Word: how-to
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Scenes from an obscure cable channel? Or maybe from a new afternoon talk show, Unsolicited Advice from the Rich and Famous? No, these stars are among the first participants in a TV genre still in its infancy: the instructional videocassette. As VCR machines have proliferated, so have how-to cassettes made expressly for the home market. A large chunk of them are exercise and fitness tapes, led by the best-selling Jane Fonda's Workout (which has sold 750,000 worldwide since its 1982 release). But hundreds of other how-to tapes are on the market, covering everything from auto...
...first generation of how-to tapes has not exactly advanced the video art form. Some use a celebrity host to liven up a dry presentation; more often an anonymous lecturer is aided only by crude graphics or amateurish dramatizations. Attempts to make the material more "visual" are frequently awkward. First Aid: The Video Kit, produced by the American Red Cross and CBS/ Fox Video, buries its valuable information amid hokey sketches in which two couples are instructed in proper first-aid techniques by a helpful neighbor...
Although a number of workout tapes are selling well, few of the more specialized how-to cassettes have found a large audience. Some industry executives blame video stores, which concentrate on renting movies and other entertainment cassettes and are little disposed to stock or promote instructional tapes (which typically sell for $30 to $60). As a result, some companies are starting to market their how-to cassettes in retail outlets geared to specific audiences: placing tapes on home repair in hardware stores, for example...
Ever since its existence became known last October, the CIA'S how-to book for Nicaraguan rebels, Psychological Operations in Guerrilla War, has been high profile. When it was being distributed in Nicaragua, however, it seems the manual was also highflying. Congressional investigators revealed last week that packets of the controversial booklets were attached to about 100 specially designed balloons and floated from neighboring Honduras to Nicaragua last March to scare the leftist Sandinista government by creating the impression that the Washington-backed rebel effort was more widespread than it was. The airborne handbooks, coated in plastic to make...
...will cooperate, and then fight to win. Weinberger's rules are nothing new. Thoughtful U.S. military officers have been recommending the same deliberate course for some time. But Weinberger, rather surprisingly, has codified that consensus into an explicit checklist of the prerequisites for military action, a kind of national how-to guide...