In The Realm Of Pop Celebrity, The

People Of A Certain Age Look Back On The Mayberry Of 'the Andy Griffith Show' And Become Almost As Homesick For That Simple Fictional Hamlet As They Do For Their Own Home Towns.

No Matter How Much Programming Improves, However, Media Savants Tend To See The Medium Living Out Numbered Days. It's Feared That The Internet Will Do To Tv What Tv Did To The Movies In The 1950s. But Instead Of Panicking, The Networks Are Finding Ways To Co-opt The Web.

Somewhere Around The Turn Of The Century, It Stopped Being Hip To Say You Never Watched Tv. Adults Are Much More Likely To Find Something To Engage Them On Television Than They Are At The Local Multiplex. Edges Are Being Cut On Television All The Time, But At The Movies Only Now And Then.

Perhaps Western Civilization Is In A Post-decline Phase, Or Maybe The Decline Is Just Taking A Really Long Time, Like The Roman Empire's Did. The Romans Had Gladiators And Christian-hungry Lions And That Sort Of Thing. We Have Mtv.

Technically, 'kukla, Fran And Ollie' Was A Kids' Show, But Adults Watched Almost Religiously - And We're Talking Adult Adults, Celebrated Adults - Including James Thurber, Orson Welles, John Steinbeck, Adlai E. Stevenson And Lyricist Stephen Sondheim.