ABSTRACT
As a first-year engineering student, I took a course called Invention. The first day, our professor stated—only half kidding.—that the purpose of this course was to allow the university to quickly appropriate the best ideas from the brightest students, who would undoubtedly drop out to become millionaires before graduating. Unabashed exploitation primes the economic pump in many college towns and, I've discovered, throughout the television industry. Take my first TV job. We all worked long horns at a miserable rate of pay in return for being allowed to, on our own time, and entirely without pay, produce programming of our own invention! The program we originated was called The Television Live Radio Hour, a studio music performance show simulcast in FM. For variety, we peppered the show with music by, and interviews with, headliners who often passed through town.
