Because in a very real sense the commercial not only controls television, it is also one of the more distorting factors. How do you put on a meaningful drama or documentary that is adult, incisive, probing, when every fifteen minutes the proceedings are interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits with toilet paper?

How do you take a medium seriously when it is so laced with highdecibel reminders to go out and buy things? That, it appears, is the twentieth‐century marching song via the good offices of the mass media—buy.

Tide, Fab, Axion, teeth‐brighteners, skin‐purifiers, tummy‐mollifiers, underarm‐sweeteners, and the whole fantasy world of the contemporary con.

At no time in the whole history of art have nonkissing cousins been forced onto a proscenium together to walk side by side totally and irrevocably dissimilar in content and intent: the program and the commercial.

Now there's Arthur Miller—and he's up there on the stage, with Maidenform bra. We give you William Shakespeare—but holding hands with him is Arthur Godfrey hawking detergents with all the sincerity of a professional wrestler. Take a fast listen to Beethoven—because very shortly he'll be drowned out by the cries of maniacal ladies squeezing Charmin bathroom tissue.

And if you love children, television has an antidote for that, too. It offers up a new breed of psychotic kids with a neurotic compulsion to show off their cavities.

Now the point of this critical analysis is not simply to annotate the absurdities of commercial broadcasting, but rather it's to point out the not‐sodistant horizon that you can aim for and ultimately reach.

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Don't, any of you aspiring broadcasters, writers, cinematographers, performers, directors, producers — re peat, don't assume that the current norm shall be your norm.

We have seen motion pictures improve a thousandfold by virtue of the level of audience taste. And that level in the mass media can be raised by creative young people who constitutionally cannot and will not sit still passively.

Your goal, your challenge and your obligation is to improve the mass media. Give it new direction. Experiment with it. Try something different. And keep in mind constantly that it is only incidentally a display case for commercial products. It is first and foremost a theater.

Now there are myriad roadblocks between you and a successful career. Certainly there is an economy running in reverse. There is, sporadically, the glutted employment market.

There are the entrenched dynasties of people my age and older who have been riding this horse to death for so many years and who look upon new ideas as either subversive or downright fatal.

And if you're an artist be prepared for the sideline carpers—the Mondaymorning quarterbacks, the second‐guessers who will constantly and forever flail at you with their critical judgment.

There is obviously no cut‐and‐dried method of hacking it and becoming a success and/or becoming admired.

There is one bottom‐line admonishment that could safely and validly be made. Be honest. Be truthful. Try to be objective. At all times, try to be creative. Whether you're focusing a lens, putting an adjective down on a typewriter, or calling a shot from a control room, simply ask yourself, Is there a way of doing it differently? Is there a way of doing it better? And then give it a try.