ABSTRACT
Trying to predict trends in entertainment programming—globally or domestically—is like trying to thread a needle in the dark, blindfolded, with one hand tied behind your back—and no eye in the needle. The graveyard of former programming vice presidents is filled with living corpses. If ratings didn’t kill them off, the pressures did. Programmers are a strange breed. They have tremendous power, and so they crave power, so much that it’s difficult for them to accept outside judgment, except for statistics compiled by an outside research group that can be blamed and fired for failure. The entertainment side of network programming picked up on the idea of using real news as real drama, lured by the same relatively inexpensive production costs, no cast to worry about beyond a narrator, and an endless supply of story lines.
