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selling movies, selling product--by “selling product” I mean using it as a catalog--and probably some form of video telephone service. Those are all things that are yet to be explored, and if somebody listens to this twenty-five years from now, they may say: “Boy, how wrong he was.”
Right now I'm thinking of you twenty-five years ago--maybe forty years ago--and thinking of the beginning of the industry, when the industry was fueled by the star system and broadcasts came to be built around personalities, and I wonder if television, aside from these services--if television as we know it, as we've come to know it in our own lifetimes, with all the evolution and thought that's gone behind programming and news programming--making space for creative talent--how will having access to really the ability to set your own programming affect that?
What's it going to do present television?
Yes.
Destroy it.
Let's talk a little bit about that?
Technology has gone a long way to doing that already. In the early days of international news coverage the networks did it, because they had the facilities to put not only personnel but also equipment into the field. That was rather expensive, and there were only three coaxial cables across the country.
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