I’m on a mailing list for RTDNA – Radio Television Digital News Assn. (used to be RTNDA – Radio Television News Directors Assn). They have some pretty interesting newsletters. In one they offer a chance to hear a voice of the past talk about the future. October, 1958 Edward R. Murrow speaks to RTNDA conventioneers; talks about the future of television. The FUTURE of television!

Here are a few of his words and the link. If your interested in news this is definitely worth your time.

Picture from RTDNA

See article and hear audio clip:   http://www.rtdna.org/pages/media_items/edward-r.-murrow1106.php?id=1106

Murrow: “Our history will be what we make it. And if there are any historians about fifty or a hundred years from now, and there should be preserved the kinescopes for one week of all three networks, they will there find recorded in black and white, or color, evidence of decadence, escapism and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live. I invite your attention to the television schedules of all networks between the hours of 8 and 11 p.m., Eastern Time. Here you will find only fleeting and spasmodic reference to the fact that this nation is in mortal danger. There are, it is true, occasional informative programs presented in that intellectual ghetto on Sunday afternoons. But during the daily peak viewing periods, television in the main insulates us from the realities of the world in which we live. If this state of affairs continues, we may alter an advertising slogan to read: LOOK NOW, PAY LATER.”