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Notable New     Yorkers
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Frank StantonFrank Stanton
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would work. They thought maybe music, and I said, “Talk!” Because in the first place all the Jews I know like to talk. [Q. laughs] And it's provocative. It's inexpensive. It's not difficult to get people to get on the air and to talk. People like to hear other people, and radio can do that better than television can do it. So if I knew I had ten years to run, I would certainly invest a lot in radio stations, because the talk programming--some of it's pretty tawdry and some of it's not only tawdry but boring--but you could develop a quality talk station--some news and some enlightened conversation--and have a very enjoyable life, in terms of doing something for the community and providing a mechanism for an advertiser.

Newspapers are in a very tough spot today, and it's by no means certain--although in my book it's more certain than it is in the minds of some of my friends But it's not certain that the newspapers are going to get through this information cycle with the kind of, say, prestige, power, circulation and income that they've had in the past. Because there will be all kinds of ways of distributing information--on-line computer services will have it; desk-top publishing will find its way in terms of newsletters and things of that kind.

The newspapers are trying to figure out, you know, should they go into cable; should they go into the on-line services that some of them have gone into. The Knight-Ridder people went into computerized distribution very early on, lost an enormous amount of money, backed out, and now they're back in again, I think, in San Diego and Philadelphia and a few other places, trying to find out just what this electronic thing is going to mean to the newspaper business.

Then you've got the people at the MIT information communications research group up there talking about having a newspaper that you can get over cable. I used to worry about how are you going to get the paper there to print the program on. Well, they think they've got a paper





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