1. "An absolutely vital service" is quoted in Lloyd Grove, "Sound Bites over Substance: The Sorry End to PBS' Election Project," Washington Post , July 11, 1991.

2. David J. Brugger, president of the Association of America's Public Television Stations, quoted in Grove, "Sound Bites."

3. "Why Markle and PBS Split on Election '92," Current , July 22, 1991.

4. Ward Chamberlin, quoted in Grove, "Sound Bites."

5. The story of the federal government's seventy-year failure to understand and support the concept of public-service broadcasting is told in fascinating detail by Willard D. Rowland, Jr., in "Public Service Broadcasting in the United States: Its Mandate, Institutions, and Conflicts," in Robert K. Avery, ed., Public Service Broadcasting in a Multichannel Environment (New York: Longman, 1993).

6. Grove, "Sound Bites." Grove refers to public television as "the television equivalent of Yugoslavia."

7. George Gerbner, "Telling Stories in the Information Age," in Brent D. Ruben, ed., Information and Behavior , vol. 2 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1988).

8. The Complete Essays of Montaigne , trans. Donald M. Frame, bk. 2, no. 10 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univ. Press, 1965), p. 304.