Word: access
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...nuclear powers decide to take the fateful step, there is little to stop them. Constructing an atomic bomb requires access to no secret information. Even in 1945, the basic principles of nuclear weapons were widely known. A booklet, declassified in 1961 and now available for $4 from the U.S. Department of Commerce, describes in detail-complete with diagrams-the technical problems the U.S. encountered constructing its first bomb. It is not surprising that four years ago a precocious 14-year-old sketched the workings of a nuclear explosive and included it as part of a bomb threat that terrified Orlando...
...Public access can never be accused of being monotonous. The schedule in Reading, Pa., has included the regular half-hour Che-Lumumba-Jackson Collective Black Community News and a twelve-year-old budding sportscaster's report on the junior stock-car races. Bakersfield, Calif., has programmed square-dance instruction, an environmentalist appeal to save Redrock Canyon and a college spoof called Stagnet...
Technical quality on public access is highly variable, from the charmingly erratic to the abysmal. Most cable operators offer instruction in the use of camera and tape equipment. Even so, "it takes a little practice to get the hang of using the camera," notes Joe Collins of Orlando, Fla.'s Orange Cablevision. But stations encourage novices to air their efforts. Thus Orlando has recently seen one Warholesque half-hour that consisted of a man cutting down a tree, and another that zeroed (or zigzagged) in on the ducks around Lake Eola...
...forbids cable companies to interfere with public-access programming, except in a few cases, including obscenity. But even here it has left unresolved the question of who is responsible for deciding what is obscene-the company, the individual user, or some third party like a committee. In New York, where a state law prohibiting any censorship of public access further muddies the obscenity issue, a program called The Underground Tonight Show recently showed a startlingly explicit tape of a "female-masturbation therapy class." One of New York City's cable companies carried it, preceding it with a disclaimer explaining...
...most cities, however, public access is barely getting off the ground, much less flying in the face of convention. "It's really hard work getting people to do things," says Sharon Portin, station manager in Lynnwood. Her company's biggest problem, she adds, is that "one minute we're the good guys for making our studio facilities available, and the next minute we're the bad guys for refusing to take our remote equipment down the Columbia River on a raft filled with a 16-piece band...