Book Description
What happened to network television in the 1980s? How did CBS, NBC, and ABC lose a third of their audience and more than half of their annual profits?
Ken Auletta, author of Greed and Glory on Wall Street, tells the gripping story of the decline of the networks in this epically scaled work of journalism. He chronicles the takeovers and executive coups that turned ABC and NBC into assets of two mega-corporations and CBS into the fiefdom of one man, Larry Tisch, whose obsession with the bottom line could be both bracing and appalling.
Auletta takes us inside the CBS newsroom on the night that Dan Rather went off-camera for six deadly minutes; into the screening rooms where NBC programming wunderkind Brandon Tartikoff watched two of his brightest prospects for new series thud disastrously to earth; and into the boardrooms where the three networks were trying to decide whether television is a public trust or a cash cow.
Rich in anecdote and gossip, scalpel-sharp in its perceptions, Three Blind Mice chronicles a revolution in American business and popular culture, one that is changing the world on both sides of the television screen.
Customer Reviews:
Journalistically Insightful.......2003-08-29
This is a snapshot of what happens when companies become too large and lose touch with changing demands in the marketplace. While this snapshot was taken a few years ago, its lessons are still pertinent. The networks have subsequently made a few changes, but the landscape in telecommunications remains unpredictable. For a reader interested in media history, the philosophical stance of various network executives is covered pretty well in narrative form. Since the book came out at the end of Brandon Tartikoff's successful programming ventures, a significant amount of the book is devoted to his style of management. Auletta identifies five dominant powers influencing the telecommunications industry: the networks, cable, independent and affiliated stations, the Hollywood studios, and the telephone companies. This book is well-researched and written. It provides insightful analysis and commentatary on the condition of the fifth estate as it was at the end of the 20th century.
An insider's account to network TV.......1999-03-19
An intriguing book for anyone interested in the volatile business of network television. Auletta clearly had inside access to the major players at the big three networks when all of them were changing hands during the mid 1980s. Auletta's account does a fine job of examining each network's unique culture, which could clearly be traced to the men in charge. The book details the inner workings of each network's news and entertainment divisions, and the uphill battle for viewers in a new era of competition. The first chapter includes an interesting story, followed by a keen analysis. The rest of the book continues that pattern.
A Powerful book on Television & the little men who run it.......1999-01-23
Having worked a good portion of my life in 'local' television, it was most interesting to read about the so-called big boys of the networks. Anyone who has spent hours watching the 'tube' should get a real kick out of this. With all the egos involved, its amazing that there were no more bodies being loaded outside their headquarters daily. Ken Auletta had some marvelous sources to get so many things to write about. Somehow I know television will continue to survive despite some of the dim-wits who run things. I kept reading the book looking for solid broadcasters----there are many, but I was amazed at how little some of the bigger names failed to measure up. I am planning to read the book for a second time. Surely some of the big guys didn't say and do some of the things reported by Auletta. Now lets just make sure Peter Jennings tie looks nice, his head cocked just right and his million dollar smile continues to remind of his four marriages and his need for a personal pacifier. Right on Ken Auletta.
Single greatest book on TV ever written..........1998-11-25
If you are at interested in TV or the entertainment business, this is the first book to read. It is an extraordinary read. It is a bit dated now, but don't let that deter you. Auletta is an excellent writer and shows it here. It is long, but is as engrossing as any novel. With apologies to Bill Carter whose Late Shift is awesome, this is the 1 book to read if you want to learn about TV.
A good look at a tumultuous time in TV history.......1998-06-20
If you have any interest in business, regulation, or mass media, this is a good book for you. Auletta takes his readers on a fascinating trip into the boardrooms of the three major American TV networks as they struggle through new ownership and invigorated competition. You will almost feel as if you are right there, and this book is quite suspenseful throughout. You'll get to know the major TV producers and network presidents, and you will swear you were actually in New York when these decisions were made in the late 1980's. _Three Blind Mice_ is well researched, and Auletta is careful to note what is speculation and what is fact. He has done a masterful job with the book, and I would encourage anyone to read it. Do not be put off by its length, for it is a wonderful, moving true tale.
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Columbia Journalism Review, published by Columbia University, Graduate School of Journalism on September 1, 1991. The length of the article is 1429 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Three Blind Mice: How the TV Networks Lost Their Way.
Author: Howard Kurtz
Publication:
Columbia Journalism Review (Refereed)
Date: September 1, 1991
Publisher: Columbia University, Graduate School of Journalism
Volume: v30
Issue: n3
Page: p52(2)
Article Type: Book Review
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Customer Reviews:
A Wonderful Read!!.......2007-07-11
I picked this book up at my library,started looking through it,bookmarked so many pages that it was getting ridicules, plus in between looking up and bookmarking these sites on my computer. So I am now giving up and am about to order the 2007 edition for my very own! This book is just crammed with cool sites,and some you just dont care about,but hey, the research has been done for you,so have fun with it, I did!
Enlightened by Thepurplebook!.......2007-04-18
Thepurplebook was extremely helpful to me! It's so difficult and time consuming to navigate through the internet for good sites and the purple book is a wonderful guide. It's made it much easier for me to find what I'm looking for. I wish I would've known sooner that this book existed!
Satisfied.......2007-03-13
Not quite what I expected. I was hoping for a more in depth research.
Average customer rating:
- A fun way to shop online...
|
thepurplebook baby: the definitive guide to exceptional online baby and maternity shopping, 2006 edition
Hillary Mendelsohn
Manufacturer: Grand Central Publishing
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Similar Items:
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thepurplebook(R), 2006 edition : the definitive guide to exceptional online shopping (Purple Book: The Definitive Guide to Exceptional Online Shopping)
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thepurplebook(R), 2007 edition: the definitive guide to exceptional online shopping (Thepurplebook)
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Consumer Reports Best Baby Products, 8th Edition (Best Baby Products)
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The Happiest Baby on the Block: The New Way to Calm Crying and Help Your Newborn Baby Sleep Longer
ASIN: 0446697001 |
Book Description
From essential gear like baby strollers and car seats to the fun accessories, thebabypurplebook is the all-new companion guide to thepurplebookand the ultimate resource for finding the best baby and maternity products online.
Customer Reviews:
A fun way to shop online..........2007-02-10
What new mom or mom-to-be doesn't need a little assistance when it comes to getting everything they need for their baby or finding that special celebratory gift for themselves? Hillary Mendelsohn has made a name for herself as a person who knows online shopping and in THEPURPLEBOOKBABY: The Definitive Guide to Exceptional Online Baby and Maternity Shopping, a special edition of thepurplebook, she goes a step further by focusing solely on this demographic of women.
With a guide as focused as this book, the consumer is able to cut out a lot of the legwork and time running from store to store looking for a particular item. THEPURPLEBOOKBABY is a wonderful resource for mothers, friends, grandparents, or basically anyone interested in shopping for baby items.
Broken down into various catagories, the guide is structured into an easy what-to-look-for format, in which Mendelsohn has hand-selected only the best online resources, running the gamut in price, style, and even popularity. What I especially liked was she also included items just for mom, in which a woman could fully enjoy the benefits (pampering, special attention, and love) of pregnancy and/or motherhood.
Reviewed by Tee C. Royal
of The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers
Book Description
With more Web sites than anyone can count and new ones popping up every minute, online shopping can be more overwhelming than time efficient. While search engines provide thousands of results, its nearly impossible to distinguish the good sites from the baduntil now. With thepurplebook, consumers now have access to a comprehensive list of top-notch Web sites that have been evaluated for excellence in product selection and customer service, allowing them to find the best, most affordable merchandise quickly and easily with the click of a button. Editions of thepurplebook were published by Bantam in 2004 and 2005. There are over 84,000 copies in print.
Customer Reviews:
On-line Shopping.......2007-05-01
This is a good rendition on the various websites in existence for a variety
of goods and services on the internet. The volume is well organized. It is
easy to read and the price is reasonable. An update of the volume would be
in order for the 2007-2008 period; otherwise, the current book will suffice.
This book would be helpful for identifying websites specific to
the current needs of the customer. A beauty of the work is that it is easy
to locate product classifications with a minimum of effort. The acquisition
would be helpful for anyone who shops frequently on the internet.
Price ratings are way wrong.......2007-01-05
The price ratings in this book are way off...one site in the book that was marked with one dollar sign had bouquets of flowers starting at $100 on up...hardly what I would call a bargain Web site. Other than that, pretty good.
purple book.......2006-08-20
Disappointing. The sections on womens' clothing & accessories tends toward the frumpy, or sites everybody knows already. If you are into fashion this probably isn't for you.
Great benchmarking tool!.......2006-06-30
As an online retailer, this book will really help me benchmark the competition - easy to read and use!
Purple Book Review.......2006-06-26
Best internet guide I've seen, but still a long ways to go.
Book Description
WE TAKE THE GUESSWORK OUT OF ONLINE SHOPPING
Attention shoppers! Tens of thousands of Internet retailers are clamoring for your business, but you stand a greater chance of being struck by lightning than of finding the best online shops out there. Now get ready to be struck by lightning over and over again, because you hold in your hands the first edition of the most complete, authoritative guide to online shopping that has ever been available—
thepurplebook™.
Here are more than 1,600 of the best Internet shopping sites— selected, tested, and organized for your information and convenience. Every site in this book has been poked, prodded, scrutinized, and held to a rigorous set of standards. For every store reviewed here, six or seven were left out because they simply were not up to par.
Those sites that are featured have demonstrated superior qualities of product selection, consumer service, and/or price, covering a full range of tastes and interests.
thepurplebook, at long last, makes it easy to find the right something for yourself and everyone on your shopping list.
Find vital information and the most exciting sites for these essential categories:
Art & Collectibles
Charity
Entertainment
Epicurean
Gadgets & Electronics
Health & Beauty
Home & Garden
Lifestyles & Megastores
Maternity
Minors
Men’s Apparel
Pets
Seniors
Shoes & Accessories
Sports & Outdoors
Stationery & Gifts
Travel
Weddings
Women’s Apparel
Customer Reviews:
Finally, A Guide on Shopping for the new Millenium.......2004-02-14
It's scary to think shopping can be made a lot easier than it already is. With the internet, now shopping is so easy you can find almost everything in a matter of minutes, depending on how fast your computer loads. Hillary Mendelsohn's book is nothing new, since there has been directories of internet companies before, but she does present it in a manner shoppers are more used to, rather than in technogeek language. Another book worth exploring if you are looking for internet shopping: Stretch Your Dollars by Buying Wholesale. Saving money so that you can buy more is always exceptional, isn't it? My wife thinks so! Thanks to the internet, she now has more stores to shop til her fingers drop.
great book, awfully familiar.......2003-12-20
thepurplebook is a great book for those who don't get out to read Cosmo, Glamour,InStyle, YM, W, GQ, Better Homes and Garden and basically any periodical currently printed in the U.S. or abroad. The term "authorship" is so loose these days. Sure the sites are great, if you can find one that works. We all know how website have a tendency to die online. However, I found some real gems. Thanks InStyle! It's really too difficult to decipher (and the print is too small) for the elderly. And the gen-exers like myself, really don't have the cash to spend $200 for a handbag or pay the large amount of money alot of these sites are asking for their goods and services. I probably wouldn't buy thepurplebook, instead I'd pick it up at your local library.
FANTASTIC!!!.......2003-12-11
This is a terrific, well-researched and well-organized resource, one of the best guides I have ever read. THEPURPLEBOOK starts where search engines leave off, helping to get through the clutter. Cheers to Ms. Mendelsohn for a terrific book. A great stocking-stuffer. I can't wait for next year's edition!
All things to all people?.......2003-11-24
This is a rather Zagattish commentary (unfortunately without the point score) on the 1600 or so sites the book tries to cover.
The real value and unfortunately the (slight) failing of the book is that it tries to be too broad. In addition not everything in the book is perfect. I spotted some slight inaccuracies in some websites that I am a regular customer of. Secondly, the narrative is simply too Categorical in its comments, and one suspects that a lot of insight may be colored by the perspective garned from the particular website itself and not through a real user experience. Unlike Zagat, there is very little of the equivocation that may suggest the particular (shopping) website could have failings, or that it may not be so good. Indeed, it would appear that virtually all comments about each (shopping) website highlights the positive ...
Nevertheless, this opus provides the reader with a valuable trove of information. I personally found the epicurean section as well as the stationery/gifts section most useful, although that might reflect my personal biases. While I also question the breakdown of the shopping categories in the book, but on the whole, I recommend it, and think that it is by far the best in its class.
I'm slightly surprised that Amazon did not put out sample pages (at least of the writing of this review) as that would allow customers to have a much better feel for the book. In any case, here's my input:
Opening a random page in women's wear includes the following sites in (continued) alphabetical order:
1) Peruvian connection
2) Pieceunique.com
3) Purpleskirt.com
4) Ravinstyle.com
5) Sauvagewear.com
6) Seamlessbody.com
And just in case you were wondering what they thought about Amazon? Amazon appears twice. The first is under the segment "Entertainment" (which includes books). The entire spiel is as follows:
"The first name in Internet retail has come a long way from its origins as strictly a bookseller. Its expanision started, logically, with music and videos, but has gone on to plenty else. But it's a continued master of entertainment media that keeps us coming back. Here you may listen to music samples, read book samples and read customer reviews of just about anything. There are plenty of reasons these guys are No. one, and you probably don't want to read about them here. Suffice to say, if for some strange reason you've never visited, check it out"
Here's one more random example from www.clambakeco.com:
"Clambakes to travel. When it's time for a good old-fashion clambake, you can do no better than to visit this new-fangled speciality retailer. What's a clambake? Well, as these guys have it, its a shindig that involves steamed lobster, mussels, vegetables, Portugese sausage and of course clams. Yes it sounds like a lot to prepare, but that's the great thing about this site: they send you a pre-packed steamer pot ... You simply add water, put over a flame and 20 min or so later you have a full fledged clamback for as any people as you need. It couldn't be easier, and you get to keep the pot."
A Guide for the Shopaholic!!.......2003-11-11
When I first found out about the Purple Book I was very excited, I love to shop and to find unique buys and often don't run across great websites because they are hard to find. This is a great resource across many categories to help you find what you need online and to discover some great sites for shopping.
The one aspect of the book that I didn't like was that it listed sites that are very known an common such as some brick & mortar stores or very promient online stores (Gap, Abercrombie & Fitch, Ebay, etc...) I was hoping there would be more focus on stores that were unique and off the beaten path but I have found some sites that I never knew of before and it is a great resource so I would highly recommend this for anyone that loves to shop as much as I do!!
Book Description
thepurplebook 2005 Edition is your guide to the crème de la crème of online shopping--more than 1,600 of the best shopping sites the web has to offer! Each listing includes an overall site review, and quick-reference icons to evaluate the site's service, selection, and ease-of-use, as well as multiple indexes to help quickly locate specific products, companies, websites, or keywords.
Chapters are broken down into 19 user-friendly categories, including:
*Art & Collectibles
*Gadgets & Electronics
*Weddings
*Travel
*Pets
*Epicurean
*Men's Apparel
*Women's Apparel
*Shoes & Accesories
*Health & Beauty
*Travel & Outdoors
*And many more!
With updated reviews and even higher standards,
thepurplebook 2005 Edition continues to be the most authoritative, user-friendly guide to online shopping that has ever been available--and with its gorgeous, two color design, thepurplebook is great for gift-buying...and gift-giving!
Customer Reviews:
A good Internet shopping guide without update.......2005-09-26
The purplebook 2005 is a good internet shopping guide which includes a large selection of items available for online sale. It also includes information related to websites that offer to send you goods from online shops that do not deliver internationally as well as charities for those who want to give.
It is a well presented reference book. I was disappointed when I realized that I purchased the 2005 version less than one month before the publication of the 2006 edition. The 2005 edition did not provide a free subscription to access the guide's website with the updated information. In others books I purchased through Amazon, each edition had access to some kind of an online update.
It may be worth considering a subscription to the site instead of buying the book in case the book is available in a public library.
Find the Best Sites Fast Here.......2005-07-19
I bought the purple book 2005 looking for information on the best sites for 2005. It's easy
to read and you can find same sites under different catagories. The
really neat thing about this book is there is a list of keywords at the beginning
of each chapter. Best way to find a site is under keywords right?
The book is laid out with a lot most well known sites but I did find a few I had
never heard of under catagories I do alot of research in.
Still there are a few that I couldn't see why they were listed, but to each
their own I guess.
After I looked over the sites online I can see why they are listed.
They also list the real good parts about a site as well as something items they feel
needs correcting, like why a site is wildly
popular but still finding anything on it is a test in patience!
They listed one site that I knew was like hunting for buried
treasure while trying to find anything!
If just looking for a list of sites for shopping in a book form
without having to hunt all over the web this then this
book for you.
Terrible. Absolutely Useless.......2005-05-06
I'm a very fair person, and try to give things a chance, but this book was just absolutely terrible.
Examples of the websites they have under clothes:
Brooksbrothers.com
AbercrombieandFitch.com
T-Shirts.com
BananaRepublic.com
Adding a ".com" to a popular brand is not very helpful at all. More than half of these website I could have found on my own without using a search engine. There are a few highlights such as Karmaloop.com (although this website is really not that hard to find either), but the brunt of these entries were the figurative surface of the ocean.
If you are looking for some cool t-shirts try a search engine and some good sites such as coolhunting.com
The Internet Shoppers Book of Books.......2004-11-07
After buying the PURPLEBOOK last year and finding it so helpful, I had to buy the 2005 edition of THEPURPLEBOOK. It is superb! I do not like to shop and am idea challenged, so this is the perfect answer. I love the way the book is so easy to use. Its' wealth of information about online shopping sites is unsurpassed. I am able to go to a category and find a source with great ease. It is also a wonderful tool to get great ideas by looking through the book, reading the detailed information and then going to the designated sources. The information is reliable and up to date. What a wonderful treasure and now I can truly "let my fingers do the walking." A BEST BUY!
A Shopper's Dream Book!.......2004-10-27
I got last year's Purple Book just in time for holiday shopping and it was unbelievably helpful. But the new 2005 edition is so much BETTER! I am a shopaholic but without time to hit the malls so I'm addicted to online shopping. For me, the Purple Book makes it easy and safe. I can research best buys, hard-to-find, one-of-a-kind items, etc. They have very specific categories so you don't waste time looking at sites that don't fit your needs - or your wallet! Descriptions are VERY detailed so you know just what to expect at each site. Plus they rate the sites for you. The whole book is really comprehensive, but laid out in an easy-to-read style so you don't feel overwhelmed. With Christmas just around the corner, The Purple Book is exactly what us hardcore shoppers need!
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Books Index
Books Home
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Television Disrupted: The Transition from Network to Networked TV
