The luminous screen in the home carries fantastic authority. Viewers everywhere tend to accept it as a window on the world... It has tended to displace or overwhelm other influences such as newspapers, school, church, grandpa, grandma. It has become the definer and transmitter of society's values.
Erik Barnouw, The Sponsor: Notes On a Modern Potentate (Oxford University Press, 1978), ISBN 0-19-502614-4, p. 75
