Word: america
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Network chiefs, having watched their prime-time audience share erode from 91% for the big-three networks 20 years ago to 60% shared by six of them today, seem too paralyzed to make real changes. "Networks are locked in a box like the rest of corporate America," says Norman Lear, who created All in the Family. "In TV terms that translates into 'Gimme an instant hit' at the expense of every other value, like creativity." Instead of looking beyond Burbank for people with fresh ideas, the networks return to the same talent pool over and over. As Imagine's Grazer...
...cultural gap, though, is not just between old and young. It is between the haves and the self-perceived have-nots of teen America. Recent teen films, whether romance or horror, are really about class warfare. In each movie, the cafeteria is like a tiny former Yugoslavia, with each clique its own faction: the Serbian jocks, Bosnian bikers, Kosovar rebels, etc. And the horror movies are a microcosm of ethnic cleansing...
...cretinous popular culture; the Internet, with its rancid cul-de-sacs; violent movies; idiot television; vicious rap; ubiquitous sex. One high school counselor cast a wide net on MSNBC: "It's all those things, ekcedra, ekcedra, ekcedra." The "ekcedra" includes adolescence itself, a form of temporary insanity that in America is rendered even crazier by all of the above...
...urge school boards to apply for federal grants that would put armed police officers in schools. But in the face of the carnage, he mostly dropped the wonkery and assumed the role of National Grief Counselor. "It is very important to explain to children, all over America, what has happened," he said, "and to reassure our own children that they are safe." If anyone thought it odd that the government's chief executive officer was advising parents on what to whisper to their children as they tucked them in at night, nobody said so. Under the circumstances, the President...
Hugh McColl, the CEO of Bank of America, once fired an executive because the guy smoked a pipe at work. "I figured anybody who had enough time to mess with pipes had too slow a metabolism for me," he explains. O.K., he's not exactly a softy. But McColl's ability to acquire and absorb one large bank after another can teach us a thing or two about teamwork: "We are people who believe in disagreeing sharply...But when we leave the room...we are in lockstep... Support the team...