Word: wizarded
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...hardly a battle of equals. In one corner, Lee Iacocca, 61--the industrial wizard who, with a little help from his federal friends, lifted Chrysler Corp. out of bankruptcy and into high profits; the celebrated author of the best-selling autobiography (2.6 million copies and still No. 1) ever written; the two-fisted presidential possibility who, though he has described himself as a Republican, dances in the dreams of many hopeful Democrats; the whirlwind fund raiser leading the overdrive effort to restore one of America's most cherished icons, the Statue of Liberty. In the other corner, Donald P. Hodel...
...wait. There is a much-maligned high-tech wizard waiting in the wings: the VCR. In 1980, studio revenue from domestic ticket sales and movie videocassettes totaled $1.3 billion (videocasssettes accounted for only 15%). By 1984 the cumulative take was $2.4 billion (33% from cassettes). Last year it rose to $3 billion, and cassette sales were virtually half the total (see chart), despite the "first sale" doctrine, which prohibits studios from earning revenues after cassettes are sold to video outlets. The industry is now pushing hard for a share of rental fees. Nonetheless, in five years, Hollywood has more than...
...everyone thinks that Wizard of Oz products are bad. "There's nothing wrong with vaporware," says Daniel Bricklin, co-author of VisiCalc. Bricklin believes prototypes were crucial to that product's eventual success. "With VisiCalc," he says, "nobody knew what I was talking about until I wrote the program." To spare others that inconvenience, he has created something he calls Dan Bricklin's Demo Program, which enables a software developer to construct a convincing demonstration even if the software has not yet been written. Bricklin calls his product "a vaporware generator." But it is not quite ready for market...
...along West Hollywood's main artery, Santa Monica Boulevard. There, a black-clad Lubavitcher family straight out of 19th century Lithuania strolls past a bus bench shared by a sneering heavy-metal-music freak with a slime green Mohawk and a drag queen done up as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. Across the way, a convenience store advertises European specialties in Russian Cyrillic characters. And up the boulevard rolls a procession of white stretch limos, trundling the show-biz glitterati (and their accountants and orthodontists) to West Hollywood's tonier night spots...
More is on the way. The Children's Television Workshop is producing six educational cassettes featuring Big Bird and other popular Sesame Street characters. Such children's TV personalities as the Messrs. Wizard and Rogers will soon be appearing on cassettes. The networks are also getting into the act. ABC is putting 50 of its critically praised Weekend Specials on cassette and is contemplating the production of original shows for home video as well. Says ABC Vice President Squire Rushnell: "There's a greater consciousness now that in producing programming for children, we have to stop and think: How will...