(2 of 2)
Networks that spend the livelong day assembling the biggest possible audiences to sell to advertisers find programs with lower ratings embarrassing. ABC'S Roone Arledge gave the Brinkley show a full hour of air time and a bigger budget so that it could gallivant around the world interviewing leaders. It has become the best combination of news and comment on TV, but Arledge, who would like to transfer it to Sunday-night prime time, fears it wouldn't get the ratings. Reuven Frank, president of NBC News, says: "Ninety percent of the people aren't going to watch Meet the Press, either because of its time period or area of interest.
You're not going to get twelve-year-old kids from a blue-collar family watching that show. And trying to tailor it to them, you'd be selling the serious watcher short." In so commercially competitive a world as TV, perhaps quality survives best when most people aren't being appealed to, and aren't watching.