten dogs, abandoned dogs. Aveterinarian declared that he was "com-pletely against" the cathouse. The showwas nominated for an Emmy award, andSkaggs was slapped with a summons bythe city for operating his establishmentwithout a license. "And when," Skaggsrecalls, "I was finally subpoenaed by

Louis Lefkowitz, who was then the NewYork City attorney general, I revealed tothe print medium and to television that itwas indeed a performance piece and didnot exist. ABC did not retract the story."Skaggs reports that the producer of thedocumentary remains convinced that thecathouse existed.

Now that we have done our bit in JoeySkaggs's campaign to be taken as a seri-ous artist, we must wonder whether sucha reputation might not constitute anotherplausible but nonexistent reality. Skaggsbrought himself to our attention in a letterrequesting an interview; but he also man-aged to wangle himself a page in Peoplemagazine, a rather odd place for an artistto make a case for himself. And Skaggs'spreoccupations do seem to be rather onthe trendy side: After running throughVietnam, religion, inflation, cults, andthe media, in his next performance he willhighlight world hunger. "I'm concerned,"says this unwilling celebrity, "that peoplewho are concerned about media and art,and the dynamics of that, haven't followedup and said, 'Wait a minute, this is morethan roach pills.' " But we who pondermedia, art, and dynamics must ask, howmuch more?

Patrons of the ArtOST museums are places

where people gather to stareat art, seeking beauty or truthor just a nice spot to fuss

around in for an hour. ButNew York City's Museum of Broadcast-ing is different. Walk in for a visit andyou'll be assigned a private cubicle, ablank television screen, and a videocas-sette recorder. Order a program of yourchoice and you're submerged in thepsychodrama of Lucy's living room, theanxiety of The Twilight Zone, or themuckraking of Edward R. Murrow.

"There are people who practically livehere," says Ron Simon, the museum'shead of public relations. Two to four timesa week, sometimes every day, a smallcadre of regular clientele comes to viewtheir favorite shows from the museum'scollection of news, documentary, corn-

edy, and drama that spans television'sfifty-year history. "It's like a little familyof members," says Matt Kerbel, the mu-seum attendant. "If they don't show upone day, we wonder about them."

This intimate attitude is a natural aspectof the museum's small size. Perhaps it hasalso developed because Kerbel and hiscolleagues are daily witnesses to personalrituals unimaginable in other museums.The regular clients at the Museum ofBroadcasting seem less concerned withthe universal truths revealed by great artthan with discovering something aboutthemselves.

Take Jeff, for instance, who visits themuseum almost every day except whenhe's out of town. "He always wants to seethe tape of President Kennedy's funeral,and sometimes he stands at attentionwhen the procession goes by on thescreen," says Simon. "Actually, he likesmilitary ceremonies in general. He justloved the Royal Wedding and the SilverJubilee."

Or there's Bob Wiener, a lawyer just outof school, who comes to the museumtwice a week. "I grew up without televi-sion because my parents didn't approve ofit, and I think they were basically right.But sometimes I felt a loss, especially byfeeling the impact it had on my peers. Iguess I'm making up time."

However, on his visits to the museum,Wiener's not just watching programs hemight have missed as a kid; he's discover-ing the world he almost grew up in, and isperhaps restoring to himself a culture hedidn't quite share.

On one occasion Wiener introduced

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this culture to a fourteen -year -old Viet-namese boat person. The boy had neverbefore seen television. Wiener showedhim The Twilight Zone, My Three Sons,and some of Woody Allen's comedy. Theboy was overcome. Since then, saysWiener, "his family has been completelytaken over by TV. They have four roomsand five TVs, most of which they pickedup off the street and repaired. Sometimesyou'll go over there and they'll be watch-ing all of them at once, with their lines ofvision crossing several times."

"It's a very personal experience," saysMike Sjoblom, a once -a -week museumregular. "It's much more intimate thanthese places are generally. It's a positiverather than a negative escape, becauseyou're going out of the house and doingsomething instead of just soaking upwhatever's put in front of you. It's a wayof experiencing the past that's sort of anuplift."

Many regulars seem to share this feel-ing of nostalgic uplift. It's almost as ifthey're gleaning something that goes be-yond "historical interest" or entertain-ment or even the old escape -from -realityroutine-as though watching a fifteen -year -old Dick Van Dyke Show somehowtakes people back to those days of sittingon the living room floor at their parents'feet eating popcorn and unconsciouslybuilding a world concept that will accom-pany them into adulthood. If so, a trip tothe Museum of Broadcasting could be areaffirmation of their own past, a primaltouchstone in understanding the waythey've constructed a world view -an ex-perience that is not only reassuring butinvigorating. Whatever it is, there seemsto be something about the museum expe-rience that makes the regulars feel very allright when they leave.

Anthony Sims, who has been pluggingin at the museum once a week since thefall of 1979, describes it this way: "Thoseold shows trigger such profound memo-ries . .. one image can bring back ahundred things you used to do or feelwhen you originally saw it."

Sims speculates on what people of thedistant future would make of us if theironly exposure to our world was what theyfound in the museum. "It would be likeopening the door to some strange plan-et-all this contradictory stuff. Theywould really have to wonder, what werethey like, what in the world were thesepeople like?"

Breakthrough

ILESTONES don't have to bebig. Take, for instance, whathappened at Storer Com-munications, one of the coun-

try's top ten multi -systemsoperators (which means they own morethan a few cable systems). Nobody hasmade much of a fuss about it, but Storerrecently made a historic announcement:that it's the first of the country's majorcable companies to sell more pay-cablesubscriptions than basic -cable service.(This is possible because some basic -cable subscribers buy more than one payservice.)

This may not sound like much, but itwasn't very long ago that people wereconfidently saying Americans wouldnever pay for television when they couldget it free.

Progress Report

IN THE EARLY SIXTIES, a Chicagobroadcaster named Red Quinlancreated a national fuss when he pro-posed televising on WBKB (nowWLS-TV) video-taped bullfights

from Mexico City. He was thwarted by astorm of protest from animal -protectionsocieties, politicians, and private citizens,who accused him of exploiting violenceand reminded him that bullfights were il-legal in the United States. The matter wassettled right then that this cultural specta-cle was unsuitable for American televi-sion.

The prohibition is implicit in the Televi-sion Code, the instrument of the NationalAssociation of Broadcasters that enun-ciates program standards for the industry."The use of animals," the code states,"shall be in conformity with acceptedstandards of humane treatment." Not allstations subscribe to the code, however,and many that do have been known not toabide by the letter of it.

Twenty -odd years after the Chicago up-roar, bullfights are standard weekend fareon UHF affiliates of the Spanish Interna-tional Network (SIN) and have been forsome time. No one seems terribly upsetabout it. What happened to the howlingthat gained such notoriety for Quinlan?

Possibly American viewers, in the two de-cades since, have been subjected to suchegregious exploitations of real and fictiveviolence on television that it would seemabsurd to complain about something astame, in a relative sense, as the ritual con-test of man against beast.

One can only admire the way the Mexi-can network, Televisa, covers the events.The Moments of Truth, which occur sosuddenly and swiftly, usually are given asingle instant replay: the sword posi-tioned, the thrust, the matador dancingaway, the bull looking stunned, lunging,then collapsing in its own blood. How, onewonders, would Howard Cosell have em-bellished this drama? How deliciouswould American television have madethese deaths?

Thoughts go immediately to the acci-dental beaning of Ron Cey by Goose Gos-sage in the World Series last year, and theinterminable replays in slow motion, thefearsome fastball bouncing off the helmetat the temple, the player dropping to theground, possibly dying, we viewersthought, or maimed for life. Again andagain we saw it, as if each showing carriedsome important new information.

There is nothing pleasant about watch-ing the execution of a bull in a publicarena, but we have come a long way intwenty years. As grist for the televisionmill, the bullfight seems a good deal morecivilized today than it did in those inno-cent days when the worst perpetrators ofviolence on the tube were Popeye and theThree Stooges.

Alda All DayABLE TELEVISION IS Still SUCK anew and mysterious businessthat million -dollar ideas maycome from anywhere. Forexample:

A teenage girl read an article in thismagazine, about the vertical nature ofcable programming, that explained whychannels had to adopt formats designatedall -news, all -sports, all-weather, all -music, all -movies, all -whatever.

"Do you think," she inquired, "thatthere will ever be an all-M*A*S*H chan-nel?"

"You mean twenty-four hours a day?""Well, just the waking hours would

do," she replied.

CHAELSNN F E B/M A R

`Golly, Superman, how did you do it?'OU MEAN the one where

Superman has to be in twoplaces at once?" he asks, "and

his good friend the professorteaches him how to split his

molecules in two?" He grew up in GrossePointe, Michigan and went away toschool. "No," she says, "I mean the onewhere Superman had to fly to Greenwich,England to set the international time for-ward an hour." She went to public schoolsin Denver and won a scholarship to thestate university. "Oh yeah," now he getsthe picture, an early childhood memoryset in grainy black and white: "Somecrook sealed himself up in a concretebunker for seven years to evade the Sta-tute of Limitations ..." "That's right,"she nods her head encouragingly, "andwhen he let himself out an hour too soon,Superman arrested him!"

She's a plasma physicist; he's a juniorprofessor of English. Both have been for-cibly stranded at a faculty open housethrown by the college that recently hiredthem. Together now, in rapid-fire succes-sion, they run through the speed -traptown that folded up into a suitcase, themad professor who invented a lethal ex-plosive while attempting to come up witha postage -stamp adhesive that would tastelike chicken soup, and the crook whounderwent plastic surgery so he couldlook just like Superman (and even had thegall to learn to speak like Superman bylistening to Superman records). By sum-moning up the common prime -time mat-ter of their generation, the two have ef-fortlessly bridged the gap betweenphysics and literature, Denver and De-troit, early wealth and early poverty, cityand suburb.

For those of us who grew up withpickled -walnut entertainment consolesenshrined like icons in sacred domesticplaces, the shared experience of even themost bland network fare has constituted astrong generational glue. For those of usborn between Your Show of Shows andthe onset of Charlie's Angels, the inno-cence of popular family drama dovetailednicely with the innocence of our ownchildhoods.

Our parents worried that we'd bescarred by television -that we'd turn softin the head, lose our concentration, loseour teeth to Froot Loops, lose our imagi-nation. But looking back from our currentby -no -means -certain posture as a genera-tion, we tend to long for that time when

television shows supported the feelingthat we were all one America.

The affable domestic world of DonnaReed and Father Knows Best, Leave It toBeaver and Dennis the Menace, wasfounded upon a popular and persuasiveillusion of nearly perfect conformity. Theassumption underlying the most familiarsitcoms was that Americans were becom-ing more and more the same: moremiddle-class, more suburban, more"American." And even though the pres-sure of subsequent events has shatteredthat illusion, and television itself has be-come just as likely to point out our differ-ences as it ever was to overlook them,those of us whose perception of the"normal" is still rooted in the image ofsitcom land-we and our fellow Baby-Boomers-can still harken back to thenaïve, reassuring memories of Ozzie andLucy and Ricky and Kookie.

We've graduated by now from sitcomland, the grown-up part of us at least, butwe somehow recognize that without thestabilizing factor of our common televi-sion past, we might be even more frag-mented, more finally lost, than we are as itis. And we may soon become as easilyworried about what television might do asour parents once were. We know what thecable revolution may yield: the most spec-tacular variety show of all, more variousthan Ed Sullivan, sillier than Carol Bur-nett, deeper than The Voyage to the Bot-tom of the Sea, sexier than Charlie'sAngels. And though we don't know whatmight be gained by all this, we do knowwhat will be lost: that outmoded but notentirely implausible stab at cultural co-herence.

The transition will prove particularlypainful for us because we knew what itwas like before, not through the sporadic

and inevitably skeptical gaze of the adult,but through the eyes of the impressionableyoung. Watching as the image of Americasplits into a hundred different channelswill seem to some of us like walkingthrough a hall of mirrors, each of themreflecting a different face in a perma-nently changing society. Because we hadso few programs to choose from, we wereforced into a collective childhood experi-ence. Because our children are likely tohave such an abundance to choose from,they may be forced into a kaleidoscopicenhancement of mere superficial differ-ences.

The cable companies have evolved acanny policy of fragmenting the once -great national audience along demograph-ic lines. We now inhabit multipleAmericas, each possessing its "unique"brand of special interests and satisfac-tions. This notion of narrowcasting, oftaking aim at defined segments of a. vastrestless mass, implies the practical accep-tance by television of a status quo longrecognized by radio stations, magazines,and (to some extent) movie companies.This weighing of the national mass on sen-sitive economic scales, as up -scale ordown -scale -everything but wide -scale - will undoubtedly lead to a furthersharpening and hardening of the dividinglines in an already divided society.

A classics major I knew in college hadmemorized far more than his mandatorypassages from Virgil and Ovid: He alsoknew by heart nearly every exchange be-tween Lucy and Ricky Ricardo. An ar-chivist by nature, he maintained an un-canny sense of the way in which Lucy andRicky defined our generational past, inmuch the same way he understood howGreek and Latin poetry represent the"deep background" of our civilization. Inthe future, when the classics major or theArabist or the poet is barraged from anearly age by specific signals that effec-tively keep him on the "right track," thelamentable and pervasive specializationthat has invaded nearly every culturalcorner will have invaded the last one. Theability of two successive television gener-ations to recall at will entire episodes from/ Lore Lucy will seem hopelessly minor tomost of us, until it's no longer there.

STEPHEN FENICHELL

Stephen Fenichell is the author ofDaughters at Risk, recently published byDoubleday.

C H AIM E I. S 11 FEB/MAR

CURR

Incredible opportunities are coming for the local programmer!"Steve Currie, 1981 President of the National Associ-ation of Television Pmgram Executives, is Managerof Broadcast Operations, KOIN-TV PortlandOregon.

"NATPE does quite a bit to help improvelocal programming. Sponsoring the IRISAwards, for example. They're only for/oca/ pro-gramming. and there's no question that they'vebecome a major award in the TV industry.NATPE-sponsored workshops and general ses-sions deal with the problems of local stationsand those of the local programmer. Theexchange of ideas and information fromaround the country helps us all.

"The role of Program Director is difficulteven for NATPE to define, because responsibili-ties vary from station to station. It started out, inmany cases, that the Program Director wasmerely an operations clerk who shuffled paper.took the network schedule, and filled in the half-hour hole on Saturday or Sunday. Most of theactual program decisions were made by theGeneral Manager, Sales Manager, or a combina-tion thereof. As Program Director here. I haveresponsibility for the on -air look of thestation. I don't control the journalistic aspectof the news, but I am involved in how theproduct looks on the air. Attitudes toward theProgram Director are changing, too. There is

a great realization that if you have a good pro-grammer who is doing a good job, you're goingto get your ratings.

"I think that as our industry develops, thelocal station with local studio, talent, and exper-tise is going to become a major supplier toother groups. whether they be a low -poweredstation in our own market, a cable channel, thevideo market. whatever.

'Right now it's easier to go out and buy asyndicated series than it is to create your own lo-cal programs, but it's not necessarily better. Wehave a program here called Northwest Illustrated.which precedes 60 Minutes on our station.It's a magazine half-hour similar to 60 Minutes-on a local level-and has won a numberof awards, including a DuPont Columbia award.This show is, to a great extent, produced onfilm. We shoot on Kodak film. because we wanta clean, finished look-one that sets it apartfrom some other news programming you seeon the air. It's our showpiece and has to havethe right look. Kodak film gives that to us- I'mvery proud of the show, because the station isnot only providing a service-we're doing some-thing of quality.

"If I see any coming trend, it's that of morenews and informational shows done on a localbasis. This will help local stations maintain theirlocal affinity. And it's a great opportunity for us.Look, it's seldom that a local station can go out

and do a dramatic presentation, a sitcom, or amode. It's just not in the cards. But here is thechance to have something truly unique for ourmarket. It's where we have our expertise. It'swhere we have the ability to really excel. There'sa lot of opportunity coming for the localstation, and I think that's something we allneed to keep in mind.'

If you would like to receive our quarterly publica-tion about motion picture production for television.TELEK, write Eastman Kodak Company, Dept.640, 343 State Street, Rochester, New York 14650.

©Eastman Kodak Company, 1981

EASTMAN KODAK COMPANI'MOTION PICTURE AND AUDIOVISUAL MARKETS DIVISIONATLANTA: 404/351-6510CHICAGO: 312/654.5300DALLAS: 214/351-3221HOLLYWOOD: 213/464-6131NEW YORK: 212/930-7500ROCHESTER 716/254-1300SAN FRANCISCO: 415/928-1300WASH.. D.C.: 703/558-9220

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Wasted Imagesby Todd Gitlin

HE NETWORKS evening news programs may amount tolittle more than headline services. But at its best, tele-

vision news gives us something newspapers cannot,namely the look of things, which, besides being

memorable-who can forget the look of Oswald dou-bling over as Jack Ruby fires into his belly?-very often gives usthe key to what events mean. Television journalism is to beexcused its superficiality, for after all is said, the pictures aresupposed to be the point: They render the particular facts ofhuman history universal, simply by showing them to the entirewatching world.

But just how revealing are these pictures? It was StephenLighthill of San Francisco, once a cameraman for CBS News,who pointed out to me that the typical television news piece isactually an illustrated lecture. The images depend on the narra-tion, not the other way around. Lighthill had gone to work forCBS in 1968 thinking, or hoping, that the camera could conveysomething of the force of modern life by disclosing what was atstake, visibly at stake, right there, look, when somebody madebad decisions and inflicted damage on the world. But he discov-ered that, through no one's fault, his craft was being squandered.It was partly because his pieces went once over briefly, and partlybecause there was no network commitment to give pictures theirdue. He recalled one time getting dropped into Globe, Arizona,where the Forest Service had sprayed the defoliant 2,4,5-T tokeep down scrub growth, and where, as a result, mutant plantswere growing haywire, a goat was born with three legs; flora andfauna generally were growing out of control. He shot the story in

Todd Gitlin teaches sociology and directs the mass communica-tions program at the University of California, Berkeley. He isauthor of The Whole World Is Watching, and is working on abook about television entertainment.

less than twenty-four hours, stricken all the while by the sight ofthese deformed creatures. But when the story came on the air, itwas only ... footage: A shot of this, a shot of that, a few moreblips of information. The pictures had been reduced to quickillustrations. Oh, the point was clear in a schematic way, if youpaid enough attention to the correspondent's voice-over. But thetrue terror was gone.

In fact, most television news images are slides to illustratelectures. I understood the force of Stephen Lighthill's pointwhen, a few years ago, I watched a network correspondent puttogether a piece about social dislocation in a coal boom town. Thecamera had been set down on the main street of Gillette, Wyo-ming, and recorded several minutes of tape showing citizenscrossing from one side to another. The correspondent left theeditor to run through the footage for a while, then came back withhis text, which began: "Gillette, Wyoming. It looks like justanother scruffy mountain town." On the evidence of the rawfootage, it didn't look like any such thing. This population mighthave been typical of Bakersfield, California, or Clear Lake, Iowa:virtually anywhere west of Chicago, in fact. The folks were kemptand unkempt, Hush-Puppied more than cowboy -booted. But thecorrespondent told the editor to pick out a few of the scruffierspecimens to suit his text. The text came first. It is my impressionthat this sort of screening is normal, and there is nothing espe-cially heinous about it. Situations are complex , but pieces areshort and the points that can be made in ninety seconds arestripped down.

To make matters still more stale, many of the visuals used byevening news programs are devoid of particularity. They are littleritual displays of events themselves made ritual. The Senatorstrides toward a cluster of reporters, then speaks into the micro-phones.... The monthly increase in the cost -of -living index isflashed over a shot of disconsolate shoppers examining vegeta -

C H A INN F I. S 15 F E B/ M A R

bles in the supermarket.... The plane taxis into view; the visitingdignitary walks down the stairs waving, then salutes the honorguard. It could be Menachem Begin arriving in Washington,Ronald Reagan in New York, Leonid Brezhnev in Belgrade. Theworld's symbols have been engraved one micrometer deeper ingranite, but just what useful information has been conveyed?

Speaking of vegetables, I am often cooking when the seveno'clock news comes on, and I have discovered that I learn morefrom the pieces of news -and "pieces" is the right word -when Idon't break off my preparations in order to dash off to the screenonly to behold Bill Plante standing in front of the White House, orthe black smokestacks illustrating a story about pollution, or thewell -dressed corporate spokesman denying responsibility. Hear-ing is understanding, if not believing.

But the point of pictures should not be to convey blips ofinformation. For that purpose, one short paragraph may be wortha dozen pictures, or a hundred. Indeed, the points of contentionin a proposed AWACS sale are not conveyed through a successionof graphics, no matter how crisply focused or colorful. The newsgives us pictures because pictures seem to guarantee the authen-ticity of the report, to confirm what Stuart Hall calls the"having -been -there" of the news. But the ritual is empty.

Of course I don't mean to suggest that news pictures beabolished. A few seconds of a Solidarity convention in Poland

reminds us that rebellion is real. Those weather-beaten faces are agenuine gift to the political spirit, something new, and they com-pensate for the otherwise predictable coverage. Historical foot-age, too, is eye-opening, especially for the young. An obituarycollage can convey quite powerfully the sense of the completedyet incomplete curve of a lifetime.

Television news should encourage its camera operators to usetheir wits and take their time. Forget the headlines; let reports ontomorrow's developments review yesterday's, not repeat them,and we will only end up wiser. Meanwhile, let's have more ofCBS's Sunday Morning's use of pictures in vérité style, silencingfor once that omniscient narrator who cannot trust us with ourvision. Let the processors of our news dare more often to usepictures as revelations. Oddly enough, perhaps news pictures areworth the most when they convey images of events that mightnever take place, or that happen behind our backs. In its excellentfive -part series The Defense of the United States last June, CBSsimulated the look of an atomic blast in Omaha. Words could nothave said what has to be said, again and again, about the enormityof thermonuclear war. These most important images give usversions of what is hardest to imagine unaided.

Let television news genuinely see at a distance, let it ceaseanesthetizing us with clichés, and we shall be genuinely in itsdebt.

The First Amendment's Second Chance

by David L. Bazelon

HE CENTRAL CHALLENGE facing decision -makers in com-munications-as in so many other fields today - is to

determine the appropriate governmental response to thechanges wrought by science. Although our vision of the

future shifts every day, it is clear that these changes willhave a profound impact on our society for good or ill. Should theybe left to the marketplace, or should government intervene?

Communications regulation in the United States begins from aset of premises perhaps unique in the world. To an unparalleledextent, our society is committed to the notion that in an "uninhib-ited marketplace of ideas, truth will prevail," that political andsocial justice can best be pursued through robust and unrestricteddebate. And to a larger degree than most, our society claims touphold each person's right to be different, to have opinions of hisown and make choices for himself, to seek dignity and fulfillmentindependently. These twin ideals -the free exchange of informa-tion and the right of personal autonomy-are embodied, ofcourse, in our foremost communications "regulation," the FirstAmendment. In order to safeguard and promote our democraticvalues of self-government and individual dignity, the FirstAmendment protects three distinct liberties: the right to speak,the right to know, and the right to privacy. A forthright effort tomake the most of the new communications technology mustconfront these potentially conflicting rights and make them har-monious.

The information revolution offers great promise of enhancingthese rights and their underlying democratic values. More chan-nels of communications could mean more speakers and a greatervariety of voices. A greater number of individuals could enjoy a

David L. Bazelon is senior judge on the U.S. Court of Appealsfor the District of Columbia Circuit. This article is an excerpt ofhis speech at the ninth annual Telecommunications Policy Re-search Conference in 1981.

meaningful right to speak, and listeners could turn to a largernumber of sources in the exercise of their right to know.

Yet unthinking promotion of the new technologies has its dan-gers. Already, the technological capability for collecting, analyz-ing, and distributing information has surpassed George Orwell'swildest fantasies.

We must ask ourselves what we gain and what we lose by usingthese tools. Imagine, for example, the benefit to medical practicefrom a centralized system of reporting, analyzing, storing, andretrieving medical information from around the world. But howcan we prevent abuse of such highly personal information? Thenew information technologies offer limitless possibilities for im-proving the quality of life. But who will control them? The gov-ernment? New entrants with no track records? Establishedbroadcasters and common carriers? Before the current clamor for"deregulation" hardens into political sloganeering and facile so-lutions, we should carefully consider the lessons of the past.

In broadcasting, protecting the speaker's right to say whateverhe wants does not necessarily lead to a flourishing of diverseviewpoints. On the contrary, because the licensee can excludeothers from his frequency, protecting the broadcaster's right maytend to suppress viewpoints -the viewpoints of those who do nothave a broadcast license. The right to speak thus runs headlonginto the companion First Amendment value: the right to hearfrom the widest variety of sources. Therefore, the Communica-tions Act made broadcasters short-term "public trustees" andimposed a variety of controls on their activities.

I think everyone would agree that the decision to regulate thecontent of broadcasters' speech, whether right or wrong, was anexceedingly difficult one to make. No one committed to theAmerican ideal of self-government can be content with the re-strictions on free speech imposed on broadcasters in the name ofdiversity. Content regulation can be embraced, if at all, reluc-tantly, as the only available means of promoting diversity.

Yet the record of fifty years of regulation reveals that themandate to promote diversity is unfulfilled. The FCC's recentnetwork inquiry report confirms what has long been obvious.

C H A ib E I. j 16 F E B/M A R

"Past commission policies," it concludes, "have served effec-tively to limit television to a system dominated by three over -the -

air advertiser -supported networks.". The blame lies squarely withill-advised governmental decisions like the 1952 allocationscheme, the intermixture policy, and restrictions on competingservices. Nor have the commission's content regulations suc-ceeded in promoting diversity among the few voices permitted bythese policies. I believe that the Fairness Doctrine, for instance,has had a significant chilling effect on controversial issue pro-gramming.

The teachings of this experience are quite clear. First, theinsight of the founding fathers has been confirmed. Even with thebest of intentions, government cannot regulate the content ofspeech and still be consistent with democratic values. Second, wecannot realize the ideal of diversity as long as powerful instru-ments of communication remain in the hands of a relative few.And third, only at our peril do we sacrifice one First Amendmentvalue for the sake of another.

Before the opportunity passes, we should carefully apply theselessons to the developing services. Should we apply contentregulation to the new technologies? Take cable television, theservice that appears to be moving most rapidly and that holds thegreatest promise of bringing on the television of abundance.Perhaps content -based regulation had some appeal in the earlyyears of cable development. But today, with systems carryingthirty or more channels, with the availability of access channelsand leased -channel capacity, does it make any sense for thegovernment to pursue diversity in cable through content control?

While experience warns us against adopting content controlsunless they are absolutely necessary, it also cautions us againstgiving too much power over the new media to established privateinterests. Some signs indicate that this second lesson of the past isnot being heeded today. The networks, even while fighting cablederegulation in court, are seeking to buy cable systems of theirown. Broadcasters are also seeking a prominent role in the newlow -power service. Established firms argue that the efficienciestheir experience and resources can bring to bear on the newtechnologies outweigh the dangers of concentration.

The economic arguments made by the existing firms may besound. I take no position either way. It is important to remember,however, that concentration poses special danSers in the com-munications area, whatever the economic impact. The SupremeCourt articulated one of the guiding principles of communica-tions policy more than thirty-five years ago when it said,"Thewidest possible dissemination of information from diverse andantagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public."Established firms may be able to introduce new services quicklyand cheaply, but the price may be to reduce the number of voices.

Clearly, then, we should pause befóre allowing the marketplacefull sway. In an atmosphere of complete laissez faire, it is all toolikely that the new technologies will be ddminated by the samevoices that have brought us today's homogenized fare. Does thismean that, as in 1934, we must reluctantly tolerate a regime ofintrusive government regulation? The notion appears to be gain-ing popularity as a new rationale for separaté First Amendmenttreatment of the telecommunications press. In the face of bur-geoning new technologies, it is increasingly difficult to adhere tothe scarcity theory on which Red Lion reliéd. Instead, in caseslike Pacifica, content control seems to be justified by the "intru-sive" nature of the media. In essence, the argument is that thetelecommunications press is too powerful to be free.

But it is important to distinguish between the power gained byoligopoly in the production of news and entertain%elit program-ming, and the power inherent in the medium. The Ye 1>íoncern is atraditional fear of monopoly of power. I believe the, tear is war-ranted, but it should be confronted on its oc3'n groúñd 'All hotchased back into the hoary swamps of government regulation of

speech. We have another alternative: "structural" regulation ofthe media. For instance, the antitrust laws could substantiallyincrease the likelihood of diversity in programming if used vigor-ously. The FCC has tightened its regulations limiting cross -own-ership of media outlets in recent years. With far more potentialspeakers than outlets, there may be room for even stricter multi-ple ownership rules than presently prevail. Applied to the newtechnologies, this approach might also encourage a greater mul-titude of tongues. With many of the new technologies just gettingoff the ground, a diligent pursuit of structural strategies offers usa real opportunity to avoid the mistakes of the past. Instead ofallowing communications giants to grow to a size requiring con-tent regulation, we could encourage a "thousand flowers tobloom" from the outset and limit government regulations to con-tent -neutral ones.

DGk]

The structural approach has the advantage of promoting boththe right to speak and the right to know. Thus, it would heed thethird lesson of the past, by avoiding the sacrifice of one FirstAmendment value for the sake of another. There is no reason whywe should not be able to enhance both the right to speak and theright to know through the new technologies. Both values, afterall, are advanced by the free flow of information, and the newservices promise an unprecedented number of communicationschannels. But as much as our open society values the spread andunrestricted use of information, can we encourage these devel-opments without jeopardizing a third First Amendment value, thesacred right to privacy? The information revolution means that Imay find out everything about anything. But it also means I maylearn more about you than you want me to know. Nor can I be surethat I will be able to control who knows what about me. Will westill be able to afford unfettered rights to speak and to know as thepace of technological development quickens?

I have no answer to this agonizing dilemma. I do know that wecan never begin to resolve it unless we proceed carefully, openly,and with full awareness of the risks, uncertainties, and thechoices at stake. In the early days of communications regulation,we necessarily acted out of ignorance. Today, with fifty years ofexperience, we have no such excuse.

At the brink of a new era in information capabilities, we canwrite-perhaps for the last time-on a clean slate. Technologyhas given us a second chance to act cautiously and with fullappreciation of our values, our experience, and what we have yetto learn. Unless we seize this opportunity, the promise of thecommunications revolution may remain unfulfilled.

C H A iVJ F I. s 17 F E B/M A R

C H A NN E L S

ALTHOUGH I'VE WRITTEN

about and studied cabletelevision for many

years, I have only justbegun living with it.

UA-Columbia Cablevisionhooked up my home a few weeksago, installing a converter devicewith thirty-five buttons for tuning.This is a one-way system, hardlythe state of the art, yet sufficientto make the old way of receivingtelevision signals seem crude.

The arrival of cable created astir in my town: much talk every-where about whether it was worthgetting, and what was on, andwhether to buy either or both ofthe proffered pay networks, HBOand The Movie Channel. Muchconcern, too, about whether thekids, already overfed with televi-sion, will want to watch evenmore. I found myself marveling atthe innocence with which we entered a new age in the history ofman.

But if we were guilty of innocence, UA-Columbia could beblamed for something worse-bringing us into the mysteriousnew age with no more ceremony than attends the serving ofcoffee in a pizza parlor. A young technician came to perform thehookup, leaving behind, along with a trail of wire cuttings, a drablittle booklet with the month's listing of movies on the pay chan-nels. It also contained a grid identifying each of the channels onthe system. After that, the subscriber was on his own.

On my own, I have spent more time tapping the buttons on thetuning console to check out the offerings than in watching any

y single channel. I suspect I will never get over doing this; it hasz added a new dimension to the television experience. So far, whatm I enjoy most about cable is being able to flip through televisionr the way I've been able to flip through magazines and books. I

don't know whether I do this because I want to watch everythingIC

áor because I really don't want to watch anything.

z In the form that UA-Columbia provides it, cable is quite simply° more television: more broadcast stations (signals imported from1.1 other states), more public television, more sports than anyoneI could ask for, and an abundance of movies for the undiscriminat-

ing. As for cable's own satellite networks, there is a fair repre-

Guilty of Innocence

by Les Brown

sentation on this system, but thereare also some notable omissions.Nickelodeon, Warner Amex'scommercial -free channel for chil-dren, is absent, for example. Un-doubtedly this is because UA-Co-lumbia is part owner of the USANetwork, which carries Calliope,a children's feature that poses as acompetitor to Nickelodeon. Ofcourse, all the "adult movie" ser-vices are absent, but those arebound to come later; on a brand-new system, it is impolitic to in-troduce pornography until cableitself has found acceptance.

It was at once apparent that thecable company was going tospend no more for programmingthan was absolutely necessary.Some half -dozen channels on thesystem carry alphanumericmaterial -a Reuters wire service,financial reports, a scoreboard, a

community bulletin board, and the like. These are channels al-most no one would miss, and they stand at the ready to yield toadditional pay services when the time is right.

Traveling across the console buttons without benefit of a pro-gram guide provides a mild sense of adventure; the opportunitiesfor discovery are greater than they have been since the early yearsof television, when commercial broadcasters were still experi-menting with program forms. Except that today we look intoprogramming rather than programs; the variety comes horizon-tally, across all the channels, rather than on any single channel.There are no shows, only pieces that fit a format.

Now that I have push-button tuning, I wonder if I will everagain watch a television commercial, time being precious. I won-der if millions of other cable subscribers aren't also ducking outfor a quick peek at the basketball or hockey games during theadvertising breaks. What will happen then to television's eco-nomic system and the marketing strategies of Prociér and Gam-ble, Ford Motor Company, and Miller Beer? I woi er what thebrowsing is going to be like when we have a hundred channels ofcable; who's going to make a living from people like me then?

I wonder what this proliferation will mean to TV Guide,America's most widely circulated magazine. Will it be able toproduce the equivalent of a telephone book weekly for every zip

C H A NN E I. s 18 F E B/M A R

James C

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A dram

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code in the country? Will the need for program informationprovide the breakthrough for teletext, television's owrinformation -retrieval system?

Meanwhile, the abundance that encourages browsing ratherthan viewing grieves my wife. Why do we need yet more televi-sion, she wants to know? In a brief few weeks, to her chagrin, ourhousehold has felt cable's effects. My tapping away at the buttonsis like a maddening tic. And our teenage children, who had finallygotten over their addiction to the tube, are back at it again,determined to drain our money's worth from the pay channels.We're not watching television, they argue, we're watchingmovies.

Our world is changing again. It is strange to think that this is theeasy part, the diaper stage-with so much more to come.

Y LOSS OF INNOCENCE with cable, my sense of havingentered a new age, came not with the UA-Columbiasystem I browse through at home but from a different,slightly earlier cable experience. Several months ago I

agreed to appear on the Cable News Network'sTake Two program to discuss Channels. Take Two is CNN'sequivalent of NBC's Today except that it is presented at noon.

In a segment budgeted at six minutes, I faced the two co -hosts,Don Farmer and Chris Curie, by television monitor, they inAtlanta, I in New York. They began by asking me to explain why,according to a certain article in Channels ("The Twists In Two -Way Cable," by David Burnham), we Americans had anything tofear in the emerging new communications environment. I an-swered that while there is much to praise in two-way cable sys-tems like Warner Amex's QUBE in Columbus, Ohio, there wereserious implications for personal privacy. Two-way systems arehitched to computers that scan each household every six seconds,recording all manner of information. They know what we watch,what we buy through television, how we vote in public -opinionpolls.

Farmer then sprung a surprise, sort of a journalistic ambush. Ithappens, he advised me, that we're hooked up right now to theQUBE system in Columbus. Let's see (I'm paraphrasing frommemory) what the folks up there who subscribe to two-way cablethink about these concerns.

Wham. I was in the interactive mode, suddenly made part ofone of QUBE'S patented polls. The host first asked who believesthere's a loss of privacy, and then who doesn't. Within secondswe had the result: Some 85 percent, as I recall, had no problemwith the privacy issue; the remainder felt otherwise. Farmermade a brief speech, the sense of which was that the people hadspoken in rebuttal of the article. My six minutes were up, I was offthe line, thanked, and sent back to my office.

On the way back, I relived the episode and found it chilling. Sothis was the famous instant plebicite, the remarkable new way tosample public opinion. The host not only controls the questionsbut also the answers. Since both QUBE and CNN are in the cablebusiness and had an interest in debunking the article and buryingthe privacy issue; how could we be sure the result they flashed onthe screen was the actual result? What if the real computer tallyhad been the opposite: 85 percent worried, 15 percent notworried - would QUBE and CNN, given their interest, have re-ported it that way? Well, let's not be paranoid. Let's say theyprobably would have. But there is no way to be sure. We simplyhave to trust.

And then this troubled me: What does 85 percent mean? Howmany people took part in this poll? A thousand? Two hundred?Forty-six? Twelve? This instant poll was taken around noon in themiddle of the week on a system that serves only a section ofColumbus, 30,000 homes. There were twenty-nine other channelsin competition for the audience at that hour-including the three

network affiliates. What kind of poll is it that speaks only inpercentages and doesn't reveal the sample size? And what kind ofjournalism is it that fobs this stuff off as pertinent?

Further: Who were the voters? Who watches television atnoon? A few years ago, when I visited Columbus and called onQUBE households, I heard repeatedly that the little children-preschoolers-loved to push the response buttons. So who wasrebutting David Burnham's thoughtful and well -researched arti-cle without having read it?

It's of no serious consequence, of course, that a sham referen-dum was held on an issue raised by a mere magazine article. Butwhat is frightening to contemplate is that such polls are routinelyconducted on every kind of important national issue, and theirresults cited as public opinion. You will never hear a cable news-caster say: QUBE took a poll today, and here's what some four-year -olds in Columbus think about the sale of Awacs to SaudiArabia.... But some poor Congressman may think he hears thevoice of his constituents.

It is some comfort that Warner Amex Cable Communicationsitself gave little credence to the Qum poll that sought to minimizethe privacy issue. A few weeks later the company produced apolicy paper outlining the ways in which it means to preserve theprivacy of individuals subscribing to the QUBE system. It vows toexplain to its subscribers the kinds of information it is gatheringand to maintain safeguards to insure the confidentiality of thisinformation. This is commendable, but we are still being asked totrust.

IN M. STEVENS'S VIEW

"7i-» Iti pAN/EL L IPMAN IN FRONT OF ALASE PiCtVRE G`' THE CAPITOL .. 11

I confess being relieved that the town I live in lacked thebargaining muscle to negotiate a more advanced cable systemthan the simple-minded one that just provides more television,more sports, more movies. I am content to browse over bullfights,ballets, and alphanumerics until elected officials reckon theremight be something to worry about in cable monopolies that enterour homes to gather information, and then package theinformation-for sale to other marketers, or as news, or as thepublic's voice for political purposes. My home is not available forentry yet. It's not that I have an aversion to new technology. It'sthat I'm unwilling to let technology set the terms.

C H ANN F I. j 20 FEB/MAR

C H ia NN F LS

The SecondAmerican Revolution

by Benjamin Barber

EMOCRACY WAS CONCEIVED in an

unwired world, one withouttelephones, computers, ortelevision. When Alexis de

Tocqueville visited America inthe 1830s, he marveled at its "spirit ofliberty," which, he concluded, arose di-rectly out of vigorous civic activity,municipal self-government, and face-to-face interaction. Then, as now, democracymeant government by consent, and con-sent depended upon consensus and thus

b upon effective communication. In a soci-ety innocent of electronics, communica-

lezº tions meant reading local newspapers,

11forming voluntary associations, develop -

a,

1 Benjamin Barber is professor of political.2 science at Rutgers University and author1 of the forthcoming book, Strong Democ-á racy (University of California Press) and

the novel, Marriage Voices.

ing public schools, and exploiting theAmerican propensity for endless talk.

Democracy survives, but de Tocque-ville's simpler world of self-governingtownships has vanished. The communityof citizens governing themselves face toface has given way to the mass society,and live talk has been replaced by tele-communications. Once a nation of talk-ers, we have turned into a nation ofwatchers-once doers, we have becomeviewers-and the effect on our democ-racy has been profound. The averageAmerican watches television between sixand seven hours a day; he votes just once ayear, if that. Indeed, only one of every twoAmericans votes in Presidential elections.

Although every schoolchild knows thattelevision is the national pastime and poli-tics is only one feature of its coverage, noteven university professors have thoughtvery much about the medium's long-term

impact on democracy. Yet we have al-ready passed through one major age oftelecommunications technology, and wenow stand on the threshold of a second.This may be our last opportunity to turnthe technology of the new age into a ser-vant of an old political idea: democracy.Democracy will have a difficult time sur-viving under the best of circumstances;with television as its adversary, it seemsalmost sure to perish.

The first age of television-from itspre-war inception through the 1970s -was characterized by the scarcity of air-waves available for television transmis-sion. This so-called spectrum scarcitygave us a system in which three mammothnational networks monopolized publiccommunication, the government regu-lated in the name of the public interest,and viewers came to perceive themselvesas passive spectators willing to leave pro -

C A N,N F L S 21 F E B/ M A R

Where television once united the nation,it will now fragment it.

gramming decisions to network execu-tives and their corporate sponsors.

The effects of this first age of televisionon America's political culture weremixed. But in one clear sense, networktelevision's homogenized programmingbenefited democracy: By offering thecountry the semblance of a national cul-ture and national political norms, it pro-vided a consensus indispensable to na-tional unity. Occasionally this was a directresult of network attitudes-as in the fif-ties with integration, the sixties withVietnam, or the seventies with Watergate.But more often, the television consensuswas informal and indirect. National de-bates such as the Kennedy -Nixon ex-changes, national media personalitiessuch as Ed Sullivan, Johnny Carson, andWalter Cronkite, and such national ritualsas the Kennedy funeral, the moon walk,and the mourning for Martin LutherKing-all these bestowed upon the coun-try a legacy of national symbols andmyths that cut across our divisive regions,sects, interest groups, parties, races,ethnic communities, and political con-stituencies.

In a nation as fragmented and pluralis-

tic as ours, where from the very begin-ning - in the Federalist Papers - the"specter of faction" loomed as thegreatest peril, television has offered per-haps the only truly common vision we canhave. If there is an American melting pot,it is fired nowadays primarily by elec-tronic means. How else than in front ofthe communal fires of television couldAmericans have mourned together theirfallen leaders? If Roots had not beenscreened in prime time on eight consecu-tive evenings, would the meaning of beingblack in America ever have touched somany non -black Americans? Roots is acelebration not only of being black butof being American. Network television,both at its best and its worst-Roots andHolocaust as much as General Hospitaland Family Feud -has helped us to sub-scribe to common values and to identifywith a single national community. It isdifficult to imagine the "Kennedy Gener-ation," the "Sixties," Watergate, theWoodstock Generation, or even the MoralMajority, in the absence of national televi-sion. Who we are in common is what wesee in common.

One aspect of this television consensus

has been corrosive both to democracy andliberty, however. The dominion of a fewmedia giants over scarce public airwaveshas centralized control over informationand entertainment. Democracy thrives ondissent, deviance, political heterogeneity,and individuality; network televisioncatalyzes uniformity and homogeneity.Move a program too far off center as mea-sured by the mass audience, and plum-meting Nielsen ratings will chase spon-sors away. Whether the media's middlingvision is seen as the victory of bad taste(as the intellectuals claim), or of an East-ern liberal elite (as Spiro Agnew used toinsist), or of crass secular materialism (asthe Moral Majority asserts), or of the cor-porate establishment (as the Left be-lieves), there can be little doubt that it is asafe and complacent vision that offers lit-tle hospitality to alternative perspectives.A common vision may also be a homoge-nized, plasticized, and intolerant vision,one that distorts America's definingpluralism by imposing uniform stereo-types on a heterogeneous people.

To the extent the networks succeed inmaking Americans think in common, theymay destroy in us the capacity to thinkindependently. The great American tele-vision consensus of the last thirty yearsdismissed the aspirations of both religionanddamentalists and leftists show the mediatoday). In place of genuine Americanarchetypes, it gave us watery stereotypes:Archie Bunker, your friendly neighbor-hood racist, who wouldn't do any manreal harm; Sanford and Son, who provedthat black folks, aside from being a bitmore hip, are just like every one else;Mary Tyler Moore, who could gentlymock the patriarchal world without evertruly challenging it. There were tough -but -generous cops, misguided revolution-aries, reformed junkies, urbane preach-ers, and decent bigots-but no viciousdetectives or legitimate terrorists or vic-torious punks or unbending Christians ordespicable hypocrites. From the safety ofthe center, all differences were reduced tomatters of style , while the difficultchoices and grim polarities of real moraland political life were ignored. The firstage of television gave us unity but exactedthe price of uniformity.

Disturbing as these dilemmas are, theynow belong to history. For we stand, pre-pared or not, on the threshold of a secondtelevision age. This new age, with its owninnovative technologies, promises to revo-lutionize our habits as viewers, as con-sumers, and ultimately, as Citizens.

Although cable television itself relieson a technology as old as communicationby wire, the convergence of a group ofnew technologies has made possible an

C H A ib F lS 22 F E B/M A R

entirely new system of telecommunica-tions, one that offers us two-way and mul-tiple -channel cable television, satellitedistribution, video discs, video camerasand recorders, and access to remote com-putels and data banks. These technolo-gies will bring into our homes a vastlyexpanded range of news and entertain-ment programming, diverse informationservices, consumer and financial transac-tion services, public -access program-ming, security systems, and televisionreferenda. Twenty-eight percent of Amer-ican homes now receive some kind ofcable service: that number will double bythe end of the decade. Already in someplaces people are using interactive televi-sion to relax, look, talk, vote, play, shop,inform themselves, express opinions, se-cure their homes, and go to school.State-of-the-art systems like Columbus,Ohio's QUBE will be installed in all themajor cities now being franchised. Theprospect of a "wired society" is quitereal.

What will be the likely effects of thisnew era of telecommunications on Amer-ican democracy? How will it compare tothe first, now seemingly primitive era?What sort of questions ought to be put tothe new industry by the federal govern-ment, the municipal franchisers, and thepublic at large?

At present., the government seems dis-posed to put the new technologies into thehands of an unencumbered private sector.The Federal Communications Commis-sion has consistently argued that cable'smultiple channels make spectrum scar-city -and the regulations that issue fromit-obsolete. The Supreme Court in 1979ruled that the FCC is not justified in re-quiring cable companies to provide publicaccess. And Congress seems inclined tolet "market forces" shape the develop-ment of modern telecommunications.Consequently, America is crossing thethreshold of the new television age with-out reflection or planning; few seemaware, or concerned, that the newtechnologies may profoundly affect thenature of our public life and thus thecharacter of our democracy. Yet presenttendencies suggest the emergence of oneof three distinct scenarios, each with far-reaching political consequences. Wemight call these scenarios "The NewTower of Babel,' "The Corporate BigBrother." and "The Electronic TownMeeting."

The New Tower of Babel: From the per-spective of the viewer, at least, the newtechnologies would appear to decentralizetelevision. In a cable system with fifty or ahundred channels, the responsibility for

selecting services and programming shiftsfrom the supplier to the consumer. Thepassive spectator of homogenized net-work fare is replaced by the active viewer,who creates his own information and en-tertainment programming by choosingamong the hundreds of local and nationalprogram services, pre-recorded discs andtapes, and the various services two-waycable makes available.

But a political price is paid for this newactivism among viewers and the apparentdecentralization of television: Wheretelevision once united the nation, it willnow fragment it. Those it once broughttogether it will now keep apart. In place ofbroadcasting comes the new ideal of"nar-rowcasting." in which each special audi-ence is systematically typed, located, andsupplied with its own special program-ming. Each group, each class, each race,and each religious sect can have its ownprograms, and even its own mini -network.specially tailored to its distinct charac-teristics, views, and needs. The critical

Every parochial voicewill get a hearing, butthe public as a whole

will voice.

communication between groups that is es-sential to the forging of a national cultureand public vision will vanish; in its placewill come a new form of communicationwithin groups, where people need talkonly to themselves and their clones.

This fragmentation is already wellunderway. Among the proliferating newprogram services available today are aHispanic network, several Christian fun-damentalist networks, a black network,and a number of highbrow culture net-works. The U.S. Chamber of Commercerecently announced plans for the Ameri-can Business Network, a private satellitetelevision system. "BizNet" will enablethe business community to organize andto communicate more effectively - withitself.

In the New Tower of Babel, all this pro-gramming diversity and special -interestnarrowcasting replaces communicationwith group narcissism. The tube now be-comes a mirror showing us only ourselves,relentlessly screening out any images thatdo not suit our own special prejudices andgroup norms. Fundamentalists no longerhave to confront Carl Sagan in the courseof a day's television viewing. No longer dospecial -interest groups have to filter theirparticular concerns through a nationalmedium and adjust their message to apluralistic nation. Faction -the scourge

C I i A 23 F E B/ M A R

of democracy feared by its critics fromJames Madison to Walter Lippmann-isgiven the support of technology; com-promise, mutualism, and empathy-in-dispensable to effective democratic con-sensus-are robbed of their nationalmedium. Every parochial voice gets ahearing (though only before the alreadyconverted), and the public as a whole isleft with no voice. No global village, but aTower of Babel: a hundred chatteringmouths bereft of any common language.

The Corporate Big Brother: The Tower ofBabel may be a suitable metaphor for theheterogeneity and pluralism of the newmedia as they appear to the consumer; butthe viewer's perspective is partial, andprobably illusory. To examine moderntelecommunications at the supplier end isto wonder whether Big Brother may proveto be the more apt metaphor for televi-sion's second age.

As abundant in number as these newchannels and program services seem,they are rapidly falling under conglomer-ate control. The potential for leviathanprofits from the new industries is drawingthe attention of the communicationsgiants. A few entrepreneurial upstarts -such as Ted Turner-may remain on thescene for a while, but they almost cer-tainly will be absorbed or conquered. Di-versity at one end of the cable may mask

monopoly at the other.If this picture of a few corporate elites

playing the role of Big Brother under thecamouflage of pluralistic special -interestprogramming seems exaggerated, itshould be recalled that cable is a capital -intensive industry. The extraordinarycosts of wiring America for cable or leas-ing transponder space on satellites sug-gest that only the most powerful corpora-tions are in a position to sustain long-terminterests in the cable industry.

Among these powerful corporationswill be the networks, which are alreadyactively moving into cable programming.ABC, in partnership with Westinghouse,will launch two cable news services tocompete with Ted Turner's Cable NewsNetwork, a property in which CBS hasexpressed interest. Westinghouse's ownposition in cable is formidable: Not onlydoes the company have several other pro-gram services on its drawing boards, but itwill have enough transponders (fourteen)and cable subscribers (1.6 million,through its subsidiary, Teleprompter) toguarantee some success. And now that thegovernment has lifted restrictions onAT&T, that company will álso be' in acommanding position. Even without itslocal subsidiaries, AT&T has researchand development capabilities that couldallow it to dominate videotex services.

Westinghouse, AT&T, Warner Com-munications, Time Inc., CBS, RCA,

ABC: If all the new media are controlledby these few corporate interests, we can-not expect genuine political diversity or atruly free flow of information. Behind allthose channels may eventually stand asingle, prudent censor. Even if BigBrother is not watching us, we may findourselves watching Big Brother.

And it does seem likely that if we arewatching Big Brother, he will eventuallybegin to keep an eye on us. The very fea-tures of the new technology that make itversatile and exciting also make it fright-eningly vulnerable to abuse. WarnerAmex's QUBE system scans subscribers'homes every six seconds, recording whatsubscribers watch, their answers to pollquestions, the temperature in their houses(for those who have signed up for energymanagement systems), and even (for sub-scribers who buy home security services)their comings and goings. Cable systemsoffering transaction services such asbanking and shopping will accumulate de-tailed computer files on all subscribers. Atpresent, there are no safeguards to pre-vent the abuse of such records, other thanthe good will of cable operators. (Re-sponding to these concerns, WarnerAmex issued in December a "Code of Pri-Jacy" under which the company promisesto keep confidential all information itgathers on individual subscribers. Thelegal force of such promises remains to betested.)

When the TV Set Turns Itself On

TELEVISION SETS in Covington,Kentucky, sometimes takeir owners by surprise. The sets

ght be sitting quietly in anmpty room when, suddenly,

they switch themselves on, tune in to acertain channel, and hike their volumeso high that no one in the house couldfail to pay attention.

Covingtonians don't mind the intru-sions, however; in fact, they've signedup for them. Their unusually willfultelevision sets are hooked up to theEmergency Alert System offered sub-scribers by Storer Cable Communica-tions, the town's cable operator. Coving-ton relies on its Emergency Alert Sys-tem (devised by Tocom, a leading manu-facturer of two-way cable hardware) towarn residents of approaching tor-nadoes.

Tocom's technology is impressive,and suggests other equally benevolentapplications. It can warn coastal resi-

dents of hurricanes, alert farmers tofrost, or summon volunteers to fires.Presumably, the Emergency Alert Sys-tem-which is now being installed incommunities around the country - willsave lives.

Like any technology, however, thisone is benevolent only in benevolenthands. Transfer it to a totalitarian stateand, instead of a device for convenienceand public safety, you have one of themost potent and frightening politicaltools imaginable. George Orwell didimagine it, of course, in 1984, in whichBig Brother could at will project hisimage and voice onto television screensin every subject's home.

Orwell surely would have recognizedthe dark side of the new media: Theawesome capabilities of two-way cablesystems mean that 1984 could arriveright on schedule. This is not to say itwill; only that the development of Or -well's thought -controlled society no

longer awaits technology.Orwell fully understood the signifi-

cance of a direct line from the state to thecitizen. Both he and Hannah Arendtrecognized that successful reign by ter-ror and domination depended on thegovernment's ability to reach deep intothe private lives of its subjects; on isolat-ing them one from another; on makingtheir relation to the state the preeminentone in their lives, and on constructing aconsistent and seamless-no matterhow false-version of reality to ratio-nalize the political order. For a govern-ment intent on such goals, two-way ca-ble, linked to computers, is the appro-priate technology.

A system modeled on Tocom's Emer-gency Alert could offer the state an awe-somely effective means of intimidation.Should a government want to make surepeople were paying attention to its prop-aganda, it could afterwards ask ques-tions to which citizens would respond by

CHANN E LS 24. FEB/MAR

John Wicklein has elaborated on thedangers this new technology poses to pri-vacy and liberty in Electronic Night-mare: The New Communications andFreedom. He argues that the new com-munications technology will give a fewpowerful corporations dangerous instru-ments of social and political control and,should democracy fail, of repression.Total television spells total control, andtotal control in the wrong hands spellstotalitarianism. Indeed, can it be wise toplace such information and power even inthe "right" hands? Either way, the spec-ter of Big Brother skulks in the shadows,just beyond the glowing tube. The scenar-io of the corporate Big Brother makes uspawns of a technology that controls useven as its versatility and diversity let usthink we have mastered it.

Both this and the Tower of Babel sce-nario, for all their differences, are equallyinimical to democracy. Babel and BigBrother alike subvert citizenship by deny-ing the significance of viewers as publicpersons with national identities and pub-lic obligations.

The Tower of Babel subordinates com-monality and public vision to personalchoice, private preference, and individualinterests. It transforms the most potentmedium of public communication theworld has known into an instrument ofexclusively private concerns. Ironically, itprivatizes us even as it imperils our pri-

vacy. It takes us seriously as consumers,spectators, clients, and buyers and sell-ers, but it ignores us as citizens. It serviceslust, religious zealotry, special interests,and individual needs efficiently andpluralistically: It helps us relax or playgames, exercise or buy goods, pray or

(Continued on page 62)

Cable takes us seriouslyas buyers, sellers, and

spectators, butit ignores us as citizens.

pressing buttons on their keypads. In-deed, the state could interrogate citizensregularly on a range of subjects, andstore their responses in permanent com-puter files. With little trouble or ex-pense, everyone's home could be trans-formed into a quasi -public place in easyreach of the state.

Just as misuse of two-way cable canstrip away citizens' privacy, it can also,paradoxically, enforce solitude-an im-portant goal for a despotic government.The state could effectively isolate sub-jects from one another by requiring themto perform, at home, as many social andeconomic functions as possible usingtwo-way cable. If, as Edmund Burkesaid, men achieve political power onlyby "acting in concert," a people cut offfrom one another in this way would havethat much less power.

An important by-product of a systemin which citizens conducted most oftheir business by cable would be themasses of data the state could accumu-late. Computers would record each indi-vidual's finances, his purchases andreading preferences, the contents of his

"electronic mail," and even his comingsand goings (which cable systemsmonitor today as part of "home secur-ity" systems). These facts could becombined with medical and employmentrecords to create a dossier on each citi-zen. A French scholar recently re-minded an Aspen Institute conferencethat, had Víchy France been wired andcomputerized the way some Americancommunities are today, Hitler wouldhave been able to round up the Jews atthe push of a button.

One of the most difficult tasks facing atotalitarian government -besides keep-ing track of its subjects-is censorship.To check the flow of dangerous truths,censors must keep a vigilant watch overscores of editorial offices and printingpresses. And information already inprint requires wholesale destruction oran elaborate cut -and -paste operationlike the one Orwell's Winston Smithpainstakingly performed at the Ministryof Truth.

But Winston Smith's job of "updat-ing" the past would have been a snap ifprinted information had reached citi-

zens of Oceania by means of videotex.No medium has ever been quite so easyto censor. All videotex material mustpass through a computer that can be in-structed to flag or excise automaticallyall offending words, names, and ideas.Effortlessly, the contents of "electronicnewspapers" can be sanitized. In a soci-ety that relies heavily on computers tostore information, the truth becomeseven more vulnerable. Any data bankcan be revised continually to reflect thecurrent needs of the government; when asociety depends on data banks for in-formation about the past, for instance,its past becomes mutable.

The fact that such technology existsdoes not necessarily mean it will ever beexploited in these ways. Yet totalitarian-ism is firmly established on the politicallandscape of our times; we would befoolish to expect it to disappear. For thatreason alone, we should not take toolightly the emergence of a technologythat serves totalitarianism so well.

MICHAEL POLLAN

Michael Pollan LS senior editor of Chan-nels.

C H AINN E I_ s 25 F E B/ M A R

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CHANNELS

The changes brought about by new communications technologieswill reach far beyond television to touch almost every sphere of life. In this

exclusive report, beginning a series, the editors of Channelsexamine some of the changes already underway, in areas as diverse as agriculture

__ and Hollywood, the American language and money.

HOLLYWOOD`Entering an era of unparalleled

.., demand.'AS Caesar once preserved his empire by al-

lowing his subjects to observe their own reli-gions, the grand dukes of Hollywood are nowmaneuvering to maintain their audiences' al-legiance by accommodating the shift to homeviewing. The growing tendency of audiencesto stay at home may jeopardize the survival ofneighborhood theaters, but Hollywood is dis-covering that it's more a blessing than a curse.

Where once a studio had only movie the-aters or the networks as customers for itsproduct, there is now a whole new set of mar-kets. Michael Rollens, a vice president at In-ternational Creative Management, describesthe change: "Until a few years ago, all my timewent into dealing with the three networks, thengetting programs into syndication. Two yearsago it became obvious that we had to give moreattention to pay cable, home video, pay -per -view television, Home Box Office, Showtime,and The Entertainment Channel. There usedto be fifteen or twenty buyers: now we're intouch with more than a hundred."

Seven million Americans spent close to $2billion in 1981 for pay ,television, mostly towatch movies they used to see at their neigh-borhood theaters. Alan Hirschfield, thechairman of Twentieth -Century Fox, thinksthey'll be spending three times that amountfive years from now, and he sees boom timesahead. He recently told The Wall Street Jour-nol, "We are now entering an era of unparal-leled demand, equivalent to the growth of thefilm business in its early years and the entiregrowth of television."

But the new technologies mean much morethan new markets for Hollywood's shows.

-= They will change almost every aspect of thebusiness, from the way movies get distributed,to how they're made, and even what they are.

Illustrations by Jo Teodorescu

A NEB WORLD

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Already, the existence of pay television hasincreased the value of studio libraries. Oldfilms used to sit in syndication vaults until alocal television station decided to show them(often at 2:30 in the morning). But last yearalone pay services such as Showtime and HBOspent about $300 million buying the cablerights to movies that had already played thetheater circuit. HBO is reported ready to buythe rights to seven hundred more films thisyear; it recently wrapped up a deal with Co-lumbia Pictures for the rights to all that com-pany's films produced between January 1981and April 1984.

Most studios are looking beyond the limitedpay -television market to seek further profitsfrom the boom in video -cassette sales andrentals. (As if to encourage them, the Elec-tronic Industries Association of Japan an-nounced that, during one period last year,

We may soonsee pay -per -1 'ieu, premierereleases ofmovies.

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CHAWELS 26 FEB/MAR

The pillar ofHollywood isbeing shaped

by satellitesand

computers.

7

Japanese factories produced more video -cas-sette recorders than television sets.) Manypeople would prefer to pay a few dollars to renta video cassette of the film they want to see,rather than rely on the programming andscheduling whims of the pay-cable service.MGM/CBS Video is offering renters a "first -run home -video season" of films that have justcome out of the movie houses but haven't beenshown on cable or the networks.

These new ways of using the televisionscreen to show movies have made it possiblefor the video division at Paramount to growfrom a standing start slightly more than twoyears ago to $30 million a year in video -cas-sette sales today. The video division's man-date: to create and develop new programmingfor video and to distribute existing programs tothe home market. Mel Harris, its president,says: "We're marketing aggressively to payTV, basic cable, video cassettes, and discs.The growth is so rapid that it can't even be putin percentage terms. Instead of trying to figureout which of the many formats will survive,we're trying to make our shows available topeople no matter which technology they mayhave."

The cable rush has prompted Paramount tojoin Universal and Time Inc. as part owners ofthe USA Network. Walt Disney Productionshas made its own move by hooking up withGroup W to create The Disney Channel, whichwill provide children's and family entertain-ment. But the studios aren't the only oneslooking toward pay television for a rosier fu-ture. Big independent production companiessuch as Tandem/TAT (One Day at a Time),MTM (Lou Grant), and Lorimar (Dallas) arealso gearing up to help meet cable's program-ming needs.

Everyone would like to think that made -for -cable programs will be more innovative andoriginal than their network counterparts-there is much talk about new serials, newplays, concerts, and theater, new varietyshows, new made -for -pay -television movies.The audience that watches pay television isolder than the one that frequents moviehouses; it is staying at home not just for con-venience but also because it simply doesn't likethe movies offered at the neighborhood the-ater. Indeed, ICM's Rollens says that the kindof movies that will appeal to pay television'solder audience are often rejected by studiosbecause they're not thought suitable for youngmoviegoers. So as the market changes, thecharacter of the movies themselves maychange. Cable offers moviemakers a chance towin back audiences they've all but lost.

There's another, more important reasonwhy programs for cable are likely to look dif-ferent: The pay services don't have nearly asmuch money to spend on programming as the

networks do. While a network might be ex-pected to pay $850,000 for a one -hour varietyshow, cable does not like to spend more than$250,000. No one yet knows whether qualityprograms can be produced so cheaply and, if itis possible, whether it can happen in Hol-lywood. The discipline imposed by smallerbudgets might spark a burst of creativity, but itcould also result in boring, ill -produced pro-grams.

Hollywood may remain a film town, but itsfuture is being shaped today by satellites andcomputers-technologies once thought tohave little if any relation to the movies. Cableitself didn't really get off the ground untilHBO's Gerald Levin had the daring idea towed Hollywood movies with cable and satel-lites. Now, HBO has become not only a majorbuyer of Hollywood movies, but also an impor-tant source of capital for production.

With the invention of computer decoders, anew dimension of pay television came intoexistence: pay -per -view television, which al-lows cable operators to transmit and bill sub-scribers for special once -only cablecasts ofevents such as the Leonard-Hearns fight. Theextraordinary success of that event has Hol-lywood promoters dreaming about the dollarsto be made from pay -per -view premiere re-leases of movies-even before they hit thetheaters or go into cassette distribution.

Satellites are changing almost all the rulesgoverning the distribution game. For instance,Paramount uses satellites to send such showsas Solid Gold and Entertainment Tonight di-rect to local stations, bypassing the networks.Independent stations have set up a loose con-federation, called Operation Prime Time,which pools money to buy programs directlyfrom Hollywood. According to Dick Block, aconsultant, this arrangement could dislodgethe middlemen - the three networks and thepay -television services as well.

If Hollywood is increasingly interested inexploiting new technologies to open up newmarkets, it has been much slower to put themto use in moviemaking itself. Roger Corman'sNew World Pictures recently announced that itwas making an all -video movie (to be trans-ferred to film for theatrical release), but themajor studios seem content to let such vi-sionaries as Francis Ford Coppola and GeorgeLucas, in San Francisco, and Nicholas Neg-roponte, in Cambridge, take the lead in learn-ing how to use new video and electronictechnologies to change the way movies aremade. Coppola and Lucas both intend to gointo all -video production after they completetheir current films.

For the moment, Lucas is concentrating hisefforts pn computer animation and special ef-fects. Computers are now capable of generat-ing lifelike images of people that seem to

Video offerspossibilitiesJO,- developingentirely newforms of enter-tainment.

: H A Nw E I. S 27 FEB/MAR

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A NEW WORLDspeak. They can also create synthetic land-scapes that could be used in conjunction withlive -action taping to eliminate much costly lo-cation shooting. Coppola, for his part, wantsto transform the filmmaking process itself, bydeveloping all -electronic movie production,from the first draft of a script on a word pro-cessor through the final electronic video-tapeedit. Though Coppola still relies on thirty-five -millimeter film, he videotapes storyboards and rehearsals in order to mock up arough version of his film before shooting asingle frame of costly film stock. The experi-ment has been plagued by a few bugs, butCoppola is convinced that the techniques he'sdeveloping will eventually eliminate the waste-ful and expensive filmmaking convention ofshooting numerous takes for every scene. Atthe Massachusetts Institute of Technology,Negroponte is working to discover and extendthe limits of video technology itself. Hisstate-of-the-art "Movie Maps" allow viewersto use computer -controlled video discs to"drive" through a pre -photographed town viaa route of their own choosing.

But if video offers possibilities for develop -

REAL ESTATE`Cable affects property values.'

HE IMPORTANCE of today's cable -franchising activ-

The mostdesirable

places to litrewill be thosewith the best

cable systems.

ity may well be told in a few years when thequality of communications facilities helps de-termine where people choose to live. To somedegree it already does.

Manhattan provides a cogent example. Theborough is divided by two cable installations, aTeleprompter system serving the upper half,an ATC system the lower half. After ten yearsof operation, it is abundantly clear that thelower half has more and better program ser-vices and is, in an electronic sense, culturallyricher than the upper half. Some day, whenManhattan's apartment shortage eases, thatdiscrepancy may be reflected in rents andproperty values, especially on the streetswhose center stripes denote the boundary be-tween the two cable areas. All else being equal,the ATC cable service makes living on thesouth side of West 79th Street a better dealthan living on the north side.

The worth of real estate has always beenaffected by such considerations as the qualityof schools and medical services, police protec-tion, and the availability of shopping and rec-reational facilities. New developments in tech-nology permit cable systems to improve allthese services and to upgrade, besides, thepolitical life of the community, if only by bring-ing town meetings into the home.

It follows that the most desirable places to

ing entirely new forms of entertainment, or forchanging what a movie is and how it is pro-duced, Hollywood so far seems content to lookfor new ways of cashing in on establishedforms. This could in the end be a collossalmistake. For all the excitement in tinsel townabout cable and new programming, no one yetseems to have come to grips with what may bethe most important development of all: Ameri-cans now spend almost three times as much onelectronic games as they do at the movie boxoffice. At Warner Communications, that giantof the entertainment industry, the biggestearner is now the Atari division, which makesAsteroids and Space Invaders. The morepeople spend their television time using com-puter -generated missiles to shoot down legionsof aliens, the less often they're likely to watchStar Wars or Gone with the Wind. Technologyis changing entertainment so quickly that achallenge to Hollywood's supremacy couldpop up when and where it's least expected.

MICHAEL SCHWARZ

live will be the neighborhoods and townswhose cable operations afford home securityservices, medical alert systems, shopping athome, continuing -education programs, accessto information banks, videotex services, elec-tronic mail, and a range of cultural andcommunity -affairs programming. The risingcosts of energy make it prudent to allow com-munications to take the place of transportationwhenever it can.

In contrast, real-estate values can only beadversely affected, over a period of time, bycable systems unwilling to provide much morethan an entertainment service.

The genius of cable is that it can be a morelocal medium than broadcast television orradio. It can serve single, small communitiesinstead of vast metropolitan areas or clustersof towns. Indeed, the character of a neighbor-hood or town - its cohesiveness and spirit -could be shaped in the coming years by theintegration of cable communications into thelife of the community.

A house with a modern kitchen will sell fast-er and at a higher price than a house with anoutmoded one. The quality of cable servicemay matter in much the same way, except forthis: The purchaser of an old house may investin modernizing thekitchen, but he could not,if he wished to, remodel his cable service.An inferior cable system makes victims ofall property owners in its realm.

LES BROWN

:--:

C H A VN F I. j 28 FEB/MAR

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A NEW WORLD

THE DISABLED`Communications is the greatequalizer'

N MANY WAYS, deaf people were better off eightyyears ago. The mail came ten times a day, onlya sliver of the population had a new inventioncalled the telephone, and television hadscarcely been imagined. It was not until thetelephone entered general use and, several de-cades later, the television set became ubiqui-tous, that the deaf found themselves pro-foundly isolated in a hearing world.

For the deaf, the emerging second genera-tion of communications technology promisesto solve the problems created by the first. Vid-eotex-printed communication displayed ontelevision sets-should allow deaf people tocommunicate easily in a written form onceagain. "When electronic mail is widespread,and we've come to depend on it, the disparitybetween deaf people and the rest of us will besubstantially reduced," says Charles Jackson,a partner in the Washington communicationsconsulting firm of Shooshan & Jackson. Thatdisparity is already fading in the case of televi-sion viewing: Inexpensive decoding devicesnow enable conventional sets to displayotherwise invisible captions.

Not only the deaf, but all of America's fortymillion seriously disabled people have much togain from the new communications technol-ogy. Electronic banking, for instance, is muchmore than a newfangled convenience for abusy executive: It spells the difference be-tween banking at home in front of a televisionset and not banking at all. When banking,shopping, sending electronic letters, and visit-ing "libraries" by way of two-way cable areprevalent, economic and social links can berestored to the disabled.

One of the most important of those links willbe with employment, according to RichardByrne, associate dean of the University ofSouthern California's Annenberg School ofCommunications. Byrne sees the communica-

The secondgeneration of

communica-tions MIT

solve theproblemscreated 0,

the first.

tions revolution as "the great equalizer" formany disabled people. "Computer technologydoes not require physical strength or mobility,"Byrne points out. "Input and output are ac-cessible with one finger." Using computerterminals, disabled people could fill most "in-formation age" jobs at home.

Recent advances in biocybernetics meanthat even people whose disabilities put stan-dard computer keyboards out of reach will beable to participate. For the blind, a Kurzweilreading machine adapted for computer termi-nals can reproduce computer output in verbalform, and practical systems for "voice typ-ing" - machines that convert speech intotype -are not far off. Ocular typing will bringcomputer terminals into reach even for thequadriplegic: An experimental machine calledthe Optocom follows the eye as it fixes onnumbers and letters displayed on a televisionscreen, and then types them out.

The mentally disabled, too, can expect ben-efits from the new technologies. As Byrnepoints out, "People are being empowered withabilities beyond their common experience andinnate capacities." Today's supermarketcheckouts, with their optical scanners and mi-croprocessors, offer one vivid example.Cashiers can tot up prices, give correctchange, and monitor inventory, even if theydon't know how to read numbers, let alonehow to add or subtract them. A mildly retardedor brain -damaged person, too, can performjobs well beyond his mental capabilities -bookkeeping, various kinds of clericalwork -by following a computer program spe-cially designed to reduce complex proceduresto a sequence of simple steps. Similar pro-grams could also substantially improve theeducation of the mentally handicapped, sinceteaching them demands long hours of repeti-tion and deep reservoirs of patience, both ofwhich computers will uncomplainingly supply.

"When a physically or mentally disabledperson learns to use the new technologies, heor she can move from what I call the 'disabilityeconomy' to the information economy," Byrneasserts.

While the opportunities held out to the dis-abled by an information -based economy areindeed impressive, by no means are they in-sured. Some benefits can be expected to de-velop willy-nilly, as when two-way cablemakes various electronic transactions avail-able to all of us. Other benefits will requiremore deliberate action. Yet whether or notsubstantial numbers of disabled people actu-ally make the move from the disability econ-omy to the information economy is no longer aquestion of technology but of politics: Whopays? And who decides?

MICHAEL POLLAN

People arebeing em-pou'ered he -jowl theirinnatecapacities.

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MONEY`It will scarcely exist as we know it.'

INCE THE DAY a network sold its first advertising fence: The technologies that make home bank-; spot, money and television have been insepar- ing possible are changing not only the way

able. But it wasn't until recently that people banks do business, but the business of bankingcould switch on their sets and actually watch itself. According to one banker, "The newtheir own money. Not only can television technologies are making it impossible for us toviewers now get the news about their bank survive merely as a bank. More and moreaccounts, but they can also transfer funds from these days I feel like my business is reallyone account to another, pay bills, keep track of telecommunications."mortgages and loan payments, and instantly Telecommunications'' Anyone still hookedcompare what was spent with what was bud- on the quaint notion that banking is reallygeted-all without touching a single piece of about money should think again: "The bank -paper. ing system is no longer primarily a financial

Electronic home banking promises an end to intermediary in society," says Pierre Du Vair, abothersome trips to the local bank. No more senior vice president at Irving Trust. "That's

;: waiting on line for the privilege of getting your rapidly disappearing, and we're becoming a: own money. No more checks that bounce. And services business." How well banks can com-

no more frantic searching for receipts at tax pete in this new business is one of the greatestIMtime: all the necessary information can be re- challenges facing the industry in the 1980s.trieved electronically from the bank's com- The information services that banks nowputer. provide are made possible by what the French

The convenience of fingertip banking has call "telematics" -the use of computers inalready been sampled by residents of San Di- conjunction with telecommunications. Tele-ego, Omaha, St. Paul, Coral Gables, Colum- matics may have been unimaginable to the» bus, and many other cities. But banking by green -visored banker who once kept his ac -television involves much more than conven- counts in a handwritten ledger; by now it's a

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group of French agricultural organizations,will render all these chores, and many others,as easy as pushing buttons on a keypad.

"Telagri," as the test is called, will ulti-mately supply two hundred different kinds ofinformation and transaction services both toindividual farmers and members of larger ri t'rd"evcooperatives. Planners expect in the end that Program inthe program will increase French agricultural Dunce isproductivity. elpetted to

Last fall, the hundreds of farmers participat- increase agri-ing in the test had their houses outfitted with culturalterminals. These would normally cost $400, productivitybut Intelmatique installed them for nothing.Though farmers don't yet know how or howmuch they will be billed for "accessing" theinformation they want, they've been assured itwill be cheap.

It should be simple, too. One Intelmatiquespokesman explained that using the system isvirtually foolproof, as long as you can read andwrite. Converters built into the system canautomatically translate any data bank's infor-mation from the various computer languagesinto French.

It was the Farmer's Almanac, 200 years ago,that first recognized the need for more thanseeds, soil, and fertilizer-the need for goodinformation-to produce a good carrot. The

system may never match thecharm of the almanac, but at least its weatherforecasts should be a bit more dependable.

J

FARMING`Doing the chores by keypad.'

pLOUGHING, sowiNG,and harvesting will always re-quire physical exertion. But some remarkablysophisticated new tools of the farmer's tradeshould soon unburden him of other jobs. InFrance, where Intelmatique has begun a five-year videotex experiment, farmers won't haveto leave home when they want to buy feed andfertilizer, or discover the species of carrot thatgrows best in their soil, or learn how muchrainfall to expect this summer. Terminals intheir homes, hooked by telephone line to a

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A NEW WORLDbusiness that banks can't help but get into ifthey want to survive.

Banks' main customers are their multi -mil-lion -dollar corporate accounts, which have in-terests or subsidiaries all over the world. To dobusiness profitably, they need to transmit andreceive billions of bits of data-about inven-tories, prices, sale agreements, purchases.Most important, they need to deploy their ownmoney efficiently, for there is nothing sowasteful as money that sits idle when it couldbe invested somewhere making profits. Themore money involved, the greater a company'sneed to keep track of hundreds of daily trans-actions that affect its accounts.

With telematics, large transactions are ac-complished almost instantaneously. Money, atleast as most people understand it, scarcelyexists: Bills are paid by the moving of numbersfrom one computer's memory to another. If aFrench company, for instance, needs to pay anAmerican firm $50 million, the transaction willprobably be effected through an internationalpayments mechanism called SWIFT (Societyof Worldwide Interbank Financial Transac-tions). On its journey across the Atlantic, themoney "travels" through several central com-puters, but the entire electronic voyage can becompleted in less than fifteen seconds. Tenyears ago, the same transaction might havetaken a day. If that doesn't sound like much ofa savings, consider the interest earned on that$50 million in the course of that one extraday-about $20,000.

When bankers say the nature of their busi-ness is changing, they're usually talking abouttheir use of computer networks and telecom-munications to provide customers with elec-tronic cash -management services. Since com-panies -and, increasingly, individuals-de-pend on such information to make the most oftheir cash reserves, a bank must be able to tellcustomers more than its competitors can, andmore quickly. "It's no longer sufficient for ussimply to give our customers credit and debitinformation first thing in the morning," saysIrving Trust's du Vair. "Now they want itthroughout the day so they know exactlywhat's happening with their accounts at anygiven time."

These services may simplify business for abank's customers, but ironically they make lifeharder for the bank itself. Before telematics,banks made most of their money by being asource of funds: They loaned money at a ratehigher than the one at which they borrowed it,and pocketed the difference. Now, however,the speed and accuracy of cash -managementservices give banks' clients precisely the in-formation they need -everything from eco-nomic indicators to data concerning their ownaccounts-to keep their money working for

them continuously. And that usually meanskeeping their money out of bank accounts.Companies can reduce their bank balances tomake more profitable investments (in an over-night fund, for instance), or they can reducethe amount they've borrowed (by consolidat-ing money from other accounts to retire debt).Either way, the bank loses. That's why, insteadof making money from their money, banks arenow charging fees for the computer- and com-munications -services they provide theirclients.

These developments wouldn't worry thebanks nearly as much as they do if banks werethe only game in town. But telematics hasmade it profitable for other companies to offertheir customers the same financial servicesthat banks alone used to provide.

Even more distressing is the fact that theirnew competitors aren't constrained by federallaws such as the one prohibiting interstatebanking. So while Citibank, for example, canoffer cash machines only to its customers inNew York, American Express has a network oftwenty -four-hour electronic terminals thatdispense traveler's checks to American Ex-press card -holders nationwide. And theWarner Amex two-way cable system allowscustomers to shop by cable and bill their creditcards. In addition, it can offer them the ser-vices of American Express/Shearson (for-merly Shearson Loeb Rhoades, the securitiesfirm), which makes it possible to buy and sellstock using a television screen, two-way cable,a home computer, and a credit card.

Sears is another formidable new competitor:With twenty-four million credit-card custom-ers buying from its stores and catalogue, theretailer is a gigantic lending institution in itsown right. What makes the company morefearsome still is its developing capability as acomplete financial-services delivery system.Bankers must have lost several hours' sleepwhen the Sears chairman announced, "Ourgoal is to become the largest consumer -orient-ed financial -service entity."

Perhaps the greatest single step towardachieving this goal .was Sears's acquisition lastyear of Dean Witter Reynolds, a brokeragehouse specializing in cash -management ser-vices and money-market funds. These fundswere invented in the late seventies by broker-age houses, which recognized that the value ofmoney deposited in non -interest -bearingchecking accounts or savings passbookscouldn't keep pace with inflation. So they of-fered people a low -risk investment that banks,prevented by law from selling securities,couldn't match. Deposit your money with us,they said, and we will not only guarantee you amuch higher rate of interest than you can get ata bank, but we'll also let you write checks

One bankersays: ".loreand morethese days,feel like mybusiness isreallyinfrnynation."

When itcomes tofinancial ser -rices, banksare no longerthe only gamein tou'n.

1

CHAiNN F I.s 31 FEB/MAR

A NEW WORLDagainst the value of your investment. It was aservice made possible by the availability of thesame large -volume, low-cost data-processingtechnologies used by banks to keep track ofmoney movements around the world. Exceptthis time, such companies as Merrill Lynch,Shearson, and Dean Witter were controllingthe flow of funds, not the banks.

In the few years since money-market fundswere started, their assets have soared to some$184 billion -most of which used to be depos-

Electmnic ited in banks. Banks now hold one-third less of

banking the nation's total assets than they did immedi-

raises many ately following World War II. Indeed, it would

difficult not be farfetched to attribute the recent stringof savings bank failures to the money-market

questions of funds, and to the technology that made thempublic policy. feasible.

The Sears/Dean Witter partnership couldoffer a home -delivery network allowing theSears customer to buy from the company'scatalogue and pay immediately by having acomputer debit his money-market fund. Searsmay also offer its card -holders the opportunityto purchase small -denomination notes thatwould pay interest-an ingenious techniquefor raising capital when you consider that some73 percent of all Americans involved annuallyin stock transactions of $25,000 or more areSears card -holders. No wonder Citibank'schairman, Walter Wriston, complains that"new competitors unhindered by archaic lawsare rapidly taking over the financial-servicesbusiness."

Wriston has a story he likes to tell aboutEddie Rickenbacker's grandmother, who wasconcerned to learn that Rickenbacker in-tended to fly fighter planes against the Ger-mans. If you must go, she advised her grand-son, "fly slow and stay close to the ground."

Wriston and other bankers argue that cur-rent government regulations constitute the

TREESThe paper blizzard is abating.'

SOMEWHERE a tree stands that will still be standingin the year 2000 and that will owe its longevityto developments in the electronic environ-ment. Each time a newsroom or businessoffice converts from typewriters to wordprocessors, paper consumption is reduced an-nually by the ton. Computers, videotex, elec-tronic mail, electronic bulletin boards, elec-tronic "yellow pages," and the various formsof video publishing also lessen the demand forpaper. Thus the paradox of Time Inc., pushingforward on the video front when one of itsbiggest divisions has been forest products.

The paper blizzard is abating, as the printedword increasingly goes electric. When asked

modern banking industry's equivalent of fly-ing slow and staying close to the ground. Theregulations must be removed, they say, so theycan fight competitors on equal terms.

Ironically, some banking regulations arenow being eliminated just as the changes in theindustry are moving it into new regulatorythickets-those of the Federal Communica-tions Commission, the Justice Department,the Securities and Exchange Commission.Perhaps deregulation is only proper; however,numerous issues remain unresolved, includ-ing, notably, those of personal privacy andlegal liability (who's responsible, for instance,if a bank's computer fails to carry out an in-struction to pay a bill?).

Clearly, for all the conveniences electronicbanking offers consumers and corporations, itraises many public -policy questions. Already,billions of bits of financial data travel millionsof miles daily on private communications net-works, crossing countless national boundariesin their excursions from one computer mem-ory to another. These aren't just abstract ex-changes of electrons; they're real financialtransactions with resounding economic im-pact, both domestic and international.

Telematics makes it possible for corpora-tions to exploit fluctuating exchange rates, oreven to circumvent a government's domesticeconomic policy by electronically moving itsfunds abroad to more hospitable environ-ments. Technology, perhaps more than ever, isthe most powerful ally of the corporate freemarket.

We are only now beginning to glimpse themeaning of banking in a world of telematics.But one thing is already certain: If ever it weretrue that time equals money, that aphorismneeds now to be amended. In electronic bank-ing, information equals money.

MICHAEL SCHWARZ

for a comment on the threat to the paper indus-try, an executive of the St. Regis Paper Com-pany would not yield to pessimism. "It's pos-sible," he said, "that everyone will still wanthard copy." Hard copy is the term for a print-out of computer text.

SECTION DESIGNED BY BARBARA SANDERS

AUDREY BERMAN

Time Inc.paradoxicallymoves, for-m and on thevideo frontwhen one ofits big divi-sions is forestproducts.

"'I:I:IiI:I?IflililiI:GI:I:I:I:I;I;IIIIIfIiI:I?I:I?I?I:I:I:I;I?IIIII;I?ITiI:I?I:fI:I:I:IIIiIiI?I?I:I:I:I:I:I;IiI:IfIfIiI:I?I:I:Ia:I;I:IiI;IiIfIiIil;Iaa:I?I:IihI?IfIfI:I I?I I:I::::IIIfI:eáIII""k

:HAib E I.S 32 FEB/MAR

GROUP

WESTINGHOUSE BROADCASTING COMPANY. INC. KDKA-TV KDKA and WPNT. Pittsburgh KFWB. Los Angeles KJQY San Diego KOAX. Dallas/Ft. Worth KODA. Houston KOSI. Denver KPIX. San Francisco KYW-TVand KYW. Philadelphia WBZ-TVand WBZ. Boston WIND Chicago WINS.New York WIZ -TV Baltimore WPCQ-TV Charlotte WOWO. Fort Wayne Clearview Cable TV Filmation Associates Group W Productions Group W SatelliteCommunications Group W Television Sales Home Theater Network Muzak Radio Advertising Representatives Teleprompter Corporation TVSC

The Local Station that Could

In Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, WNEP reachedthe top by navigating the difficult passage

from one age of television to the next.

THE YEAR WAS 1948 and televisionhad not yet arrived in rural

theastern Pennsylvania, a hillyion of coal mines and factoriesunched around the cities of

Scranton and Wilkes-Barre. All the VHFfrequencies in the area had been seized bystations in New York and Philadelphia,100 miles away, whose signals did notquite reach local antennas.

Greg Mitchell is the author of the recentlypublished book, Truth and Conse-quences: Seven Who Would Not Be Si-lenced.

by Greg Mitchell

With no television reception, businesswas bad for John Walson, an appliancedealer in Mahanoy City, thirty-five milessouth of Wilkes-Barre. Try as he might,Walson could not sell his big, boxy televi-sion sets to people who knew that thesurrounding Blue Mountains would pre-vent them from getting a watchable pic-ture. So Walson erected a seventy-foottelevision pole on top of one of the moun-tain ridges, and placed antennas on top ofthe pole. Then he strung some armysurplus wire from the antennas, throughthe trees, to his appliance store in town.He hooked up several television sets tothe wires and put them in his store win-dow. Soon the residents of Mahanoy City

began to congregate in front of Walson'sstore to watch the fuzzy pictures beamedin from Philadelphia. Walson offeredthem a deal: If they bought a set, he wouldhook them up to his reception system,too.

This was probably the first cable opera-tion in America. Walson has been cited bythe National Cable Television Associa-tion and the U.S. Congress as the "father'of cable."

By 1951 several other cables had beeninstalled in the region. When, in 1953,three stations in Scranton and Wilkes-Barre finally began operating - all onUHF frequencies-they built their ownprimitive cable systems to carry their sig-nals beyond the surrounding mountainsto outlying townships. For two decades,cable helped the stations enormously.Now it has come back to haunt them.

The reason: More than 62 percent of thehomes in the area are now hooked up tocable (compared to 28 percent nationally),

C H A INN F I. S 34 F E B/ M A It

Illustrations by Mel Furukawa

and cable now does much more than ex-tend local broadcast signals. Local sta-tions find themselves competing for view-ers with Home Box Office and ESPN,and competing for advertising dollars withhalf a dozen sophisticated stations pipedin from outside. As more homes hook upto cable every month, the threat becomesmore menacing still.

"In the past ten years we've lost onethird of our audience to the outside," saysDavid Baltimore, president of WBRE-TV,an NBC affiliate in Wilkes-Barre. "We'vegone past the future -shock of cable here.It's a problem others will be facing soon."

Of Scranton/Wilkes Barre's three sta-tions, WNEP, the locally owned ABCaffiliate, was the first to face cable's chal-lenge, and its success has been notewor-thy. WNEP recognized early that the onlyway to compete with cable was to producelocal programming that would be dif-ficult, if not impossible, for outside inter-ests to match. "We take all the money wesave from not buying Donahue," saysWNEP's general manager, Tom Shel-burne Jr., "and put it into news." AtWNEP, a reporter works on a vote -fraudstory for six months. A camera crew issent to New York for live reporting on thecourtroom appearance of a local gangster.An investigative journalist is hired for fourmonths to put together a prime -time doc-umentary on local mob activities. Thiskind of coverage may be standard inChicago or Los Angeles, but is highly un-usual in markets the size of Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, which ranks forty-eighth inthe nation.

"We passed on The Muppets to go withPM Magazine," Shelburne says, "be-cause it has local segments. Of course,The Muppets has a great track record, sothat's a gamble. But I guess you could callus gamblers."

Most of WNEP's gambles so far havepaid off-sort of. WNEP dominates itsmarket today in a way few stations do. Itsnews program beats the competition threeto one in the ratings, and WNEP's adver-tising revenues and profits far outdistancethe market's other stations. Yet there is noguarantee that WN EP's success story willhave a happy ending. "We don't antici-pate growth beyond inflation anymore,"Shelburne says. WNEP may be the littlestation that could, but as one era of televi-sion gives way to another here in Scran-ton/Wilkes-Barre, the terrain up aheadkeeps getting harder and more uncertain.

HE CITY of Scranton sits innortheastern Pennsylvania's

lovely Wyoming Valley, seventeenmiles north of Wilkes-Barre.

Though the two cities have acommon history, today they are about asdifferent as night -Scranton -andday -Wilkes-Barre.

In the early part of this century, anthra-cite coal was much in demand for homeheating, and this part of Pennsylvaniaheld the country's only known deposits ofsignificant size. Immigrants from Europepoured in and Scranton's heavily Catholicpopulation peaked at 143,000 in 1930. Butas gas and oil furnaces proliferated,Scranton declined, and today only 97,000residents remain.

Coming into Scranton from the northon Interstate 81, you are greeted with thesight, off to the left, of an automobile

junkyard snaking along the side of a hillfor more than a mile. On a sunny day, thelight reflected off twisted bumpers andhoods is almost blinding.

Wilkes-Barre, population 55,000, hasdeclined along with its northern neighbor,yet it has avoided that city's perpetuallydepressed state, thanks largely to oneperson and one natural disaster, each ofthem named "flood."

Daniel J. Flood, Wilkes-Barre's flam-boyant Congressman, was first elected in1954. He was able to direct fresh industry,mostly textiles, into Luzerne Countyfrom his senior position on a couple ofpowerful House committees. (This, ofcourse, was before a bribery scandalforced Flood to resign in 1980.) Equallyhelpful to the city was Hurricane Agnes,which swept over the area in 1972, causingthe Susquehanna River to overflow andput more than 20 percent of Wilkes-Barreunder water. In Agnes's aftermath, morethan $200 million in federal disaster aidflowed into the city. Today Wilkes-Barreis one of the most attractive cities in theEast, with historic brick structures stand-ing side -by -side with gleaming new build-ings.

Unfortunately for Scranton, the city issituated just outside Flood's congres-sional district, and well beyond the banksof the Susquehanna. Today, Scranton'sdowntown is a shambles.

Beyond Scranton and Wilkes-Barre,the television market (which includes462,000 households) takes in rural routesand tired industrial cities such as Hazle-ton, Allentown, and Pittston. Blue-collarworkers make up about 50 percent of thepopulation; one out of ten people is ofPolish or Italian stock. Voters have tradi-tionally been Democrats, but moderateRepublicans now represent two local dis-tricts in Congress.

The region is not a healthy one. Morethan 9 percent of the population is unem-ployed. A recent survey by Chase Econ-ometrics ranked northeastern Pennsylva-nia last among 108 markets studied forpotential economic growth.

I, A iSi h ti 35 F E B/M A R

To make matters worse, the area is rid-dled with organized crime. A 1980 Penn-sylvania Crime Commission report onorganized crime cited Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, Pittston, and Hazleton nearly asoften as Pittsburgh. The web of local mobactivity extends, according to the report,to at least two local cable -television fran-chises.

Since they are locally owned (at leastfor the moment), Scranton/Wilkes-Barre's three television stations are un-derstandably anxious to improve theirarea's poor image. WNEP-TV is in a posi-tion to do the most. But it was not alwaysthis way.

OUIS BALTIMORE founded radio sta-tion WBRE in 1924. A year later,Frank Megargee started a station

called WGBI. In 1948, ThomasP. Shelburne co-founded

WILK.When television came to the valley, the

three families applied for licenses. Balti-more's WBRE-TV hooked up with NBCand went on the air January 1, 1953 inWilkes-Barre as Channel Twenty -Eight.The Megargees signed on with CBS, andin June of 1953, WDAU began broadcast-ing over Channel Twenty -Two in Scran-ton. Six months later Shelburne launchedWILK, as Channel Thirty -Four, inWilkes-Barre.

Starting out, Shelburne faced a prob-lem: ABC, the fledgling network he was

linked to, had another affiliate in Scran-ton: WARM. (One of WARM's ownerswas William S. Scranton, a descendant ofthe family for whom the city is named,and later governor of the state.) ABC sug-gested that the two stations merge; in 1958they did, becoming WNEP, Channel Six-teen. Transcontinent Television Corpora-tion purchased the station that year, butsold it to Taft Broadcasting in 1964. Nineyears later Shelburne, who had remainedgeneral manager through all the owner-ship changes, put together a group of localinvestors, including his son, Tom Shel-burne Jr., and former Governor Scranton,

and bought WNEP from Taft."The investors, and my father, felt that

they wanted to get this area going, or dietrying," says Tom Shelburne Jr. (Theelder Shelburne comes to the office regu-larly, but "Tommy," as nearly everyonecalls his son, is officially the general man-ager and runs the station day to day.)"The investors all have financial and fam-ily interests here," he explains. "That'sthe advantage of being locally owned. Forthem to make money the area has to grow.So they said, 'Let's take the most effec-tive tool for growth, and use it. If itdoesn't work, nothing can.' Everythingwe do, we keep that in mind."

But how would the "tool" be wielded?"News is the only thing that matters,"according to Tommy Shelburne. "As itgoes, so goes the station. Local pro-gramming was the only way we couldmake a mark. We also saw that with cableexpanding, we'd have to play up the localangle in order to even survive. So we de-cided to put everything into news.

"We had a good signal and a good facil-ity but we needed money. We sold somecars to buy cameras. We laid off three orfour people in engineering and hired re-porters. I built, sanded, and painted a newnews set myself. We took people frombehind the scenes and put them out front.It was more a question of juggling thebudget than a massive investment. Whenthe ratings started to go up we didn't rest.We took the added revenue and spent it on

equipment so we could go further. Thatwas a gamble, but by doing it you candouble your money instead of watching itcollect 17 percent interest in the bank."

According to Nielsen ratings, theWNEP eleven o'clock news had an 18share of the audience in May 1974, com-pared to WDAU's 30 and WBRE's 31. Butthen the ascent began:

WNEP WDAU WBREMay '75 22 23 33May '76 23 19 26May '77 27 18 27May '78 35 12 30May '79 43 15 17

The figures were similar for the sixo'clock reports.

How did WNEP do it? With everythingfrom vision to dumb luck.

For local broadcast journalism, theseventies were years of rapid and far-reaching changes. Many stations werediscovering for the first time that the rightcombination of format, technology, per-sonality, and graphics could elevate alocal news show from its traditional role ofloss leader to that of profit center. But notevery station was able to make thechange. In addition to investment, it tookaggressive management that was aware ofthe technological trends in the industry,that was comfortable with innovation,and that, at least in its thinking, wasyouthful. In Scranton/Wilkes-Barre,WNEP was that station.

At WDAU, the Megargee family wasnot very active in the operation of thestation, and news director Tom Powellhad been on the job since 1953. AtWBRE, Louis Baltimore has been suc-ceeded by his son, David, a man conser-vative in his politics and in his approach totelevision news. David brought his sonTerry in as vice president, but Terryhadn't worked elsewhere for any length oftime.

Parochialism was not a danger atWNEP. Tommy Shelburne, a tall, soft-spoken man of thirty-nine who wearshorn -rimmed glasses and a beard, hadspent ten years in television-in Cincin-

nati, Kansas City, New York, and Phila-delphia-before returning to Scranton/Wilkes-Barre with many fresh ideas."The biggest problem with the other twostations," according to Shelburne, "isthat they have no outside expertise inmanagement. I've worked for five otherstations. My news director and marketingguy have worked in four other markets.We don't have our heads buried in thesand."

Acknowledging the viewer appeal of"live feeds," Shelburne invested heavilyin electronic news -gathering (ENG)equipment. To cover a market that

CHANWE I.$ 36 FEB/MAR

spanned twenty-two counties, he boughtmobile vans and even a helicopter, which,besides giving his reporters mobility, gavethe station a very visible form of promo-tion as it hopped around the region. Hequintupled the size of the news staff. Thenhe gave style to this substance by insistingon a personable approach to the news.WNEP's Gary Essex became the firstlocal matinee -idol anchorman, and thefirst to be paid appreciably more than aregular reporter (forcing the other stationsin the market to pay their anchors more).

Good fortune was also on WNEP'sside-in the form of the ABC network'slate -seventies success. With the help ofABC's coverage of the 1976 Olympics, itsuncoverage of Charlie's Angels, and itsrecord -breaking series, Roots, WNEP'sratings surged. Just as important, TommyShelburne promoted the surge wisely,creating an overwhelmingly Number -Oneimage for the station long before the rat-ings proved it. But by 1979, WN EP's newsturned what had been a horse race into aratings romp, suddenly leading longtimeleader WDAU by three to one; indeed ithad won an audience larger than that ofthe other two stations combined.

"We were outgunned and outmanned,"explains WDAU news director Tom Pow-ell. "At the time our ratings came apart,WNEP had us two to one in manpowerand was way ahead on the technical end."Tom Bigler, vice president for news andpublic affairs at WBRE, says: "When

`We've gone past thefuture -shock of cablehere,' says one localbroadcaster. It's aproblem otherswill be facing soon.'

WNEP was adding things that added totheir appearance, we were reluctant.David [Baltimore] kept saying, 'I'm notgoing to match them man for man, dollarfor dollar. Every item has to be essential.'Frankly, we waited too long, and now it'stoo late."

WNEP's ratings have remained strong.The November "sweeps" showed WNEPwith a 47 percent share of the audience at6 PM. versus a combined 30 percent sharefor the opposition, and 44 versus 30 at 11PM. During this period the top four week-night shows in the market and six of thetop eleven were WNEP news broadcasts.

At a time when the ABC network's pro-grams have often run second nationally,they have always led in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. Here, for example, ABC'sGood Morning, America has led NBC'sToday by about two to one.

TeE Two -STORY, tan -brick buildingthat houses WNEP's offices

d studios is located in a remotet just off Interstate 81, at thecranton/Wilkes-Barre airport in

Avoca. The station's plush $2 -millionproduction facilities occupy the secondfloor of the airport terminal.

Midway between the two major cities ofthe region, this setting is significant.WBRE, located in a modern, three-storybuilding in downtown Wilkes-Barre, isclosely identified with that city, whileWDAU, which operates out of the base-ment of a prep school in Scranton, is con-sidered "the Scranton station." As localbroadcasters point out, this is an unusu-ally parochial area. In an era of single -paper domination of small markets (andeven some big ones), this single marketsupports four daily newspapers - two inScranton and two in Wilkes-Barre.Though just twenty minutes away, Scran-ton residents rarely visit Wilkes-Barre,and vice -versa. These habits extend ap-parently to television -watching as well.

WBRE outpolls WDAU in Wilkes-Barre, WDAU tops WBRE in Scranton;WNEP, however, beats both stations inboth places, and kills them elsewhere.From its vague position in Avoca, it has anaudience in both cities, as well as manymore far-flung viewers who tend to seeWNEP as the "regional" station.

Inside the WNEP building on Novem-ber 3, 1981. the newsroom is buzzing: It's5 PM.. an hour before air -time, on Elec-tion Day.

Reporter Bob Reynolds is preparing anupdate on his vote -fraud series, which hadaired two weeks earlier. After spendingsix months working on the probe - thelast two full-time - Reynolds showed howsomeone in Pittston had forged the signa-tures of eight voters in the May primary;to prove the charge, he hired a handwrit-ing analyst. (The Pittston Sunday -Dis-patch took the occasion to denounceWNEP's "steady style of sensational-ism.")

A couple of desks away, Michael Brownis on the phone. Author of Laying Waste,a landmark 1980 book on Love Canal andother chemical hazards, Brown has beenworking virtually full-time since July on aone -hour documentary scheduled to beaired two weeks hence. Last May WNEPnews director Nick Lawler had learnedthat a noted organized crime figure-a

native of Scranton who now lived outsidethe area under a new identity - might bewilling to spill the beans about local cor-ruption. Lawler called Brown, whom hehad met while at WKBW-TV in Buffalo,and convinced him to take on the story.Lawler budgeted $30,000 for the program.

Brown soon discovered that the mobs-ter, Gerald Festa, who has been namingnames for the federal government underits witness protection program, did nothave all that much to say about localcrime. What was supposed to be a hard-hitting exposé had turned into a storyabout how crime doesn't pay. Would thestation's $30,000 gamble pay off? Man-agement did not seem worried: Instead ofscheduling the special in the usual local"public affairs" slot-say, 1 P.M.. or 7 Pm.on a Saturday - it would air in prime time,preempting the ABC hit Hart to Hart. Topublicize the program, WNEP had justtaken out an ad in the regional edition ofTime magazine: "Not since Joe Valachihas such a gripping story of underworldterror been told ..."

(This may have been an exaggeration,but as usual the station's promotion paidoff: WNEP's documentary would attracttwice the audience of the heralded televi-sion movie Skokie, and lose to the verypopular Flamingo Road by only one rat-ings point.)

"Newspapers won't touch the mobaround here," Brown comments when hegets off the phone. "WNEP is the onlyforce that can take on the Mafia and thepoliticians - they have the power and theresources. I've written for The New YorkTimes and it's a lot like that here-whenyou call someone and you leave a mes-sage, boy do they call back fast! Nick[Lawler] has also made hazardous waste arunning issue here. Once they got a tip ona dump site, went there in the helicopter,and filmed chemical barrels lying all overthe place. The station called in the state,which started an investigation. With thecopter and the cameras WNEP actuallyhas more detective capabilities than thestate enforcement people."

Approaching 6 PM. the newsroom sud-denly smells of hair spray. Some of the"personalities" are sitting at their desks,reading scripts aloud before they head forthe studio. Nick Lawler sits in his office inthe corner of the newsroom, his tieloosened at the neck. Slightly paunchy, hehas brown hair that curls over his fore-head. Lawler is thirty-one but looksyounger. A native of Washington, D.C.,he had been at the station for a year and ahalf. (He has since moved on to KOCO-TV, the Gannett station in OklahomaCity.)

"When you're Number One," he says,settling back to watch the news, "it be -

C. N A F!. S 37 F E B/ M A R

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comes an albatross. You have to do moreto stay Number One than to becomeNumber One. Fortunately, managementhere is not afraid to spend money to makemoney. A lot of people in local TV are notthat way."

Newswatch /6 begins. The co-anchorsare in tight close-up. Behind them is alarge window through which an array ofscreens and blinking lights is visible."We're the only station with computervote tabulation," Lawler says. The pic-ture cuts quickly, but smoothly, from liveshots of reporters at various campaignheadquarters to taped inserts of theScranton mayoral candidates voting ear-lier in the day, and then back to live shots."We're trying to go live to six places ateleven,' Nick boasts, as Bob Reynoldsappears on the screen. Reynolds, report-ing from Pittston, interviews a womanwhose vote was forged in the primary andthen queries the official who had certifiedher ballot.

Next to the screen displaying WNEP'snews program, another set silently beamsthe WBRE report. The picture is morestatic; there are fewer remotes, and whatlive shots there are run on and on withoutbenefit of taped inserts.

After a commercial break, WNEP re-turns with standard footage of a fire. Ahouse had burned, and its occupants-awoman and her five cats - were all givenoxygen. "Shit," Lawler says, "peoplehave been watching fires on TV for twentyyears. Why didn't we get any shots of thecats getting oxygen?"

Now it's time for Mike Igoe and hisregular "Action 16" ombudsman segment.Tonight Igoe's helping an old fellow get aten -dollar refund on a watch. "It's usuallysomething bigger than that," Lawler says."Mike gets 500 letters a week-the D.A.refers people to him. People approach himat dinner: 'Mike, help me out ...' They'vebeen kicked in the ass in this area so longthey don't know where to turn. We'remaking Action 16 the place to turn."

Though Lawler feels it's "great" thatWNEP is locally owned, he acknowledgesthe added pressures. After WNEP did aseries on a local department store withblocked fire exits, the store temporarilypulled its ads off the station. WNEP oncealleged that local buses were regularlybreaking the speed limit, despite the factthat one of the station's investors owns alocal Trailways company. "I'm sure theShelburnes heard about it," says Lawler,"but it didn't filter down to us." Yet theinvestors "don't want to go to the countryclub and hear how we messed up. Thatkeeps us on our toes.

"I have friends who are news directorswho are constantly complaining about'lack of support from upstairs' and 'the

bottom line.' Well, I have a crew at aprison right now, a hundred miles away,covering a hostage thing-I have no ideahow much that costs."

ESPITE WNEP's success, all isnot well in Avoca, Pennsylva-nia. Cable continues to en-croach, and the capital

needed to compete is scarce.WNEP's runaway ratings triumph has nottranslated into enormous profits, becausethe heap the station sits on top of is mileswide and only inches high. Though themarket is the country's forty-eighthbiggest, it only ranks seventy-ninth in rev-enues and ninety-seventh in profits.

The latest edition of TelevisionFactbook provides financial details for1978, when the northeastern Pennsylva-nia market was ranked forty-second in theU.S. That year the three Scranton/Wilkes-Barre stations brought in $11.7million in advertising revenues. Profit wasjust under $2 million. At the same time,stations in the Dayton, Ohio market(ranked fiftieth in size) took in twice therevenue and yielded more than threetimes the profit. In Johnstown/Altoona,Pennsylvania, a depressed portion of thestate that ranked seventy-third nationallyin 1978, the stations took in only $8.4million - well under the total for Scran-ton/Wilkes-Barre-but made a milliondollars more in profit.

Several factors account for the market'sproblems. A spokesman at Petry Televi-sion Inc. in New York, WBRE's nationalsales representative, says that many com-panies now feel that they can reach a largeportion of the Scranton/Wilkes-Barremarket by advertising on the Philadelphiachannels beamed north via cable. Hecalled 1981 a "pretty good" year forWBRE but says each year tends to beradically different, as accounts jump backand forth between the local stations andthe cable imports, depending on who isoffering the best deal.

The arch competition has also resultedin relatively low rates for local advertisers.As ratings leader it's up to WNEP to setthe standards. But Tommy Shelburnesays he can't charge too much more thanhis rivals; no matter how high his ratingsare, his ad rates must remain competitive.He complains that his station's cost -per -thousand is "one of the lowest in thecountry." WNEP's news program mayhave twice the audience of other stationsbut it cannot charge twice the rate.

The final reason for paltry profits in-volves expenses. Even with 50 percent ofthe local profits, WNEP spends so muchthat it is hardly a gold mine. Meanwhile,the other stations have been living some-

what beyond their means in a frantic ef-fort to catch up. It's a television equiva-lent of the arms race. "We may be spend-ing too much," admits Tom Bigler,WBRE's vice president for news and pub-lic affairs, "but we can't allow the qualitygap between us and the New York andPhilly stations to widen." Without cable,of course, that gap would not be a worry.

But as cable continues to expand itsreach, something has to give, and (withthe exception of WNEP) it looks like itwill be local ownership. The Megargeeheirs are awaiting approval from the FCCon the sale of WDAU to a group of outsideinvestors. And in mid -November 1981,newspapers in Wilkes-Barre reported thatDavid Baltimore was looking for a buyerfor WBRE.

IN M. STEVENS'S VIEW

-THE 1LUE13E12Ry PIE CHANNEL

4/14I740ti5'

On the day after Election Night, NickLawler sits at his desk watching his sta-tion's midday report. Just ninety minutesearlier a young woman had jumped off abridge and landed right on Interstate 81.An ambulance had rushed to the scene;crossing the highway on foot, the driverwas hit by a car and killed. Now WNEPnews is there, with live "insta -cam"coverage.

Upstairs, Tommy Shelburne is comput-ing the cost of new equipment he has justordered. "We spend money like drunkensailors here," he says. "We don't have toanswer to anyone outside on the budget,so we can ride out a bad month." Butcable is always the dark at the top of thestairs. Latest ratings show WNEP's 7 P.M.

entry, PM Magazine, with its strong localangle, swamping the fare offered by themarket's other stations (including TheMuppet s) - yet 40 percent of the market isnow watching cable at this hour. "Thatfigure was 12 percent a short while ago,"Shelburne says.

Shelburne evidently feels that the fu-ture of his station depends on the success -

(Continued on page 63)

C H ia NW E I. j 39 FEB/MAR

Public Broadcasting:The High Cost of Going Private

by Steven Behrens and Brooke Gladstone

T SEEMED a perverse idea: commer-cials on noncommercial television.Just the kind of "experiment" in gov-ernmental policy that could belaunched carelessly out of the

Reagan -inspired budget wars in Congressand become the final turning point in thehistory of American public broadcasting.You couldn't tell whether the scheme wasadopted because Congress cared so muchabout public broadcasting, or because itcared so little.

If the plan hadn't run into oppositionfrom a united front of craft unions in De-cember, ten public television stations andten public radio stations would be outfit-ting themselves for an eighteen -monthadventure in advertising, to hit the air thisspring in test cities.

Congress's experiment, however, maybe reduced in scale or even canceled, be-cause the cost of going commercial ishigher than expected. By opposing theexperiment, the performers', musicans',writers', and directors' unions reminded

i Congress that their members a/so have(j been subsidizing public television andy radio, through favorable contract terms.Fil

...But the unions were defending more than

¢ their contracts. The labor leaders were.. fighting a redefinition of public broad--..`:_:casting that could leave it weaker and

Steven Behrens and Brooke Gladstones have covered public broadcasting as the

editors of the trade newspaper, Current.

more dependent than ever on corporatelargesse.

"I have no desire to nourish this mad-ness of Mr. Reagan's Administration,"says Sanford Wolff, executive secretaryof the American Federation of Televisionand Radio Artists (AFTRA). "I see noreason to rape public television and tonourish the notion that if the federal gov-ernment gets out of all public programs,the rich will take care of us."

Many, if not most, public broadcasterswere secretly relieved that the ad experi-ment was torpedoed-secretly, becausethey felt they couldn't say "no" them-selves. When the experiment was sugges-ted by some of their best friends in Con-gress during last summer's budget fight,they swallowed hard and assented. Howwould it look, after all, for public broad-casters to reject a chance at self-suffi-ciency -an invitation to join the privatesector, in a year when the public sector isbeing rapidly dismantled? Besides, some

are admittedly willing to abandon theirnoncommercial identity out of balance -sheet desperation.

The federal treasury provides about 30percent of the industry's $700 million an-nual income. But public broadcasting maylose $70 million or more in federal grantsby 1983. Although Congress didn't cut asdeeply as David Stockman wanted, nextyear's appropriation for the Corporationfor Public Broadcasting (the system'smajor dispensary of federal aid) will divefrom $172 million to $137 million. The fol-lowing year, CPB's funds could drop aslow as $105 million.

The Public Broadcasting Service couldnever hawk enough tote bags to recouplosses like those -or to keep up with ris-ing costs. The price tag on last year's mar-ket basket of familiar PBS shows, led byThe MacNeil Lehrer Report, is up 22percent this year. Stations' facilities re-quire maintenance at a cost of $48 milliona year. Every station faces layoffs; somewill broadcast fewer hours a day or go offthe air entirely. Vital flexibility will belost: More than ever, programming will beskewed to entertain high -income donors,and the prime -time schedule will be de-termined by oil companies' underwritingchoices.

Advertising as an income source hadbeen proposed occasionally through theyears in Congress, but never before last

C H A NN F I. j 41 F E B/M A R

summer had the notion taken hold. Once abipartisan, semi -sacred cow, public televi-sion lost its halo with the simultaneousrise of Reaganism and a conventionalwisdom about new communicationstechnologies.

The "new technologies" theory maysound familiar by now. Already used dur-ing the Carter years to justify partial "de-regulation" of broadcasting by the Fed-eral Communications Commission, thegospel goes like this: Cable television andother new media promise enough chan-nels to serve every need. Since channelsare no longer scarce, economics will nolonger dictate that each channel be usedto reach a mass audience, and the gov-ernment need not protect or promotebroadcasting for smaller audiences.There's more: Since PBS was good onlyfor opera and ballet, we don't need PBSanymore, now that classy versions ofHome Box Office allow highbrows to paydirectly for cultural uplift.

That conventional wisdom, however,disregarded public broadcasting's reach(far greater than cable's in both audiencesize and geography), its free availabilityto the poor as well as the affluent, and itsmany kinds of alternative programmingbesides the highbrow. Naïve though thetheory was, it turned up in nearly everygeneral -circulation magazine last year,usually under a headline like "Is PublicTV Dying?"

Soon enough, the theme also turned upin Stockman's budget bluebook: "Thereis no overriding justification for the fund-ing of CPB." The audiences should payfor it, said the Office of Management andBudget. "Taxpayers as a whole should notbe compelled to subsidize entertainmentfor a select few."

CPB retorted: More than half thehouseholds in the country, not "a selectfew," tune in to public television at leastonce a week, and the viewers closelymatch the demographics of the popula-tion. Furthermore, if the taxpayers paidonly for things that everybody uses,"there would be little justification for pro-grams related to education, housing,highway construction, and the like."

Indeed, many of those undertakingswere threatened, too. That was the prob-lem. While Congress was dishing outsmaller school lunches, CPB, with its "fatcat" image, couldn't escape damage. Pub-lic broadcasting lurched through hearingrooms like the Elephant Man, crying "Iam not a frill" while fiscal conservativesjeered. By summer, public broadcasterscould only protest mildly that the pro-posed advertising experiment was riskyand inappropriate. The industry's cham-pions, led by Representatives Tim Wirth(D -Colo.), Al Swift (D -Wash.), and Tom

Tauke (R -Iowa), had put themselves onthe line against Stockman's cuts, and theywanted the experiment.

Tauke, who proposed the experiment,wanted it done in time to give Congressnew information for budget decision -making in the fall of 1983. Swift, an ex -broadcaster himself, expected the find-ings would lay to rest the idea thatcommercials were public broadcasting'sanswer.

Tauke's approach served as a kind ofcompromise. Jim Collins, ranking Repub-lican on Wirth's House telecommunica-tions subcommittee, had wanted to au-thorize public broadcasters to accept adsimmediately, without an experiment, andto cut far deeper into CPB's budget. Byvoting with Tauke, House members couldsay they were gradually phasing down theCPB subsidy while opening a new door toself-sufficiency for public television.Congress authorized (but didn't demand)the advertising experiment, to be super--

tial ad revenues and audience reaction."If we were trying to design a test that

wouldn't work, we've found a way," saysTony Tiano, head of the San Franciscostation KQED, which declined to volun-teer for the test. Tiano says that, as usual,public -broadcasting legislation had been"drawn on the backs of envelopes in thehallway."

Nevertheless, some sixteen public -television licensees (out of 159) volun-teered, along with thirteen public radiolicensees, in response to a rush -rush pleafrom the temporary commission. To meetthe January I congressional deadline forstarting the experiment, the commissionwas planning to pick the fateful twentybefore Christmas. Then it hit a solid wallof union resistance.

In a private confrontation December 4,the unions said broadcasters who go"commercial" would have to renegotiatecontracts, and might end up losing thevaluable right of multiple repeats without

0nce a bipartisan, semi -sacred cow, public TVhas lost its halo withthe rise of Reaganism.

vised by a new Temporary Commissionon Alternative Funding for Public Tele-communications. Congress gave itself abreather: for two years, the questionwould be safely "under study."

Setting aside philosophical problemsand union resistance, the experiment hasplenty of practical difficulties. Congressso limited the number of stations (tentelevision and ten radio) and the durationof the test (eighteen months) that generalconclusions would be hard to draw. Toaccommodate commercial clusters be-tween shows, running time would have tobe lopped off many PBS programs alreadytaped. Research costs were estimated tobe as high as $400,000, but Congressdidn't allocate a penny. And any stationsthat volunteered for the experiment facedstart-up costs estimated at $100,000 to$150,000, as well as the risk of offendingdonors who take the "noncommercial"identity seriously.

Overseers of the experiment, borrowedfrom the industry and the already short-staffed FCC, expect it to provide at bestonly "anecdotal" evidence about poten-

paying expensive "residuals" to artists.The unions reportedly threatened to sueif, even during an experiment, contractsweren't changed, and their members'work turned up on any station carryingcommercials.

"It was reassuring to those of us whowere secretly hoping the whole experi-ment would be blown up by a grenade,"confided one broadcaster after the show-down.

If the broadcasters can't experimentwith spot commercials, some want to trystretching the definition of underwritingcredits. John Jay Iselin, president ofWNET, New York, has proposed givingunderwriters time for soft -sell institu-tional ads-"undertisements," he callsthem-to go with programs they assist.

Even if no on -air tests can be arranged,the commission plans a "paper experi-ment" involving public -opinion surveys.

Most broadcasters had been willing to"go along" with the test, like it or not, aslong as they didn't have to risk their ownstations: despite many on -air opportuni-ties during pledge drives, they largely

C H A WI F I. S 42 F E B/M A R

kept to themselves any major doubtsabout advertising as an income source.The presidents of CPB, PBS, and Na-tional Public Radio, for example, wentalong with the test but opposed the newincome source.

An ad executive for some twenty yearsbefore joining PBS, president LarryGrossman denies any "knee-jerk" revul-sion toward ads. He simply recalls that"What put Playhouse 90 off the air wasThe Untouchables." If public televisioncomes to rely on ads, he predicts, pro-grammers won't be blind to the advertis-ing dollar. Just as network television hasscheduled fewer children's programs,public television will follow. NPR presi-dent Frank Mankiewicz also avoidsanti -Madison Avenue rhetoric while re-jecting advertising. "It's not a bad busi-ness, or an improper business. But it's notour business."

The most outspoken of the three, thenew CPB president, Edward Pfister, istrying to establish his semi -federal agencyas a leader in public broadcasting ratherthan a perennial opponent in cat fightswith the stations. If advertising is permit-ted, he says, "what may result is some-thing that works but is not public broad-casting."

What exactly is public broadcasting?Not all public broadcasters would regard"noncommercial" as the key adjective fortheir stations. Some say "nonprofit" isthe more important distinction. Their sta-tions serve excellence, not stockholders.If ads are permitted, there would be onlyone or two per break, says one big -citystation manager. That would be only asmall step beyond underwriting. "What'sthe big deal? The other option is to closedown."

Even though the public -broadcastingaudience has broadened to resemble thegeneral population, it has enough of an"upscale" edge to attract advertisers aim-ing at high -income viewers, says Denvereconomist Paul Bortz, author of the studyfor CPB. On the income side, he took intoaccount public broadcasting's relativelysmall audiences (although he estimated adrates at 150 to 300 percent of the commer-cial television rates because of the upscaleaudience). On the cost side, Bortz pro-jected the discouraging burden of settingup an advertising office in every station:36 percent of gross ad revenues.

If public television aired seven two -minute clusters per evening, and publicradio aired four minutes per hour duringdrive time, and all stations participated,Bortz estimated, the annual net "profit"would be $52 million to $104 million.

Bortz didn't, however, subtract incometaxes the stations would probably have topay on advertising profits ("unrelated

business income"). One station estimatedthat taxes would take 44 percent of itsprofit even though it is a nonprofit corpo-ration. Furthermore, an ambivalent Con-gress decided that public stations wouldbe penalized for having taxable income byhaving an amount-equivalent to thetaxes paid -subtracted from their federalaid.

to federal aid. To earn profits of $172million-CPB's appropriation thisyear-public broadcasting would have tobuild a money machine that would ranknumber 169 among the most profitableU.S. corporations, just after Colgate-Palmolive and just before Anheuser-Busch, ringing up sales in the billions.The poor cousin of the broadcasting in-

ublic broadcasting lurched /K__,through hearing rooms like ' / /the Elephant Man, crying ,

`I am not a frill' while fiscalconservatives jeered.

Bortz didn't hazard any guesses aboutthe predictable backlash that would occuramong public television's current sup-porters. The unions would be only thefirst of its angels to withdraw. Musiccopyright owners could be expected todemand full royalties for broadcasts oftheir work -another multi -million dollarreversal. Other sources of subsidy couldbe expected to dry up: the states, statecolleges, and local governments that forkout 40 percent of the industry's income;the audiences that directly contributeanother 15 percent, and even the under-writers, who supply 10 percent.

"Once a station has gone `commer-cial; " warned Maryland broadcasterWarren Park, it will have forfeited mem-bership drives, and "the pressure on theprogrammer to increase ratings is going tobecome intense because the survival ofthe station will depend upon it."

In other words, to go commercial, theywould not only have to chase Nielsens,they'd also risk losing some part of $500million in aid and contributions to have ashot at maybe $50 million from commer-cials. That makes advertising look lesslike an "alternative" and more like trou-ble.

While the temporary commission at-tends to its crippled experiment, it hasanother assignment from Congress: to re-port back in July on other funding "alter-natives" and changes in federal law thatwould be required.

Inevitably, some folks answering thecommission's inquiry in January and Feb-ruary will suggest that public broadcast-ers use their talents and facilities to go outand earn cash to subsidize themselves,and get off the dole. Some stations arealready doing that to a degree. But "goinginto business" is an unrealistic alternative

dustry would be expected to show greaterprofits than such media giants as ABC($146 million in 1980) and Time Inc. ($141million). Unlikely.

It's also unlikely that Congress can getoff the hook by conjuring up some hybridcommercial/noncommercial kind ofbroadcasting. Such an invention couldn'tsurvive commercially without going forvastly larger audiences, and the commer-cials, combined with mass -appeal pro-grams, would drive away the benefactorsof a noncommercial service. We probablycannot have it both ways.

Then how can public broadcasting besupported? Congress has shown no inter-est in exacting license fees from viewers,as is done in Britain to back the BBC, or inexacting "spectrum fees" from commer-cial broadcasters who use the public'sairwaves.

If no adequate alternative can be found,James Quello, the FCC member whochairs the temporary commission, says he.already has warned Congressmen that thecommission may come back asking for arenewed commitment to direct federalaid.

Then the question of federal aid againwill be put squarely before Congress, theway AFL-CIO representative JackGolodner did it in testifying againstbudget cuts last year: "If we are going tocut it, then we are going to have to tell theworld that we cannot afford a diversifiedinformation system in this country....Let's be honest about it. Tell everyonethat we cannot afford public broadcast-ing; we are a poor country and we cannotafford these things.The next thing we willbe talking about perhaps is how we can getMcDonald's to pay for the textbooks inour schools because we cannot affordthem either."

CHAELSNN 43 F E B/M A R

OUR PASTIS CHANGINGTELEVISION!SFUTURE

On May 7, Greater Cincinnati entered a new andexciting era-the era of interactive cable television.

Only one other city now enjoys a full-scale two-waysystem. Columbus, Ohio. It's been going strong there forthree and a half years.

Both Ohio systems are called QUBE by their developer.That's us. Warner Amex Cable.

More are on the way. Soon subscribers in Houston,Pittsburgh, Dallas and St. Louis County will be ableto enjoy the excitement of interactive TV.

Most companies competing for cable franchisesin other cities now propose interactive services.But only Warner Amex actually operates a full-scalesystem, and has the experience.

8 YEARS OF INTERACTIVECABLE EXPERIENCEAT WORK TODAY.

A lot of people thought interactive cablewas just a fad. They were skeptical when wespent five years developing and testing theQUBE system before making it fully operationalin Columbus three years ago.

People with vision willing to take a chanceare often dismissed by more conventionalthinkers. It was a big risk for us. But it wasworth it.

HOW OUR EXPERIENCEWORKS FOR YOU.

Warner Amex has experience and know-howunmatched by any other cable company in thecountry. Our experience in Columbus enabledus to refine our technology and expand ourhorizons.

More and more people will soon be enjoyingthe QUBE experience, using television as a shop-ping center in their own homes, as a home securitysystem, as a new way to retrieve information, to takecollege courses for credit, to express opinions on keyissues of the day, and of course, to be entertained.

They'll be able to choose on an individual basis thewidest variety of shows, sports and specials available.And it was all made possible by Warner Amex.

QUBE. Only Warner Amex has it.

Because of us, television will never be the same.

1:23 Warner AmexCable Communications Inc.75 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY 10019

The revolutionaryBT -1300, the new WarnerAmex QUBE console.Just press the appro.priate buttons to selectany one of scores ofchannels. "Talk back" toyour TV set. Express youropinion. Play games.Shop at home. And muchmore.

S*M*A* S*HRatings winners come and go, but TV's real prize

is syndication, which is about to make thisunlikely show the greatest hit of all time.

bought Twentieth Cen-tury -Fox Film Corporation

from its public stockholders$703 million last summer,

one of the assets he prized was a nine-year -old television series that seems as-sured of several more first -run years onCBS. For M*A*S*H is no ordinaryprime -time hit show, it is a power-house -or in oil men's terms, a gusher.

There is nothing to compare with it in alltelevision today, and rarely has there beena program like it ever. Not only is it widely

Earl C. Gottschalk Jr. is a Los Angeles -based writer.

by Earl C. Gottschalk Jr.

respected for the quality of its bittersweetwar -comedy scripts and the deft ensembleplaying of its cast, but it succeeds almostanywhere in the schedule, whether inoriginal episodes or syndicated reruns.What Davis acquired along with thestudio was what every television producerdreams of: a program that mints money, aproperty that in fact promises to earn forDavis in the next ten or fifteen years aquarter or even more of the total amounthe paid for Fox.

Well before Davis entered the picture, aFox executive confided that Alan Alda,the star of M*A*S*H, who enjoys a size-able profit participation in the series,would realize at least $30 million from

syndication alone. "If that's his share,'the executive said, "imagine what ourswill be."

TO LISTEN TO big-time televisionproducers in Hollywood is to

nder why anyone would ever goo the risky business of making

television shows. There are onlythree customers for the product-ABC,CBS, and NBC-and they never payenough the first year to allow the produc-tion company to make a profit. Someseries may break into the black the secondyear, but the real money comes when a

C 11 A NN F L J 45 F E B/M A R

show builds up enough episodes to justifyrerun syndication to local television sta-tions. Syndication demands anothermethod of presenting the show: instead ofonce a week in prime time, every night orafternoon in the same time period. Thisrequires a library of around a hundredepisodes, and to accumulate such a back-log, most series have to run at least fiveyears in network prime time. For everyone that makes it, there are scores ofSupertrains.

Making television shows is a chancygame, and the networks keep making itrougher. During the sixties, the practicewas to order thirty-nine first -run episodesand to fill out the summer with thirteenreruns. Today, if the producer is lucky, thenetwork orders twenty-four first -runepisodes. Often the network will askfor thirteen, or if it is a midseason re-placement, only six. The syndicationpayoff grows more and more distant.

Moreover, a network order of thirteenepisodes is no assurance that all of themwill be aired. Most series don't survivebeyond eight or ten weeks. Programs thatcannot hold their own in a time periodonly feed audience to the rival networks.

Every television season, hundreds ofprogram proposals and dozens of pilots,or sample episodes, are scuttled. Millionsof production -company dollars go downthe drain before the real action begins. Ofthe programs that do get on the air innetwork prime time, only about one inforty takes hold and runs long enough toamass a library of episodes for a syndica-tion sale. "You can get much better oddsin Las Vegas," says Alan Silverbach,executive vice president of Metromedia

Plenty of showsare based on movies, butalmost never does theknockoff eclipsethe original.

Producers Corporation.Indeed, producers liken the gamble in

television programming to playing theNevada slots. You pump money into themachines and usually lose; only some-times is there a payoff. Some programs hitfor three cherries, or three plums, or threebells. But occasionally, a M*A*S*H hitsthe jackpot, and the knowledge that it canhappen is what keeps the players comingback, season after season.

M*A*S*H is remarkable for manythings; one is that it has made everyoneforget the excellent 1970 movie fromwhich it was adapted. The original was afilm directed by Robert Altman, whichwon an Academy Award for Ring LardnerJr.'s writing. Donald Sutherland, ElliottGould, and Sally Kellerman performedthe roles in the film that are played ontelevision respectively by Alan Alda,Wayne Rogers, and Loretta Swit -all un-knowns before the premiere. Plenty oftelevision shows are based on movies, butalmost never does the knockoff eclipsethe original. M*A*S*H does.

It is an unlikely series to be such agigantic hit, prolonging the Korean War asit does, at a time when people don't wantto think about war. Its progenitors as tele-

vision war comedies were Hogan'sHeroes, McHale's Navy, You'll NeverGet Rich, and F Troop, but M*A*S*Hdiffers from them because its black com-edy springs from life and death, not inci-dental situations. Its heroes are not cleverAmerican fellows outwitting bumblingNazis from week to week, but members ofa Mobile Army Surgical Hospital who doa bloody sort of work, and grow ever morecynical about life and war. M*A*S*H ismore serious than the typical televisioncomedy and does not labor for laughs asso many others do. People frequently diein its episodes, flouting a sitcom taboo.And it is, by and large, anti-establishmentin its point of view, which, in these times,makes it an anachronism.

What may be most remarkable aboutM*A*S*H is that it has managed for somany years to sustain its quality as well asits popularity. This is largely because theprogram's producers, and its star, havenever lost sight of its original concept.Although other principals have left, AlanAlda has remained as star and field cap-tain, and has neither staled nor lost inter-est in his work. "The idea is to be funny,but to let the pain come through," he ex-plains. "It's to make people laugh and cryat the same time. We don't want the wartreated as merely a backdrop for hijinks atthe front."

Burt Metcalfe, the current executiveproducer, who started with the show as itsfirst casting director, attributes the suc-cess of M*A*S*H to its stubborn adher-ence to a concept. "This is not just aboutfun," he says, "but also about compassionand the human spirit. As I watchM*A*S*H day after day, I'm alwaysstruck by how much less it could be."

The show benefited greatly from thefact that the key people behind thecameras also remained with it a long time.Larry Gelbart, who devised the televisionseries and wrote the earliest episodes, leftto write movies and plays-but not untilninety-seven episodes of M*A*S*H wereunder his belt. Gene Reynolds, the origi-nal executive producer, remained evenlonger.

The two of them may be credited withputting the show on its successful track byignoring the artistic advice of the networkand resisting the studio's efforts to holddown production costs. Metcalfe says,"Network executives deal in clichés andformulas. So every hit show necessarily isa pioneering effort. The hits come aboutwhen a producer insists that it be done hisway or not at all, and the network finallysays, 'All right, go ahead, try it.' "

After the battle with CBS came the bat-tle with Twentieth Century -Fox. "Theyhave guys here looking to cut every cornerthey can," says Metcalfe. "Some of them

C H A NN F I. j 46 F E B/M A R

would shoot the show in a closet if theycould." M*A*S*H is filmed out of se-quence, like a movie -not videotaped be-fore a live audience, in the manner of astage play, like Archie Bunker's Place andother modern sitcoms. The studio wantedto shoot each half-hour show in two and ahalf days to save money; the producersresisted, demanding an extra day for re-hearsal. "A comedy like M*A*S*H is asoufflé," Metcalfe says. "You need acer-tain level of competence. If you don'tachieve that level, the whole thing fallsapart."

Despite its initial attempts at meddling,CBS had faith in a show that fared poorlyin the ratings at the start. A flop in itsoriginal Sunday -night berth, it might havebeen canceled summarily, as manyanother show has been that failed to provean instant hit. The network kept movingthe series to other nights and other timeslots. "CBS executives got nervous, butthey were patient. It took us a year and ahalf to become a hit," Metcalfe recalls.

TWENTIETH CENTURY -FOX beganselling syndicated reruns of

A*S*H to local television sta-ns in 1975 on a "futures" basis.hat is, they were not to become

available for airing until October of 1979,after which they were station property fora five- or six -year period. For station ex-ecutives, the decision to buy the rerunswas a difficult one. They were beingasked to make a fairly large financialcommitment to an unorthodox war com-edy that might hold little interest for view-ers four years down the line. It seemed notto bode well that M*A*S*H's ratings onthe network were taking a dip at the time(it turned out to be temporary), and thatMcLean Stevenson and Wayne Rogershad left the show. Still, Fox garneredsome $25 million in total revenues fromthat first round of syndication, which itlater reported as $20 million in pretaxearnings. Prices in each market were con-sidered quite good but certainly not spec-tacular.

But if Fox was happy enough with its$20 million windfall, the stations thatbought the show were in clover. No matterwhere it played-at 6:30, 7, or 11 PM. -M*A*S*H creamed the competition: newsprograms, game shows, other off -networksitcoms. "It's one of the strongest syndi-cated shows in the field," said William A.Schwartz, president of Cox Broadcasting.In San Francisco, on independent stationKTVU, M*A*S*H scored higher ratingsthan the majority of the network shows inprime time. Alan J. Bell, general managerof the station, pointed out that "the showis extra -successful in San Francisco be-

cause the city's free -spirited, young audi-ence devours M*A*S*H's anti-establish-ment sass and irreverence."

UHF stations, such as WFLD inChicago, found they were being discov-ered by new viewers thanks to M*A*S*H.Non -network stations in New York andLos Angeles were carrying the programthree times a day; with its regular networkrun, it was airing in those markets sixteentimes a week. M*A*S*H was boffo inthose cities, and in such others as Wash-ington, Minneapolis, Milwaukee,Phoenix, Miami, and Portland, Oregon.

"In terms of performance in the mar-ket, there really hasn't been a show intelevision history like M*A*S*H," saysAnthony M. Hoffman, entertainmentanalyst for the New York investment firmof A.G. Becker & Company. Ted James,his counterpart at the San Francisco bank-ing firm, Montgomery Securities, callsM*A*S*H "clearly the most successfultelevision property ever produced."

With the benefit of hindsight, financialanalysts now believe Fox seriously un-dervalued M*A*S*H in its first syndica-tion sale. The program was put on themarket just before the advertising boombegan at the country's hundred -odd unaf-filiated stations. The money generated bythe boom subsequently enabled these sta-

)000000000

Shirley the record, $54,000. Reportedly,M*A*S*H had fetched only $13,000 anepisode in New York. Fox had sold it toosoon, giving the stations that bought it atremendous bargain.

Still, it's hard to blame the company foracting when it did to syndicate M*A*S*H.After all, the show was Fox's only genuineprime -time television hit in many years; infact, the Hollywood wags called the series"Fox's television division."

Now Twentieth Century -Fox has begunselling the second package of M*A*S*Hepisodes in syndication, for delivery in1985, and the company has blood in itseyes. Robert Morin, Fox's senior vicepresident for syndication, declares,"We'll get prices in the second syndica-tion that no one will ever get again. We'llmake up this time for not getting enoughthe first time around."

According to Ted James of Montgom-ery Securities, Fox's asking price forM*A*S*H has quintupled for the secondround of syndication. He estimates thecompany will gross $125 million this timeand reap an operating profit of $75 mil-lion. The other $50 million will go to ac-tors' residuals and to Alda, Gelbart, andothers with profit participations in theseries.

On top of his fee for the first -run

IN M. STEVENS'S VIEW

7

~l/~ REJECTED SAME -SHOW COrJ¢PT

lions to pay huge amounts for the rerunrights to successful series. In 1976, a yearafter M*A*S*H went into syndication, theprices for network reruns began toskyrocket.

WPIX in New York paid $35,000 eachfor 123 episodes of Happy Days, which atthe time was almost twice what any syn-dicated show had brought before. ThenAll in the Family snagged $40,000 anepisode in New York, and Laverne &

episodes, said to be $150,000 each, Alda'sshare of the first syndication reportedlywas $5 million. The second round of syn-dication should gain him an additional $25million. His pension could end up beingvery large indeed.

None of the other actors, writers, orproducers share directly in the profits, butall have been rewarded for the success ofM*A*S*H with hefty salary increases.According to financial analysts, Loretta

CHAMqEI.5. 47 FEB/MAR

Swit, who plays nurse "Hot Lips" Houli-han, receives $40,000 a show. Mike Farrell(Hunnicutt) and Harry Morgan (ColonelPotter) each get $35,000; Jamie Farr (Cor-poral Klinger) and William Christopher(Father Mulcahy) $25,000, and DavidOgden Stiers (Charles Winchester)$20,000. All are in off-season demand formovies, nightclubs, personal appear-ances, and other television shows.

The lush salaries have made M*A*S*Hone of the most expensive half-hour seriesto produce. Needless to say, they havealso contributed to the high morale andesprit reflected in the shows.

AF

REPORTER visiting the M*A*S*Hencampment on Stage 9 at the

ox lot in Beverly Hills watchesHarry Morgan, Bill Chris-

topher, and Jamie Farr per-form a six -line scene that takes place inthe colonel's office. It's a simple bit ofaction that 1 ows Colonel Potter paintinga portrait ti , Pát her Mulcahy. CorporalKlinger bursts into the office for a fewlines of dialogue.

Director Charles S. Dubin puts Morganthrough his lines again and again until heachieves the right emphasis. Dubin sendsbackstage workers scurrying to find theproper lights to give Father Mulcahy's hairthe right effect. The scene is shot seventimes, and the whole process takes nearlytwo and a half hours. Such a prodigiouseffort on a seemingly inconsequentialscene is indicative of the pride theM*A*S*H company takes in the quality ofthe series.

Morgan comments: "On most televi-sion shows, a director will do two or threeretakes, and that's all. On this show,they'll do retakes until they get it right.We've done as many as twenty-three onsome scenes. We're trying to make it per-fect; not just good."

Jamie Farr remarks, "None of us willever again play in a series like this one.Wé'll never in our lives find this kind ofcamaraderie and creativity. There are noÍig egos here. Everyone wants to dowell."

That includes the writers. The scriptsare always crisp and literate. Executiveptoducer Metcalfe says the secret to at-taining this quality is that the producerswork with a small group of writers consist-ing of Metcalfe, producer John Rap-paport, and executive story consultantsDan Wilcox, Dennis Koenig, and ThadMumford. The M*A*S*H staff conceivesthe stories and then assigns each to amember of the writing staff. Practicallynothing is accepted from freelance writ-ers.

The M*A*S*H team of producers and

-TI-IE OTHER SIDE OF HU6H5ON R. CRVMLy

IN M. STEVENS'S VIEW

writers takes pains with authenticity anddoes extensive research-rare for a com-edy series. Metcalfe himself has inter-viewed some two hundred former MASHdoctors who served in Korea, and con-tinues to keep touch with many of them byphone. Last May, he attended a reunion ofMASH doctors in Chicago, and cameaway with material for a number of sto-ries. "We look to them for anecdotes," hesaid. "No writer, no matter how skilled,can come up with an idea that matchessomething that really happened inKorea."

Metcalfe points out that the show drawsfrom the same Hollywood pool of writersthat all other shows use. Several in thepresent group of M*A*S*H writers hadworked previously for a flop comedyseries, Waverly Wonders, which starredJoe Namath. "If someone hires you for ashow and says, 'Write this crap,' you'll dothat," said Metcalfe. "But when we say,'Do your very best,' they'll do that too."

M*A*S*H is not the Number One showin the Nielsen ratings; Dallas is, and hasbeen for several years. Three's Companyoften ranks higher, and so also does60 Minutes. So why is M*A*S*H thebonanza, and the others just big hits? Be-cause each episode that airs on CBS has along and lucrative future life in syndica-tion-the trickiest marketplace in televi-sion.

On most stations, the main time periodsfor syndicated programs are the 4 -to -6 P.M.block or the 7:30 slot after the eveningnews. These time segments draw an ap-preciably younger audience than networkprime time, and to a large extent that dem-ographic skew determines what willsucceed in syndication. Such big networkhits as Mission: Impossible, MarcusWelby, M.D. , and Ironside didn't performwell during those hours. Neither did TheSix Million Dollar Man, although it hadbeen designed for young viewers. The

analysis of its failure was that it was a"fad" show on the network, and the fadwas over by the time it entered syndica-tion.

And All in the Family, for all its greatpopularity on CBS over the years, hasonly been moderately successful in syndi-cation, from the standpoint of ratings.Alan Bennett, syndication expert for theKatz Agency, which is the sales represen-tative for some 140 television stations,says this is because "it doesn't appeal tokids." For the same reason, Bennett says,The Bob Newhart Show, a solid comedyhit on the network, was just so-so in asyndicated rerun.

In first run, Dallas consistently pacesthe prime -time field, but during the sum-mer rerun season its ratings slip substan-tially. That seems to be the way with serialdramas; in reruns they become twice-toldtales. Peyton Place, a prime -time soapopera that was a huge success in the six-ties, failed miserably in syndication, andthat suggests tough going for the Dallasreruns.

M*A*S*H, on the other hand, has ex-ceptional prospects and is the likeliestchallenger to I Love Lucy's record as theall-time earner in syndication, despitethat program's twenty-year head start.M*A*S*H plays three times a day in NewYork and Los Angeles because it can cap-ture the adult audience at 11 P.M. as readilyas the young audience in the late after-noon and early evening.

In the end, the miracle of M*A*S*H isnot just that it meets the requirements ofthe main local time periods, but that ittranscends the demography of sex, age,and education. It is neither a woman'sshow nor a man's, neither highbrow norlowbrow. It is the kind of program a fathermight watch on the same television setwith his teenage son . In popular music to-day, it is Willie Nelson who has that rarestof knacks: to join all segments of the audi-ence, closing the generation gap. In tele-vision, it is M*A*S*H.

C 11 A F. I. S 48 F E B/M A R

The Guilt EdgeAn old conspiracy of highbrows and

newspapers has conditioned us to link televisionwith the decline of Western Civilization.

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telling you that with a littlemore effort you could be hav-ng a really miserable time.

Guilt. For me it began on May9, 1961, in a remote and dusty corner ofFort Bliss, Texas. I was watching televi-sion in the day room of Company D.The rest of my platoon had trudged off tothe mess hall after our evening ritual ofwatching the cartoon adventures ofHuckleberry Hound, but I had stayed tocatch the first few minutes of the eveningnews. The army was buzzing with rumorsabout American involvement in a placecalled Vietnam, and I wanted to see ifanything was happening that might inter-fere with my imminent return to civilianlife.

But the lead story that night was notabout Vietnam, or even about astronautAlan Shepard, who had grazed the edgeof outer space in a suborbital rocket shotfour days earlier. Instead, the announcerwas talking about someone named New-ton Minow. Minow, recently appointedchairman of the Federal CommunicationsCommission by President Kennedy, haddelivered a blistering speech to televisionbroadcasters in which he invited them towatch their own programming from sign -on to sign -off.

"You will see," Minow said, "a proces-sion of game shows, violence, audience -participation shows, formula comediesabout totally unbelievable families, bloodand thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism,murder, western badmen, western goodmen, private eyes, gangsters, more vio-lence, and cartoons. And, endlessly,commercials - many screaming, cajoling,and offending. And most of all, bore-dom."

There was more. Minow acknowledgedthat a television western draws a largeraudience than a symphony, but scolded,"It is not enough to cater to the nation'swhims-you must also serve the nation'sneeds." The thirty -five -year -old formerlaw partner of Adlai Stevenson cut loosewith a condemnation that echoedthroughout the country. Television,Minow asserted, is a "vast wasteland."

I cringed, besieged by feelings ofshame. If television was a vast wasteland,then I, a founding member of the FortBliss Huckleberry Hound Society andtelevision fan extraordinaire, was clearlya vast wastrel. I loved it all, the wholeNewton Minow hit list. I loved the gameshows, the formula comedies, the unbe-lievable families, the private eyes,gangsters and gunplay, cartoons, cajoling

Clark Whelton, speech writer for the mayoro/'Nen York, is writing a hook on television.

C. HANNIS 49 F E R/ M A It

commercials, the works. I can still sing theMott's applesauce jingle from 1950, and asfar as I know I hold the record for con-tinuous contemplation of a test pattern.

But ever since Newton Minow painted a"wasteland" label on my viewing habits,I have been dogged by doubt. Whenever Isettle back for a Mary Tyler Moore rerunor another session with Family Feud, Ihear that small voice telling me I am con-tributing to the decline of Western Civili-zation, and I feel guilty. I have spent morethan a little time examining this curiousexercise in self -condemnation, and Iknow there are millions of others who suf-fer from the same affliction.

How did a mechanical contrivance liketelevision get cross -wired into the Ameri-can conscience? Did it really start withNewton Minow? In fact, the origins oftelevision guilt go back a long way, and areprobably as old as the medium itself. NewYork Times critic Jack Gould had alreadytaken a swipe at television as early as1948, when sets had tubes instead of tran-sistors. Gould wrote that children's showsappeared to be a "narcotic" administeredby parents, who had learned that plunkingjunior down in front of the Philco wouldkeep him out of their hair for an hour ortwo. By calling television a narcotic in-stead of something that kids enjoy watch-ing, Gould helped to establish a pattern ofoverkill in television criticism that wouldlargely be delivered via television's majorcompetitor- newspapers.

Very early in the struggle for mediadomination, the newspaper businessshowed its fangs: It was the summer of1950. At the editorial offices of the NewYork Journal -American , flagship paper ofthe Hearst publishing empire, a suddenmeeting was called. Among the hand-picked reporters attending that meetingwas Atra Baer, daughter of the well-known humor columnist Bugs Baer.

"The editor came right to the point,"Baer recalls. "A message had been re-ceived from William Randolph Hearst,the chief himself. It seems that Mr. Hearstwas very worried about television, espe-cially about the 'deleterious' effect that itmight be having on the American public.So a team of Journal -American reporterswas assigned to canvass the NewYork Cityarea and come up with some quotes -particularly from mothers-that wouldfocus on the 'bad effects' of television."

Orders in hand, the reporters fannedout. Atra Baer was sent to a nearby sub-urb, where she asked the requisite ques-tions in the requisite way: "Madam, areyou worried about the harmful effect tele-vision is having on your children'seyesight? Are you concerned about theharmful effect television has on your chil-dren's reading habits?" The sought-after

answers were easily obtained, and a storyon the "dangers of television" was easilywritten. At that time there were Hearstpapers in every section of the country.

Merrill Panitt, the editor of TV Guide,remembers just how effective anti -television journalism was.

"In our early issues," Panitt says, "weconstantly had to answer all the negativestories circulating about television. Weran articles reassuring our readers that no,television is not bad for your eyes: no,television is not bad for your back: no,television does not cause cancer, and itcertainly doesn't cause constipation."

Given the newspapers' antipathy towardradio, their alarm at the arrival of televi-sion-radio with pictures-can be imag-ined. The antagonism even extended intopress conferences, where newspaper re-porters often salted their questions withexpletives ("Senator, don't bullshit us,when the hell is Congress going to passthat goddamn tax bill?") so that broad-casters, whose vocabularies are sanitizedby their license obligations, couldn't runthe footage on the air. When naughty lan-guage didn't do the trick, light plugs werepulled, doors were slammed, and cough-ing epidemics broke out whenever a tele-vision reporter asked a question.

"It worked for a while," says a formernewspaper reporter who admits to a minorcareer in sabotage. "But we could seewho was winning the war. Politicianswouldn't even let a press conference beginuntil the cameras arrived."

Newspapers grudgingly accepted theinevitable. The immense popularity oftelevision stars like Milton Berle and EdSullivan had helped to sell millions ofsets, and the daily papers had to give theirreaders what they wanted. Bans againsttelevision listings were dropped, eventhough many papers quietly decided thattelevision coverage deserved to becrammed in with the comics or burieddeep inside. This snobbery toward televi-sion still exists today. A reporter whoworked for The New York Times in the1970s recalls an editor saying that theTimes would not "debase" its culture sec-tion with television news. Television re-porting was-and still is-relegated tothe back pages.

However, it was in the area of televisioncriticism that newspapers made theirbiggest dent in the competition. Syndi-

cated columnists like John Crosby spe-cialized in scathing reviews of televisionprograms, reviews implying not only thatcertain shows were inferior, but that tele-vision itself was a medium only a lowbrowcould love. Although theater critics wereexpected to love the theater, and danceand movie critics to revere those artforms, television critics were often peoplewho disdained television.

AtT THE CENTER of this conflict be-ween newspapers and televisionwas a life -or -death struggle.

Publishers were well awarethat someone who gets his

nightly news from the tube is less likely tobuy an evening paper. Even before televi-sion went on the air, newspapers had beenfighting for survival. Dozens of double-barreled logotypes (Post -Dispatch,Herald Tribune) revealed the manynewspaper mergers inspired by the fear ofbankruptcy. Fresh competition from tele-vision gave newspapers the shudders, es-pecially in large cities where the newmedium flourished.

On a national basis, however, there waslittle reason to fear that television wouldundermine American literacy. Officialfigures reveal that the United States hadonly nine fewer daily papers in 1980 thanthere were in 1950, and circulation hadclimbed by more than eight million.

Nevertheless, enemies of televisionwere ever on the alert. In 1963, psycholo-gists claimed to have discovered a "TVSyndrome," which supposedly made kidscranky if they were overexposed to thetube. In the seventies, reports indicatedthat by the time they reached first grade,television -watching children had spent anaverage of 5,000 hours in front of the set.A variety of social problems now began tobe blamed on television. Low readingscores? College Board scores taking atumble? Crime and vandalism on the rise?Blame television. And let's not forget therecent news from Tulsa Central Academyin Oklahoma. When English teacher JohnZannini's seventh grade class heard thatPresident Reagan had been shot, most ofthe class cheered. Mr. Zannini blamed iton television.

Television has been subjected to con-stant scorn and sniping by critics whowould have you believe that unless youwere watching a show introduced by Alis-

C 11 ANN E I. j 50 F E B/M A R

tair Cooke, you had no taste at all. WriterRichard Schickel summed it up this way:

"Television criticism, especially thatwhich aspires to the broad scale and thetheoretical, has become, in recent years,little more than a branch of the ecologymovement. The brightly glowing box inthe corner of the living room is perceivedby those who write sober books and Sun-day newspaper articles about it as a sort ofsmoking chimney, spilling God knowswhat brain -damaging poisons not onlyinto the immediate socio-political envi-ronment, but also, it is predicted, loosingagents whose damage may not becomeapparent to us for decades to come."

In the short run, however, the damagedone by snobbish criticism of television isvery apparent. America may be the onlycountry in the world where people actu-ally feel guilty about watching. Unfortu-nately, it is very easy to bully the averageAmerican on matters of culture and taste.This vulnerability probably dates back toour colonial past, when most settlers weretoo busy surviving to give much thoughtto gracious living. All that was refined andcultured arrived on packet boats fromEurope - which to a considerable extentis still true today-and Americans be-came accustomed to taking orders onquestions of taste, anxious to be acceptedby the rest of the world. Newton Minowbetrayed this anxiety in his "wasteland"speech when he asked: "What will peopleof other countries think of us when theysee our western badmen and good menpunching each other in the jaw, in betweenthe shooting?"

I can answer that question. Americantelevision is very popular throughout theworld, where most people consider it asource of entertainment, not of guilt. I

once stayed at a small hotel in Barcelonawhere the only regulation was: "Neverinterrupt the manager when he's watch-ing Sea Hunt or Have Gun Will Travel."When Americans assigned to a NATO airbase in Iceland broadcast old / Love Lucytapes, the show became the number -onehit in nearby Reykjavik. In England,where television is a popular pastime,viewers watch anything and everythingwithout apology. But here at home it's adifferent story. Americans are plagued byguilt for enjoying television.

There is, for example, the guilt parentsimpose on children. Michael J. Arlen,television critic for The New Yorker.compared this parental harrassment to theguilt -mongering and mythologizing fre-quently surrounding the subject of mas-turbation. "Authorities, for example,such as parents and educators, suggestthat it may cause vague harm ... thoughgenerally speaking there are rarely anyvisible signs of ill effects." Instead of en-

couraging children to develop good judg-ment about their television habits, parentssometimes taint the whole topic with im-plications of moral failure by those whowatch any television at all. The result isnot less television viewing, but subterfugeand feelings of guilt when the set is on.

There is also the vague fear that thetube is wasting your time. You spent allday Saturday watching a Gilligan's Is-land festival, and when you're throughyou discover that the lawn still isn'tmowed. And you feel guilty. Obviously,television offers extraordinary opportuni-ties for wasting time. There is nothingeasier than turning on a set, and if televi-sion is being used as an excuse for avoid-ing other duties, then guilt feelings areprobably justified.

HEN, OF COURSE, there is statusguilt, the least logical variety ofTevision angst. You preferA*S*H" to Mendelssohn, butou're afraid the neighbors will

find out. You've read critic John MasonBrown's quip that television is "chewinggum for the eyes," and now you deny thatyou like to chew gum. Status guilt can be a

serious problem: however, it will help toknow that those who regularly demeantelevision do so out of a need to feelunique. It's easy to be snobbish about thetheater,restaurants, clothes, or literature,because status seekers can always claimto have been the first to discover a newplay, bistro, fashion, or book. Television,

o

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which reaches everyone at the same time,offers little in the way of snob appeal. Theviewer can only claim to have done whateveryone else in the country could havedone if he had turned on his set, andthere is no distinction at all in such aboast. Now and then a "cult" show likeMary Hartman, Mary Hartman willcome along, but as soon as enough peopletune in, the snobs tune out and turn uptheir noses at anyone who doesn't do thesame.

The fact that most television guilt hasno basis in reality does not mean that tele-vision is without flaws. However, it takesmore than one generation to shape andrefine an innovation so powerful and revo-lutionary, and we're learning all the time.As for those who agree that television isindeed a vast wasteland, and that thosewho watch it deserve to be burdened byguilt, I suggest that the world before tele-vision was not exactly paradise. Bore-dom, loneliness, ignorance-these andother social ills have been around for along time.

From the window of the Company Dday room where I watched HuckleberryHound, I could see the distant summit ofGuadalupe Peak, ninety miles awayacross the high plains desert. Ninety milesof sand and chaparral. Ninety miles ofnothing. But the Company D televisionset brought the world a little bit closer.Anybody who has seen a real "vast waste-land" will tell you that television is a vastrelief.

IN M. STEVENS'S VIEW

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CHAELSNN 51 F E B/M A R

Should Corporate AdvertisersBe Allowed to Sell Ideas?

by Charlie Dodge

HE CAMERA PANS the silhouette ofa primitive flying craft setT inst a bursting dawn sky. Bryan

en is about to become the firsterson to cross the English

Channel in a manpowered airship. Wewatch as he pedals his way into the recordbooks. A voiceover, quiet and aqueous,confides, "Bryan Allen illustrates our be-lief that everyone benefits when individu-als have great freedom to pursue personalgoals. Unfortunately, neither you nor wecan expect such freedom in our daily lives.Not when someone decides the govern-ment should protect us from it. Somethingto think about ... from the people atGetty."

The people at Getty are in the oil busi-ness. Their public -policy ads may havenothing to do with oil, but they are thelatest reminder of the push now on tobreak the lingering barriers to advocacyadvertising on television. Advertisingagencies and their trade associations,corporations, and lobby groups are work-ing hard to open television up to paid "is-sue" messages - with notable success:The Television Bureau of Advertising(TvB) predicts television revenues fromsuch advertising will have rocketed fromzero in 1979 to nearly $100 million in 1981.

The Bryan Allen spot-along withsimilar thirty- and sixty-second stories -is running during prime time in five majorcities and on two ABC -owned and -oper-ated stations. ABC approved the com-mercial as submitted ("It wasn't an advo-cacy ad; it doesn't espouse a particularview," claims ABC spokesman Jeff Tol-vin). CBS rejected it outright ("Their cor-porate or political opinions are their ownbusiness, but they're not going to get onCBS," says the network's Jim Sirmans).And NBC accepted them, but only afterthe ads had been running for months onABC -owned stations. The ads are alsorunning on the 85 percent Getty -ownedEntertainment and Sports ProgrammingNetwork (ESPN), which reaches elevenmillion cable homes.

Charlie Dodge is senior writer for Cam-paigns and Elections: The Journal ofPolitical Action, a quarterly published inWashington.

C H A NN F L l 5 2 F' F: R ,' 111 A R

Companies are pressuring revenue -hungry stationsto drop restrictions against advocacy ads.

Similar commercials are in the works."We're babes in the woods in corporateadvocacy," says Getty public -relationsmanager Jack Leone. "It's really just atoe -in -the -water thing for us now." It'salso a foot in the door, since the Gettyspots artfully disarm the Fairness Doc-trine. To be subject to a Fairness Doctrinechallenge, an ad would have to espouse aposition on a "controversial issue of pub-lic importance." And what could be lesscontroversial on its face than "the free-dom to pursue individual goals"? Gettyofficials do not admit this strategy is whatthey have in mind, only that "we're nottrying to ram something down people'sthroats. In sixty seconds you can't articu-late a philosophy."

Others disagree, arguing that Getty isespousing, albeit subtly, a philosophy ofderegulation and anti -environmentalism.The Getty ads, as well as those by Mobil,Kaiser Aluminum, and a growing list ofactivist corporations, raise difficult ques-tions-not only for the networks but forthe public. There is a danger that the cor-porate points of view on critical issues -and on more general ones, as withGetty-will come to dominate the mediaif giant companies are allowed to buy allthe air -time they want. Should networksand stations have the right to decidewhich advocacy advertisements they willcarry? Should an oil company's philoso-phy be entitled to more exposure than alabor union's? Should money determinewho speaks loudest on the important is-sues of the day?

These crucial questions haunt the net-works and local radio and television sta-tions, where decisions on whether or notto run a given advocacy spot are becomingincreasingly difficult to make. Pressurefrom advertisers is increasing, the adsthemselves are becoming subtle enough tobe acceptable, and the ad revenues seemmore enticing every day. Reluctance re-mains, but resistance is quickly eroding.

The Supreme Court ruled that stationshave a legal right to reject editorial adver-tising, and many of them do, usually be-cause they fear having to provide free timefor opposing views. In 1977, the FederalCommunications Commission decidedthat a Texaco spot-showing all thepieces of a jigsaw puzzle falling into place

when refineries and distributors areadded to oil wells-was an attempt tocomment on legislation pending in Con-gress to break up large oil companies. Thecommission ordered one station to runopposing commercials, produced by aconsumer group, Energy Action."Local stations don't want it to getmessy," says Roy Danish of the Televi-sion Information Office, an arm of theNational Association of Broadcasters. "Ifthere are legal problems, they will backaway."

Yet some wonder if the Fairness Doc-trine is the real reason some stations, andthe networks, are reluctant to run issueads. "The Fairness Doctrine has essen-tially atrophied," says Stuart Sucherman,

As the ads get moresubtle, the decisionsfacing local stations

become more difficult.

executive director of the Columbia Uni-versity Media -in -Society Seminars. "Ifyou went over to CBS and said, 'Whathave you not done over the last few yearsbecause of the Fairness Doctrine?' youwould get, 'Nothing. We don't even knowwhat it is.' " Indeed, Gene Mater, CBSsenior vice president for policy, arguesthat "if the Fairness Doctrine wereabolished tomorrow, CBS policy wouldremain the same." Local stations, tempt-ed by dollars, are far less likely to matchnetwork resolve. At the request of theAmerican Association of AdvertisingAgencies, the TvB completed a survey inthe summer of 1981 that found 93 percentof responding television stations willingto accept advocacy advertising on an "is-sue -by -issue basis." (That number was upfrom 89 percent in 1980.) Five years ago ina similar TvB survey, only 50 percent wereso disposed. Fifty-six of the stationsagreeing to accept the ads are in the topten markets. In a concurrent survey, Opin-ion Research reported that 60 percent ofthe public believes companies should beallowed to buy advocacy time on televi-

sion, although 90 percent consider mediacoverage of business generally fair. Thesame study revealed that of the 90 percentwho have seen issue ads, 70 percent haveseen them on television.

Yet J. Walter Thompson, which billsitself "the agency that takes issues,"found a great deal more resistance thanthe surveys suggest when it went to localtelevision stations with the anti -budget -cut commercial it handled for the Ameri-can Federation of State, County, andMunicipal Employees (AFSCME). Two-thirds of the nearly 100 stations contacteddeclined to carry it, claiming they do notaccept issue -oriented advertising.

On July 1, ABC became the first net-work to allow corporations and others topurchase "paid commentaries." Time wasallotted from the late -night schedule; theprice for an advocacy minute was set at$32,000-8.5 percent above regular late -night rates. But the network had no tak-ers, and only two expressions of inter-est-from the Conservative Caucus ofLynchburg, Virginia, and upstate NewYork's Coalition on West Valley NuclearWaste. "Who wants to discuss issues aminute after midnight?" asks Mobil'sTony DeNigro, noting his company'ssuccess in running issue spots duringprime time on local stations. Andrew J.Schwartzman, executive director of theMedia Access Project, a Washington -based public -interest law firm, offers adifferent explanation: "They [corpora-tions] are very greedy, and what they'resaying is, 'We're not going to buy thisrestrictive time. We're going all theway.' "

For many local radio and television sta-tions, issue advertising can be an impor-tant source of revenue. Sandy Pastoor,vice president for programming at Met-romedia's WTTG in Washington, is quickto admit, "It's very good money."

Mobil was the first company to beginspreading some of that kind of moneyaround. The company began its much -publicized struggle for access to networkcommercial time shortly after the public-ity fallout from the oil embargo of 1973. Ithas been leading the battle against thenetworks ever since. But Mobil seems tohave changed its strategy of late. Aftertrying to win approval for a series of rela-

CHAM F I.S 53 FEB/MAB

show, a surprise to Wood. Just beforegoing on the air, he was introduced to JimWallgren, a sixteen -year -old from Gar-land, Texas, paralyzed from the chestdown as a result of a high school football -practice accident. Wood silently hopedthat nobody would be confused by the factthat he and Wallgren were both fromTexas; people could think the youth hadbeen one of his players, and that he hadbeen negligent.

Once on the air, Good Morning, Amer-ica host David Hartman first interviewedattorney Miller about liability problems.Wallgren, in a wheelchair, then told hisstory. Ex -pro Francis said his concernscentered on kids below high school agewho play tackle football. Hartman thenasked Wood what precautions he took toavoid injuries. Wood outlined his trainingprocedures and emphasized the impor-tance of proper conditioning.

When Wood finished, Hartman said,"Back in 1974, you participated in anABC News Close -Up about sports vio-lence. Let me show just thirty seconds."Then, as the camera fixed on Wood,Hartman added, "This is back in 1974,and this is Coach Wood with some of hisplayers, seven years ago, so watch this,gentlemen ..."

Wood was puzzled, and looked towardthe monitor. As far as he knew, he hadnever participated in an ABC NewsClose -Up. Some years earlier, a film crewhad come to Brownwood to make a doc-umentary about him, but he did not recallthat it had been intended for television; tohis knowledge, it had never been released.

As soon as the image hit the screen,Wood was certain a mistake had beenmade. The team colors were all wrong,and a Brownwood winter would havekilled the palm trees lining that practicefield.

But if he had worried about people get-ting the wrong impression about him andthe injured boy from Texas, what he sawnext on the screen distressed him evenmore. Wood, 67, watched a man who ap-peared to be in his thirties jerk, slap,scream at, and shove students during ahigh school football practice. The obviousage difference between his guest and theman in the film must have botheredHartman; Wood heard him say, "As I said.this is seven years ago back in 1974..."

When the clip ended, Hartman turnedto Wood. "Now coach," he began, "whenyou say, 'go get 'em, hit, hit .... "

Wood tried to interrupt. "Let me ...""... how do they back off from that

when you tell 'em to go out and try to killsomebody?" Hartman persisted.

"Let me say first that this is the mostridiculous thing I've ever seen in my life,"

Wood said. "That isn't me.Hartman recovered quickly and offered

his personal and professional apologies:then he asked for Wood's reaction to whathe had just seen.

"If he [the coach in the film] were onmy staff, he'd be fired in the morning,"the coach replied.

In his letter of apology to Wood, GeorgeMerlis, executive producer of the show atthe time, said that those responsible forthe incident had been severely repri-manded, and that one resignation hadbeen demanded. He stated that Hartmandid not have prior knowledge of what wason the film and offered his "abjectapologies" for "the embarrassment toyou and to David Hartman and to GoodMorning, America."

ABC spokesman Peter Heller later saidthat one of the show's writers had "struc-tured the segment . .. to ambush thecoach." Heller maintained that the writerdid not tell anybody else about her design,not even Hartman. "What happened was,

possible settlement with Stevens beforethe suit was brought, but no agreementhad been reached by the time Channelswent to press in January. The lawyer sayshe expects the case will come to trial.

Wood personally believes Hartman"seemed to know a lot about that stupidfilm clip,' and that, if he had been thecoach on the film, he should have beengiven advance warning to prepare a de-fense. ABC's Heller agreed that "even if ithad been Gordon, it was unethical and it isagainst the specific standards and prac-tices of the show to set someone up."

The coach has received sympatheticletters from across the country. Somewere addressed to him with a carbon toABC; others were addressed to ABC witha carbon to him. All invariably began, "AsI was eating breakfast this morning,' andmany revealed a deep mistrust of themedia and delight that ABC had beencaught in its own trap.

"You really put journalism in its properlight,' a viewer in Arkansas wrote.

the bad morning at Gwill certainly make

to venture ever againjournalism, but probably

we asked ABC News to give us a thirty-second clip to show with Coach Wood,"Heller said. "ABC News had done a pro-gram some years ago on brutality insports, and they sent us a film clip of acoach abusing players. We made a mis-take at Good Morning, America in notknowing the coach wasn't Coach Wood."

The explanation did not keep Woodfrom instructing his lawyer to file a libelsuit against the network. The lawyer,Gary Stevens of Houston, anticipates thatdefendants in the case would includeHartman, ABC News and Sports presi-dent Roone Arledge, and Howard Cosell(Stevens says Cosell participated in estab-lishing editorial policy for use of sportsmaterial in such shows as Good Morning,America). Wood isn't convinced thatmore people at ABC didn't have advanceknowledge of the clip's contents; Stevenshas asked that ABC put his client back onthe air, and that the network admit to hav-ing known before the film was broadcastthat Wood was not in it. ABC discussed

ood Morning, Americaits staff reluctantinto confrontationalfor the wrong reasons.

Others wrote:"Seems to typify the media's appetite

for sensationalism ...""TV is always trying to knock down

great people .Many wrote ABC to say that, at the

very least, they were inexcusably unpre-pared. "At least verify facts beforecrucifying an individual ..."

And of course, there were some oldaxes to grind. "Now you have a smalltaste of what was done to Richard Nixonwhen he was hounded out of office."

ABC has dutifully admitted guilt, butthe question nags: What if it had beenGordon Wood in the film? Would thewriter have been fired if Wood had beenshamed rather than misrepresented? Thebad morning at Good Morning, Americawill certainly make its staff reluctant toventure ever again into confrontationaljournalism, but perhaps for reasons not asnoble as those claimed.

Arnie Weissmann is editor of Texas Out-look magazine.

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Images from Somewhere Else

Within the Context of No Contextby George W. S. TrowLittle, Brown & Co., $12.95

HE QUESTION IS: Should we con-sider television with chagrin, or

with horror? Those who pay atten-tion to the medium's busy fore-

ground of programming-good,bad, long, short, noble, ignoble-usuallyconsider it with a strained wince. Mosttelevision critics seem to feel this way(alone among forms of entertainment,television has almost no discerning criticswho like what it has to offer), as does theviewer who "only watches public TV" orold movies, or who restricts the impres-sionable young folk to one hour per night.

Attend, however, to television's eeriebackground -a low, electromagnetichum, a pool ofsomewhere else, perhaps from within themachine itself, made available, madefamiliar, to silent people in darkenedrooms hour after hour-and you mightcome to a more categorical conclusion.Marshall McLuhan first broached the se-cret that television is the water in whichall we blithe fish swim, declaring furtherthat the electronic media had replacedlinear, "typographic" thinking-that is,logic -with direct, "tactile" experience.And then, with a surprising cry of "in thedestructive element immerse," McLuhandeclared television the salvation of thedissociated sensibility, and settled in towait for the arrival of "the global village."Most others who have followed McLuhaninto the post -Gutenberg world, however,have reached the opposite conclusion -utter dread. In Four Arguments for theElimination of Television, reformed ad-vertiser Jerry Mander calls the medium a"guru -hypnotist -leader," claiming that it"zombie-ized" the mind, deprived thesenses, sought death over life, and madestraight the path of fascism.

George W. S. Trow, a New Yorker es-sayist and deadpan satirist in the stylemade famous by Donald Barthelme,comes down squarely on the side of hor-ror. Readers accustomed to the usualarray of psychological and economicwould-be facts, however, will be disap-

pointed and probably baffled by thisgnomic and altogether brilliant reportfrom the frontiers of modern culture.Trow composes his thoughts telegraphi-cally, with much of the implicit logic sup-pressed, so that his essay (which appearedoriginally in The New Yorker) readssomething like one of Ezra Pound's can-tos. Yet because he deals directly with thepersonal experience of television, andpopular culture in general, we may findeven his most obscure or adventurous ob-servations familiar: We have felt the samedread at times. "Television has problemswith its programming," he writes, "be-cause the frame of all programs on televi-sion is television-nothing else.... Day-time stories are just television loneliness.Talk programs are just the television con-text of no -context. Game shows havecome to admit that they refer only tothemselves."

The frame of all programs on televisionis television-this is "the context of no -context." In Trow's mind, a context is asetting of shared values or rules withinwhich an exchange, or "transaction,"may take place; for example, the code ofgentlemanly conduct that allowed WorldWar I flying aces to know when it waspermissible to shoot one another out ofthe air. Trow argues that the televisionage, arriving at a time when America'ssense of grandeur and historical purposehad lost much of its energy, annihilated allsuch reference points. Final authoritiesare no longer available in the culture, noreven is the idea of authority. Look at tele-vision. David Brinkley has a sort of con-text; but so does J.R.; so does MondayNight Football. The only remaining con-texts are ad hoc, unpersuasive. "Thingsvery distant came powerfully close,"Trow writes of television's pseudo -intimacy, "but just for a minute." Trueauthority provides a shelter from the lone-liness of the self, a warm spot in the com-munity; but television deepens the isola-tion and disorientation of the viewer. Ittakes him away from home.

Once there was a context of sharedjudgments, and the shared history thatshaped them. In the "New History,"though, judging has been replaced bycounting; the "New History" is "the rec-

ord of the expression of demographicallysignificant preferences." The advertiser,the pollster, the politician-thoroughlymodern men -believe a thing is importantbecause it is widely liked or widely be-lieved, not because a man would judge itgood, or ill. We love it because it is loved.Trow dwells at length on "The Aestheticof the Hit," which "loves you because youlove it because it's a Hit!"

Television provides the drained realitythat makes it possible to confuse popular-ity with value, or even fact. Trow fishes upa revelatory illustration on this score, re-calling how the host of Family Feud"asked contestants to guess what a poll ofa hundred people had guessed would bethe height of the average Americanwoman. Guess what they've guessed.Guess what they've guessed the averageis." What is at issue is not a fact, butmerely the popular impression about afact.

Television is a vacuum, but the vacuumwears a smile-the smile of newscasters,Dallas Cowgirls, Johnny Carson. Trowreserves a special hatred for "the lie in thesmile." Rising to his highest level ofabstraction, as well as dudgeon (a peculiarcombination), he defines television as"Two abilities: to do a very complex kindof work, involving electrons, and then tocover the coldness of that with a hatefulfamiliarity. Why hateful? Because.... Ithas to do with a human being as a humanbeing is weak and willing to be fooled;the human being's eagerness to perceiveas warm something that is cold, for in-stance..."

The need to be warm in the cold, to lovewhat cannot be loved; television speaks tothe viewer as the viewer is a child, saying:Love Johnny Carson; love Coca-Cola. Itmakes no distinction between worthy andunworthy objects of the emotions.

Television's infantilism is an infectiousdisease; it caught it from a debilitatedpost-war culture, and passes it on. Trowcompares People and Life magazines atsome length. People, he points out, is

conducted "within the mode of a televi-sion talk show." It gossips about the inti-mate lives of celebrities and elevatesanonymous people to fame, thus creatinga spurious sense of unity between the

C H A iNN F LS 58 F E B/M A R

viewer, alone, at home, and those who"have their home in the grid of twohundred million." This is the magazine'spurpose; it offers no other context, suchas a particular view of the place or value ofcelebrities. Trow looks at a copy of Lifefrom 1951, and notes that the figures onthe cover appear inside a frame, whichrepresents Life's point of view, its unvary-ing context. Life was about the back-ground, the particular view of Americanlife taken by the editors, above all byHenry Luce (a point also made in one ofMichael Arlen's musings on television fif-teen years ago). People is about the de-racinated foreground, the stars who seemto have no existence beyond the pages ofthe magazine.

What does it all add up to? (The authoris fond of the rhetorical question.) One ofTrow's favorite headings-each para-graph, or pensée, has its own title-is"The Decline of Adulthood." An adultwas once someone with the faculty forjudging, which was based on the posses-sion of a shared context. But as no contextremains to be mastered and inhabited,people turn instead to childish modes,childish "transactions." Trow conjures upa wasteland of alienation and despair,looking at art and finding only the "glum-ness" of the discovery of the lie in thesmile.

Television's critics normally occupy thehigh ground of books and classical culture(Jerry Mander opts for openness, contactwith the earth, Hopi Indians). But Trowimplies that modern life offers no suchalternative contexts. If the fish realizesthat his water is polluted he can either likeit, as McLuhan, or lump it, as Trow.

Readers will perhaps glimpse this de-spair of alternatives in Trow's odd, color-less style. "So one or two of the babiesbegan to experience a problem. Loneli-ness rose to the surface. It was a problem.No exit for the babies. Dead end for thebabies." At times he takes on-adopts,not mimics - the vacuous enthusiasm ofhis subject matter. His style says: There isno other way. He explains punk art, forinstance, as a parody of "an iconographyof excrement" by those with no othericonography to refer to. Trow does not somuch parody his subject as undermine itwith irony. In a moving passage that con -

eludes the essay, he recalls how his fa-ther's hat came to symbolize the haulbourgeoisie manner that he could neveradopt. "I have, in fact, worn a fedora hat,but ironically.... A fedora hat worn byme without the necessary protective ironywould eat through my head and kill me."

Since Trow is surely right that we can'tgo backwards to fedora hats and moroc-co -bound volumes, and we don't seemlikely to go forward to Hopi Indians andoneness with whales, we must return tothe question of the machine in our midst:Should we consider television with hor-ror, or with chagrin? Trow is something ofa patsy for dread. New York City horrifieshim, and the New York World's Fair filledhim with loathing. Some intelligentpeople who have to watch television for aliving, such as Michael Arlen, consider itappalling and irremediable but do not feelthat the fish are being quite so damagedby the polluted water.

And then there are all those happy ex-periences of television, most of them de-pending on the medium's most degradedaspects. The previous issue of this maga-zine carried a series of interviews withordinary folk whose lives were in varyingdegrees organized around television. Atwelve -year -old learned about life fromsitcoms; a basketball player talked aboutthe soaps with teammates, as if thecharacters were mutual acquaintances; awidow enjoyed the company, the string of

undifferentiated smiles; a Harvard typepaddled happily in television nostalgia.The tube gives pleasure in infinitely vari-ous ways.

Yet it is appalling; watching oneselfwatch it, one often feels something likenausea, existential if not physical. Anyviewer of Three's Company could agreewith Trow's observation that television isa sink from which all the judgment, con-flict, wisdom of a culture is draining. Thatthe true material of television is not "life,"but television - "a momentary fabricfrom outer space," as Trow writes -alsoseems incontestable.

Two sets of facts stand in conflict.Television gives pleasure to apparently in-telligent people, but television is the vac-uum at the center of modern culture, thecontext of no -context. Television's back-ground is altogether dreadful, but itsforeground is tolerable to some, attractiveto others. The fact is that you cannot gazetoo long into the vacuum in the back-ground, because doing so brings a terriblepall of inauthenticity over everything.That the water is polluted really is not abearable thought, unless you like pollu-tion or believe in the existence of alterna-tive ponds. Since we have to live in theforeground, we might as well learn to tol-erate it. JAMES TRAUB

James Traub is a Channels contributingwriter.

IN M. STEVENS'S VIEW

-- 44,71-m%~

JNsrN,4f ,4 41,05riNrrzETiN6 exENCEC H A NN F I. j 59 F E B / M A R

(Electronic Free Speech)

You're about to lose a rightyou never knew you had.

Unless you act fast, you'll forever lose yourright to talk back on the air.

The Reagan Administration and America'smost powerful communications giants are try-ing to kill the Fairness Doctrine which protectsfree speech on radio and television.

If they succeed, you won't have the right tocounter corporate propaganda campaigns, pre-sent dissenting political views, or reach mil-lions of Americans who can't be reached in anyother way.

We can't afford to lose this right. Here'swhat's at stake .. .

To put it simply, the Fairnessgives you the right

to expect fair and balanced cov-erage of important public issueson the air.

It also gives you the right totalk back.

If a radio station broadcastsan editorial opposing gun con-trol, for example, the FairnessDoctrine requires the station tooffer those who favor gun con-trol a chance to respond.

If a giant oil company buysmillions of dollars worth of TVadvertising to push its "solu-tion" to the energy crisis, theFairness Doctrine requires thestation to offer those with otherviews time to answer back-even if they can't pay.

The Fairness Doctrine makesevery broadcaster responsible tothe public. Since broadcastersenjoy a licensed monopoly touse our airwaves, this isonly fair.

It's also strong assurance thatbroadcast journalism will bereasonably objective. With mostpeople getting most of their in-formation from television, thisprotection is vital.

In effect, the Fairness Doc-trine prevents radio and TV sta-tions from becoming vehiclesfor one-sided propaganda. Itpreserves balance. It encour-ages open debate and the freeflow of ideas and opinion onwhich our democracy depends.

But now, under cover of "de-regulation," the Reagan Admin-istration and the broadcast in-dustry are quietly seeking tokill the Fairness Doctrine andits democratic protections.

They want to take away ourright to hear all sides and ex-press our own views. The out-come of the battle will determinehow freely every American canspeak for decades to come. Andwe can't win without your help.

Please send for more informa-tion on the Fairness Doctrineand what you can do to save it.Your tax-deductible contribu-tion will help alert thousands ofothers.

We must act now. While westill have the right to talk backat all.

Savethe Fairness

Doctrine. Tell me more about the

Fairness Doctrine andhow I can save it.

Here's my direct tax-deductible contributionto your educationalefforts

$15 $25$50 More.

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ADDRESS

CITY STATE ZIP

Please make check payable to:

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Public Media Center is a non-profit publicinterest ad agency which is concerned aboutmedia access.

WJIM's Long Roadto the Woodshed

by Alex Kotlowitz

VgaIEWERS OF LANSING, Michi-n's WJIM-TV often missed

Mery Griffin's openingmonologue or parts of the pre-

game ceremonies on the NationalFootball League game of the week. WJIMmanagement wanted more time for localcommercials. So it squeezed them in -even when they didn't fit, and even if itmeant "clipping" network programs.

The practice of "clipping" was one offive violations Federal CommunicationsCommission judge Byron Harrison citedin denying broadcast license renewal toGross Telecasting Inc. (GTI), owner ofWJIM-TV.

If the commission upholds Harrison'sruling, WJIM will become one of the veryfew television stations in America to haveits license revoked in response to citizens'complaints.

The judge's decision was a long time incoming. The Lansing chapter of theAmerican Civil Liberties Union initiatedthe complaint against the locally ownedtelevision station in 1973, charging amongother things that WJIM management re-fused to cover politicians it didn't support,that it was guilty of anti -labor practices,and that it used its FCC license to advanceits own private interests. The clippingcharge was added to the petition later,after a local viewer wrote the FCC com-plaining about shortened Mery Griffinmonologues. On examining station logs,the ACLU discovered more than six thou-sand cases of clipping by the station(though only one -tenth of that numberwere permitted in the record as evidence).

While clipping was far and away themost serious violation by WJIM man-agement, Judge Harrison also cited theCBS affiliate for: ceasing coverage of alocal tennis club's activities because it hadnot paid its bills; taping the 11 P.M. weatherreport at 6:30 (according to the testimonyof a former WJIM weather forecaster, hewas told by management to look outsidehis window for any changes in theweather); firing a reporter who had beentrying to organize a union, and using con-tour maps that exaggerated the station'sbroadcast area by as much as 32 percent,in efforts to obtain advertising clients.

In his 196 -page decision, issued last No-vember, Harrison also chided WJIM formisrepresenting itself to CBS and theFCC. The station's management had re-peatedly denied that it was clipping net-work programs and had written the FCCthat the concerned Mery Griffin viewermust have been confused by the looseformat of the show back in the days whenit was CBS's late -night answer to JohnnyCarson. (A CBS spokesperson refused tocomment on whether the network wouldpursue any legal action of its own.)

While Harrison did absolve the stationof the allegations that it had blacked outcertain politicians, he concluded that "theclear intent of GTI to engage in misrepre-sentation and outright fraud with repre-sentatives of the government, industry,and public further demonstrates ... thatGTI is beyond rehabilitation."

Gross Telecasting intends to appealHarrison's decision to the three -memberFCC review board. The case can then beappealed to the commission as a whole."It's just unbelievable that he would de-cide the way he did," says Harold Gross,GTI's chairman. "We trust the commis-sion will overturn it." Gross labeled thecase a "witch hunt" on the part of theACLU: "If they can come in and do thisto us, they can do it to anybody."

He defends the station's instances ofclipping by saying that "everybody didit," and that the station stopped the prac-tice when it was fully apprised of the rulesagainst it.

Though the ACLU and the Washing-ton -based Media Access Project (MAP),which joined in challenging WJIM, werepleased with Harrison's decision, theywere discouraged by the length and ex-pense of the petition process.

The case against WJIM was not hearduntil two years after the initial filing of thepetition, and the hearing procedure itselftook another three years. Since the clos-ing of the hearings in the summer of 1978(after 160 days of testimony, more than24,000 pages of transcripts, and 917 exhib-its), the case has rested in the hands ofJudge Harrison.

"It is a long and unusual record; it's just

21:

a lot of material to go through, plus I havea lot of other duties, too," Harrison said inexplaining why he took so long to reach adecision.

Such lengthy delays discourage com-munity groups wanting to challenge theirlocal television stations. The WJIM casehas already cost the ACLU and MAP anestimated $200,000, a prohibitive amountto almost any citizens group. The LansingACLU has held numerous fundraisers,spaghetti dinners, and solicitation drivesto help meet the expense.

MAP executive director AndrewSchwartzman admits that "if we knewthen what we know now, I doubt that I'dwant to go through it again." But, he adds,"By showing that we can successfully[challenge a station's license], it will makelicensees more responsive to the commu-nity."

Schwartzman calls the judge's ruling "areminder that the Communications Act isalive and well," adding hopes that thiscase will "buck the tide" of the currentFCC's deregulatory mood. The commis-sion may indeed be hard pressed to over-turn Judge Harrison's strongly wordeddecision. "We can disagree about the per-formance of the overall industry," saysSchwartzman, "but we have to realizethat there are some broadcasters whodon't meet the standards."

If the FCC decides in favor of WJIM,the citizens groups will probably appeal inthe courts. ACLU officials expect thatanother two to four years will elapse be-fore the case is completely resolved.

In the meantime, while the various par-ties await the final outcome, WJIM con-tinues to operate as if it had a license,providing news and programming toLansing viewers, and earning profits. Asit has for the past eight years, it operateswithout even the obligation of having tofile for a license renewal every threeyears.

But, as MAP's Schwartzman says,"They're a heck of a lot more solicitousthan they would be if they were off scot-free."

Alex Kotlowitz is a Michigan -basedwriter.

CHAMEIS 61 F E B/M A R

American Revolution(Continued from page 25)

learn French; but it does not help us com-municate or seek social justice or formu-late common decisions.

Corporate Big Brothers are no lessprivatistic in their methods: They controlby manipulating private wants and masterby guiding private tastes. Their world,like Babel, is inhabited by atomized andalienated individuals seeking personalgratification in a society in which onlyindividual wants and corporate profitscount.

The Electronic Town Meeting: Ten yearsago, when he was an FCC commissioner,Nicholas Johnson said: "As never before,Americans need to talk to each other. Wehunger to be in touch, to reaffirm ourcommitment to each other, to our human-ity, to the continuity of hope and meaningin our lives.... The ultimate promise ofcable is the rebuilding of a sense of com-munity." The new television technologyhas at least the potential of becoming aremarkable new instrument of publiccommunication and collective delibera-tion. From the ancient world to the Amer-ican founding, the great enemy of democ-racy has been scale: the repressive effectof mass society on the communicationand participation necessary to self-gov-ernment. Television in its second age canbe to the problem of scale what drugs wereto disease: a miracle remedy. People canbe brought together across time and placeand be permitted to confront one anotherin a continuing process of mutual explora-tion, deliberation, debate, and decision -making.

What I have in mind has nothing to dowith the instant polls and uninformedvotes that have characterized the QUBEsystem's dalliance with politics and thatpoliticians rightly fear. Voting withoutprior debate, polling without full-scalepresentation of positions and facts, ex-pressions of preference without a sense ofthe public context of choice, all do moreto undermine democracy than to reinforceit.

But the true promise of interactive sys-tems, public -access channels, and com-puter information -banks is that they canenhance knowledge as they enlarge partic-ipation. They can equalize by informingthe poor as well as the rich and, by provid-ing access to the powerless as well as thepowerful, they can help to realize the idealof an active and informed citizenry. Butonly if they are offered as a basic publicutility at minimal cost to all Americans;otherwise, they will only increase the gapbetween rich and poor by dividing a single

national constituency into two nations:one information -rich and able to partici-pate and influence the national destinymore effectively than ever before, theother information -poor, relegated to stillgreater powerlessness.

Edwin Parker and Donald Dunn ofStanford University wrote in Science in

1972 that "the social goal of [cable televi-sion organized as a 'national informationutility'] could be to provide all personswith equal opportunity of access to allavailable public information about soci-ety, government, opportunities, products,entertainment, knowledge and education-al services." Today, equal opportunitymay depend as much on equal informa-tion and equal access to communicationas on economic equality; with cable tele-vision, this becomes a far more realisticaspiration.

interactive systems like QUBE, which canlink up thousands of citizens in an elec-tronic town meeting where informationand opinions can be exchanged, expertcounsel called upon, and formal votestaken. In Columbus, Warner Amex hasn'tseen fit to exploit this capability except asa toy: In amateur talent shows, citizensthere can use their two-way cable "vote"to yank acts they don't like. Still, the po-tential exists.

The promise of the second age of televi-sion for democracy remains largely unex-plored. Among the thousands of cablecompanies now serving more than twentymillion homes, only a handful offer localpolitical -access channels or services, andnone have made service to public citizen-ship their principal product. Cable televi-sion is servicing every conceivable consti-tuency in America save one: America's

IN M. STEVENS'S VIEW

AND NOW THE 51X OkLocKWI?H JOHN HENDI.EY,Ntp,RJORIE PETERS

ANp COO -GOO THE cLOWN WITH THE

SPORTS ReFDR7.+.

In some places, the democraticcapabilities of the new telecommunica-tions technology have already been pro-ven. In Reading, Pennsylvania, an exper-imental project sponsored by the NationalScience Foundation in 1976 (and devel-oped by New York University) used thelocal cable system to establish an interac-tive communications network for the ci-ty's senior citizens. The elderly in Read-ing were able to create programming forthemselves, and to hold their elected offi-cials more accountable through a series ofpublic meetings held on interactive cabletelevision. Though this particular experi-ment has ended, cable's role in Reading'spolitical system has not: Today all budgetand community development hearings areconducted by two-way cable. Citizens canparticipate on -camera by visiting neigh-borhood centers equipped with televisionequipment; or they can ask questionsfrom home by telephone. As a result,political participation increased dramat-ically. Reading's experience demonstratesthe new technology's potential to create amore informed and active citizenry.

Perhaps the greatest promise lies with

A ver -u,

citizenry, the sovereign governing bodyresponsible for the survival of our demo-cratic republic.

Yet if in this conservative era of deregu-lation it is too much to hope for a nationaltelecommunications service devoted todemocratic and public uses of the newtechnology, it is surely not too much tocall for a public debate on the future ofAmerican telecommunications. Anumber of years ago, former CBS Newspresident Fred Friendly suggestedAmerica needed an "electronic bill ofrights" to protect it from its pervasive newtechnology. Even more than a bill ofrights, today we need an "electronic con-stitution" -a positive plan for the publicuse of a precious national resource on be-half of our nation's faltering democracy.Without such a plan, the electronic roadto a national democratic neighborhoodmay be detoured down back alleys thatterminate suddenly in the anarchicprivatism of Babel, or in a world of corpo-rate Big Brothers willing to share with usthe profits won from destroying once andfor all democracy's proud, public "spiritof liberty."

C H A NA: E I. j 62 F E B/ M A R

Local Station(Continued from page 39)

ful accommodations it can make with ca-ble. So far, this has meant establishing astrong local identity for WNEP that cablecan't duplicate. But competition isn't theonly possible response to cable's chal-Lnge; Shelburne is willing to try coopera-tion, too. He has recently approached twonational cable outfits, proposing thatWNEP produce a series of programs forthem as a way to take advantage of thestation's excellent production facilitiesand staff. This weekend, Shelburne says,"we're taping a concert in Boston forHome Box Office, and we're doing some-thing for Ted Turner in Atlanta. We haveto broaden our base to give us some secur-ity."

Shelburne leans back in his chair andputs his hands behind his head. "I re-member when we used to really sweat outthe ratings," he says. "Now we don't haveto, but it's hard to enjoy them. We have tokeep looking ahead. I wish we only had toworry about what happens downstairs.Stick our news show against any in thecountry and we'd shine. If we could takeit and put it in a place like New York ..we'd make millions!"

r

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C H A NN F I_ S 63 FEB/MAR

Commercial Expansionism

N-

BC RECENTLY AIRED a one -hour dramatic special calledThe Steeler and the PittsburghKid, based, curiously enough,on the famous and much -

honored Coca-Cola commercial starringMean Joe Greene. The entire project waspraised in an Advertising Age editorialentitled "The Ad that Grew." Naturally,we wondered what would happen if televi-sion programmers -ever alert for passingbandwagons on which to jump - sudden-ly decided that other ads should be simi-larly aggrandized. The following newshows might result:

Dan Sanka, Private Investigator - In this97 percent quality -free series, RobertYoung (Dan Sanka) refines and extendshis relaxing persona. As an operative withGresham and Murphy, Sanka roams theSan Francisco Bay area searching for menand women whose nerves are all ajangle,people who have unwittingly joined theterrifying underclass known as "the unre-lazed." Drama frequently ensues whenthe relentless congeniality of Sanka is metwith shocking hostility and rage, and theworthy detective is badly beaten. In theblood-soaked pilot, Sanka loses an eyeand an ear. The second episode, set inCalifornia's seemingly mellow MarinCounty, costs him an arm and a leg. Theproducers expect the series to have a lim-ited run.

Babbling Brooke - Delightful new de-signer sitcom about a run-of-the-mill teenidol and her imaginary friend, Calvin, theonly "person" who really understandsher. Calvin is a mischievous sort of ac-quaintance, often getting Brooke intoweird scrapes as well as irreparably dis-torting her posture. The cast featuresDina Farina as Brooke's only corporeal

Andrew Feinberg's humor pieces appearfrequently in Playboyand other nationalmagazines.

by Andrew Feinberg

friend, Vanessa, a girl whose major goal isto fit into Brooke's clothes. (The show'screators exuberantly claim Vanessa istelevision's first comic anorexic.) Addi-tional weekly whimsy is provided byBrooke's chain-smoking, overbearingmother, played to a fare -thee -well by tele-vision veteran Don Knotts.

That Olson Woman-In this wrenchingdrama, Mrs. Olson, distraught afterFolger's Coffee insisted on her divorcefrom Dan Sanka, tries desperately toenter the lives of young couples she meetson the street, at art galleries, and in six-teen -millimeter movie houses. The rela-tionships she forges with these familiesare often poignant and tender, and in thefirst episode her new six -year -old friendsays to his mother, "She's just likeGrandma Crispums, Mom. When is sheleaving?" In episode two, coincidenceraises its blessed head when Mrs. Olsonand Joe DiMaggio meet while making ahouse call on a family in the throes ofinadequate richness. Together they makemalicious small talk about a MaxwellHouse freak named Cora, and Mrs. Olsonbegins to wonder: "Could this be Mr.Right?" The answer will shock you.

Q & A -This shattering drama each weekfeatures a different character posing thatmost harrowing of queries: "Do you knowme?" In the first episode, Q (played byguest has-been Vince Edwards) asks thisquestion of many people on the street andis appalled by their unsympathetic re-sponse. The show explores the great dis-tances that can separate people in ourconsumerist society, and Q's problemcannot be solved until he receives a billfrom Bloomingdale's. Starring as AlexDolmades, the tough-minded cop incharge of the Missing Ego Unit, is TellySavalas, who closes the show with thesechilling words: "Your identity: Don'tleave home without it."

Boob Tubes-This is the first televisionseries ever based solely on an advertisingslogan, DuPont's"Better Living ThroughChemistry." Irwin Corey plays lab wizardVictor Teflonson, a man with a past he iseager to bury (years ago he inventedpolyester). Determined to atone for hissins, Dr. Teflonson experiments eachweek with a new life -enhancing drug, andthe result is usually spontaneous comediccombustion. The proud producers say theshow will do for science what AnimalHouse did for academia.

In the Chips -A beautiful, sad -eyed bullis taken in by a fastidious stockbroker(Tony Randall), who lives in a lovely butsoon -to -be -dilapidated Manhattan town-house. During work hours the bull, namedOscar, wanders around the financial dis-trict looking for sound investments andsolving occasional white-collar crimes,but at night he takes center stage at acountry -western bar, tossing co-op cow-boys on their urban derrieres.

Whatever Lola Wants-By day, NormaNiblet is a bland, retiring media plannerfor a major New York advertising agency,but by night, having been transformed byjust a dab of a miraculous aromatic elixir,she leads a life of astonishing upscale sex-uality as Lola de l'Aviance, internationalfreeloader. The twist here is that the twopersonalities have no knowledge of eachother. One of the highlights of eachepisode occurs when Norma receives adozen roses at work and swears shedoesn't know the man who signed thecard. But we do, having been privy to allthe sensual derring-do in the gauzyflashback that opens each show. Eventu-ally, Norma/Lola begins to get psycholog-ical assistance from the local florist's fas-cinated delivery man, who turns out to bea very sensitive, if unaccredited, layanalyst. Penny Marshall and RaquelWelch star as the title character.

cHAiVN E I.J 64 FEB/MAR

January 15, 16 & 17Pre -Lincoln's Birthday

KING OF THE KHYBER RIFLES2 hrs.-20th Century -Fox

May 28, 29 & 30Pre -Memorial Day

THE BLACK ROSE2-1 2 hrs.-20th Century -Fox

Carct- 26, 27 & 28Frie-East?.r

3RIGADCON21-:s.-MGM

: ine25, 26 & 2'P -e -July LtF

BH ~II JUNCTION2 h-s.-MC.AM

A RecognizedLeader In

FamilyEntertainment

April 23, 24 & 25Spring Festival

JESSE JAMES2 hrs.-20th Century -Fox

August 27, 28 & 29Pre -Labor Day

GREEN MANSIONS2 hrs.-MGM

April 30. May 1 & 2Pre -Mother's Day

THE RETURN OF FRANK JAMES2 hrs.-20th Century -Fox

October 15, 16 & 17Pre -Halloween

KING SOLOMON'S MINES2 hrs.-MGM

November 12, 13 & 14 Ncvember 26, 27 & 28 December 3, 4 & 5Pre-TianksgivingDay Fre-Christmas Special Pre -Christmas Special

FRIENELY PERSUASION MOGAMEO GIGI3 l-rs.-Lorímsr 2-1 2 hrs.-MGM 2-1 2 hrs.-MGM

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