6 review for This Is Cbs: A Chronicle Of 60 Years

1. 

   4 out of 5

   Richard Tolleson – Dec 22, 2020

   If you read "Reflections in a Bloodshot Eye" by Robert Metz, you can skip to the last couple of chapters of this book. I read the two back to back, and I'm not accusing Slater of plagiarism, but if my students turned in his book, I would definitely run passages of it through my "cheater checker, ". Many of the same anecdotes are told, in the same order. This book was written more than a decade after Metz's, so it updates with the departure of Cronkite, the hiring of Rather, the rise of Kuralt an If you read "Reflections in a Bloodshot Eye" by Robert Metz, you can skip to the last couple of chapters of this book. I read the two back to back, and I'm not accusing Slater of plagiarism, but if my students turned in his book, I would definitely run passages of it through my "cheater checker, ". Many of the same anecdotes are told, in the same order. This book was written more than a decade after Metz's, so it updates with the departure of Cronkite, the hiring of Rather, the rise of Kuralt and Sunday Morning (but that's only mentioned briefly), and the corporate troubles CBS had with fending off takeovers, both real and imagined, friendly and -un. A lot has transpired since, and one gets the general sense that CBS is in a lot better shape both financially and organizationally than it was when this book was written. My three stars is for the fact that up until the mid 70's, when Metz's book ends, I didn't feel like I learned anything additional from this book. It's also repetitive, with Metz occasionally retelling a fact at the bottom of a page that he just told us at the top of the same page. If you are interested in broadcasting, and CBS in particular, this is worth a read, but don't expect it to inform on anything going on in the industry today. All of the things that the CBS employees were railing against in the 80's have come to pass, and, as the fictional Howard Beale said in the prescient film "Network", "We're in big trouble".

2. 

   4 out of 5

   Bill Hill –

3. 

   5 out of 5

   Bill Holtzapple –

4. 

   5 out of 5

   Dale –

5. 

   5 out of 5

   Mark Flory –

6. 

   5 out of 5

   Thom Osburn –