Rick Monday’s Star-Spangled Play

Old Glory.  Stars and Stripes.  Star-Spangled banner. America’s flag is, for some, a sacred fabric.  Rick Monday represented those devotees during a Cubs-Dodgers game at Dodger Stadium on April 25, 1976, when he prevented a duo—father and son—from igniting the...

The Unsung Hero of CBS

On the day before Christmas in 2006, Frank Stanton passed away at the age of 98.  A broadcasting pioneer, Stanton served as CBS chief William Paley’s lieutenant for decades, helping mold the television industry into a media force.  Unquestionably, CBS earned its...

Aaron Sorkin and the White House

Before he became the architect of the fictional Bartlet presidency on The West Wing, Aaron Sorkin wrote the 1995 film The American President.  Sorkin’s story depicts the end of President Andrew Shepherd’s first term.  Shepherd, a democrat, is a widower...

Desperation in the Vast Wasteland

In 1961, FCC Chairman Newton Minow decried television as a vast wasteland.  Nearly a half-century later, Bill Carter analyzed the landscape, coalescing his findings into the 2006 book Desperate Networks. A television show reaching the prime time airwaves is a...