THE MEDIA BUSINESS;Murdoch and 3 OthersSet Latin Satellite-TV Effort
Date: 21 November 1995
By Mark Landler
Mark Landler
Seeking to dominate the satellite television market in Latin America, the News Corporation said yesterday that it would form a direct-broadcast satellite service with three powerful partners: Tele-Communications Inc., the nation's largest cable operator; Globo, the leading media company in Brazil, and Grupo Televisa, the giant Mexican broadcaster. Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of the News Corporation, said at a news conference in New York that the partners planned an initial total investment of $500 million in the service, which is to begin operations in May. It will transmit 150 channels of entertainment, news and sports programming to homes equipped with satellite dishes and digital receivers.
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How the Earlier Media Achieved Critical Mass: Printing Press;Yelling 'Stop the Presses!' Didn't Happen Overnight
Date: 20 November 1995
By D. J. R. Bruckner
Though the Chinese invented printing, in the West the printing press dates to around 1450. But it took two inventions of the Industrial Revolution -- the steam engine and the telegraph -- to turn it into what we would now define as a mass medium: one that can reach all segments of a population quickly and at a relatively low cost. All these elements did not come together until about 100 years ago. Until the 19th century, books were printed on hand-operated presses. So were newspapers. All those famous early journalists -- Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, Samuel Johnson, Benjamin Franklin -- saw their work coming off flat presses, slowly.
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Observer;How Cozy Our World
Date: 21 November 1995
By Russell Baker
Russell Baker
A majority of Americans say they now get most of their news from television. To see how the world looks to this majority, your correspondent spent six months glued to his TV screen. Following is the typical American view of the world today: The two most important people on earth are Newt Gingrich and President Clinton. O. J. Simpson, who used to be Number Three, has slipped badly and is not even in the top 20 anymore. The new Number Three is Deion Sanders.
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How the Earlier Media Achieved Critical Mass: World Wide Web;If Medium Is the Message, the Message Is the Web
Date: 20 November 1995
By John Markoff
John Markoff
The Associated Press was formed in the mid-19th century when a group of newspapers decided to invest jointly in a newfangled medium -- the telegraph -- to speed the collection and dissemination of information. Last week, A.P. announced that it would adopt a newer-fangled medium -- the World Wide Web -- to begin distributing its articles and photographs over the global Internet. It was simply the latest, but perhaps most historically significant, move yet by an old-line media organization into the World Wide Web, the Internet multimedia information-retrieval system that appears on the verge of becoming a mass medium itself.
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The Appeal of Powell
Date: 20 November 1995
To the Editor: Re "Powell and the Press" (Op-Ed, Nov. 16): Dan Quayle, not for the first time, has missed the point. Many members of the press and public were hoping for Gen. Colin Powell's candidacy because they thought he would be a good President.
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Business Week's Case Isn't Like CBS's
Date: 21 November 1995
To the Editor: I must take strong exception to some conclusions in the Nov. 17 article about the "60 Minutes" case as it concerns Business Week. It is factually wrong and unfair to lump Business Week with CBS as part of a trend toward "capitulation" by the media.
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Man in the News: Aleksander Kwasniewski;Walesa's Nemesis
Date: 21 November 1995
By Jane Perlez
Jane Perlez
When Poland imposed martial law in 1981, which sent the strike leader Lech Walesa and thousands of others to jail, an ambitious young Communist Party newspaper editor wrote an editorial neither approving nor condemning what the Government had just done. "It seems important right now for Poles to reject emotions and myths and concentrate on genuine social and state interests," suggested Aleksander Kwasniewski after one of the most traumatic periods in Polish history.
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COMPANY NEWS;MICROSOFT TO ACCEPT MORE ON-LINE USERS
Date: 21 November 1995
AP
The Microsoft Corporation said yesterday that it had reconsidered a plan to cap enrollment for its Microsoft Network on-line service at its current level of 525,000 subscribers and would continue to look for more business. Microsoft's service is offered to people who buy the Windows 95 program. Keeping the service open to new customers is important for Microsoft as the holiday period arrives, said Peter Krasilovsky, an analyst with Arlen Communications Inc., a consulting firm in Bethesda, Md. "To blow the opportunity to sell to hundreds of thousands of new users of Windows 95 in the Christmas stocking would have been a major problem," he said.
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