A California restaurant owner complained of a 40% drop in business. At a Harlem tavern in New York City, patrons insisted that the jukebox be turned off while they discussed the TV program they had just watched; in Los Angeles, the owner of one discotheque closed down operations altogether. The reason: last week's twelve-hour dramatization of Alex Haley's book Roots.
Aired over eight consecutive nights, Roots came up roses for ABC. Haley's story, recounting his ancestors' brutal passage from life in Africa through slavery in America, attracted nearly 80 million viewers on its third night, making that episode the third most popular...