Television today and tomorrow

Today the media is awash in exuberant tales of the arrival of the information superhighway, when television will explode with exciting possibilities, offering some five hundred channels as well as a marriage of television and computer that will provide, on command, access to unlimited bits of information. In 'Television Today and Tomorrow,' Gene Jankowski and David Fuchs--also a former top executive at CBS - predict a bumpy road ahead for the information superhighway, and the major TV networks, they say, are abundantly healthy and will remain so well into the next century. The information superhighway, the authors admit, will dramatically increase the distribution channels, but it will have little impact on the amount of programming created - and this may spell disaster. Jankowski and Fuchs point out that the media blitz has hardly focused on programming, or funding, or on what needs these five hundred channels will fill. The major networks will remain the only means of reaching the whole country, and the only channels that offer a full schedule of current, live, and original programs, free of charge.