The 90's, episode 215: THE VIDEO REVOLUTION
10:26 ""New York Cabbie"" by Skip Blumberg. Robert Demella, a NYC cab driver, rants about various subjects. On how to avoid getting scammed: ""You don't pick up drunks, teenagers or seedy types."" On TV: ""Only good for news...I'd like to take a sledgehammer and smash the TV...The TV set is the downfall of Western Civilization...People don't read anymore, people don't talk anymore, people don't think anymore...Our generation that grew up on TV is the STUPIDEST generation to come down the pike.""
17:00 More from ""New York Cabbie."" Demella continues: ""I hate sound bytes. I hate 30 second political commercials. It makes me want to take a sledgehammer to the people hoisting it on us...I can smell a fraud from a mile away. That's my business...When I get a passenger and they're just too friendly, I go, 'You got any money?'""
26:48 ""Les Brown"" by Kathie Robertson. Brown, a motivational speaker, comments on TV 's violent nature and its ability to desensitize people. He criticizes the media for emphasizing the negative and not being committed to positive change.
28:01 ""Free Speech"" by Skip Blumberg. On the streets of New York City, a spokesman attracts a crowd with his advice to blacks and Latinos to avoid assimilation and support only black and Latino businesses. A white policeman tries to disperse the crowd but is denounced: ""The man has a right to voice his opinions, and we have a right to listen!""
41:01 Dee Davis commentary. ""Maybe we could make television a little better if we thought of it not as a way to sell things, but as a way to change people's lives, a way to give them new enthusiasm, a way to energize them, to cure the sick and make the lame walk.""
41:24 ""Deep Dish TV"" by Dee Dee Halleck. Halleck fixes a pie while discussing the importance of public access television in the exercising of First Amendment rights. ""It's participating actively in communications.""
43 :19 ""Todd Alcott ""by Skip Blumberg. 90's regular, Todd Alcott rants: [Speaking as a TV] ""Look at me. Don't look over there. There is nothing to look at over there. Look at me...Don't get the wrong idea, I'm not trying to run your life. You need to go to the bathroom. Go to the bathroom. Come back. Look at me...So we have a deal. You will do what you absolutely have to do, then you will come back and look at me. Don't worry about your schedule, I am here for you 110% of the time...People tell you I am bad...You tell them I've been here for your entire life...People say I'm bad. You know what that sounds like to me? -- sour grapes. I've got some stuff coming up for you...Crime, thrills, sex, death, comedy - all here in the next 8 minutes...""
53:23 Excerpt from ""Radio Faces"" by Tom Weinberg. Excerpt from the TV show that examines the professional and private lives of Chicago radio personalities. In this excerpt we meet Tom Joyner, a DJ at WCGI. He is interviewed in a limo as he makes his way to O 'Hare Airport. He discusses his influences. ""I don't really consider what I do work. I play music and have fun twice a day. I'm not an air traffic controller. That's a job...I see us, Black radio, killing ourselves...without personality we're just another station on the dial.""
57:36 ""Don Cherry"" by Starr Sutherland. A musician at the Victoria Theater in San Francisco plays a 3 in 1 instrument: a kazoo, a ""Jew's harp"" and a clicker.