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Frank StantonFrank Stanton
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Session:         Page of 755

to put into the computer. You get the printed word on it, and once you've read it, you put it back in; it wipes it clean and starts over again.

Q:

Now that's a revolution. [Laughs]

Stanton:

So there are little guys lurking around every corner with some idea about how to improve or to change the things; and the newspapers are vulnerable. They've got expensive plants. They've got expensive distribution systems. And newsprint isn't cheap. And the environmentalists would cheer for something that just got one piece of paper and didn't keep, you know, piling up on the street in black bags.

So what you're going to see in the next twenty years is really going to be mind-boggling. It's not going to come as fast as the Vice-President, I think, would have us believe; but the technology is way ahead of the programming anyway. That's why the media lab at MIT is so busy trying to figure out just what the role of the newspaper will be--because it's got to adjust to the black boxes and to the computer.

You've only got twenty-four hours in the day, and you've got to sleep a reasonable amount of time. You've got to eat a certain amount of time. And you don't have an infinite amount of time to sit in front of either a television set or a cathode ray tube. And you don't have an unlimited amount of money, either.

Q:

In terms of the news format, particularly in broadcast, what do you think the implications are of having news cable channels? In terms of the half-hour national news broadcast.





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