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Half-hour program on the "real-life adventure" of big business. Newsman Eric Sevareid, who served as host, described the series as neither "chamber of commerce boosterism" nor anti-establishment; rather, "an effort to report how various industrial sectors actually work."
1981
Bill Brodnax (Taurus Petroleum) drills for gas in the Cajun country of southern Louisiana. Witness how drilling is planned, financed, and carried out. In the closing moments, viewers learn alongside the wildcatter and his backers whether the well does in fact strike gas.
Loy Weston, the American chairman of Kentucky Fried Chicken Japan, presides over 324 stores. Witness the setting up of a new outlet in northeast Tokyo.
Examining the future of AT&T as its telephone monopoly ends and a new era of tooth-and-nail competition begins.
The bizarre preparations for an auction where millionaires bid for race horses. (Tom Gentry Farms)
Inforex was a $70 million-a-year computer firm that rode the high-tech wave to prosperity in the early 1970s. Founded in 1968, it had burst on the scene with the IKE, a television-like data entry machine that had rendered the old punchcard systems obsolete. But the company had never been able to come up with a profitable second product.
Entertainment industries, searching for safer products with bigger returns on investments, have joined forces to create 'properties'. Witness one such property progress from inception to spinoff.
One of the new airlines challenging the giants of the industry in the wake of deregulation, New York Air is followed from start-up to inaugural flight.
Unhappy with the unpredictability of cotton prices, many Mississippi Delta farmers are converting their hardscrabble land to catfish "farms" of 80-acre ponds.
Levi-Strauss attempt to market a moderately priced, mass produced men's suit.
The San Diego subsidiary of Japan's fastest-growing company -- Kyoto Ceramic -- illustrates Japan's management techniques.
Tom Bata, chairman of Bata Shoe, visits his company's manufacturing plants in Chile, Upper Volta, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, and Kenya.
How market leader Boeing stays on top of the world aircraft business.
John DeLorean, a former executive at General Motors, has used his fortune, reputation, expertise, and connections to produce a new sports car.
1984
Ted Turner and Satellite News Network executive Lloyd Werner vie for advertisers, subscribers, and cable-system carriers as they jockey for position in the cable news business.
Telophase Corporation plans to start America's first chain of low-cost crematoria and to market cremation as an alternative to burials.
Will the new $125-million Westin Hotel in Boston be able to compete in a market already filled to capacity with luxury hotels?
Ned Steinberger, owner of a small business that produces an innovative and extremely popular electric bass guitar, must cope with impatient customers and new competition.
Frank Perdue, the man who turned chicken into a brand-name item in the Northeast, plans to market a new product: chicken franks. WARNING: May contain scenes of animal trauma.
Texas real estate developer Trammel Crow attempts to lure Hollywood filmmakers to Dallas by building a state-of-the-art production complex.
The Gloria Stevens chain of health clubs struggles to find a formula for survival in a volatile business climate.
The prize-winning Matanzas Creek Winery in California attempts to escalate production without disrupting the delicate balance of supply, demand, and high quality.
Israeli firm Elscint tries to develop, produce, and deliver a superior medical diagnostic scanner to compete with larger corporations.
Winners -- and losers -- stake their fortunes on cocoa in the futures market.
Lear Fan Ltd. and Beech Aircraft vie for a larger share of the market by developing a light, efficient corporate plane while battling technical problems, skeptical investors, and bureaucracy.
Salespeople demonstrate their personal tricks of the ancient trade, to illustrate the psychology of selling.
Eric Sevareid
Self - Host
Streaming availability information not available
1983
Braniff executives try to restructure their company in this behind-the-scenes story of America's first major airline bankruptcy.
Terri Gibbs, award-winning country-and-western singer, tries for a second hit album and super-stardom.
William Goldberg, president of the Diamond Dealers Club, offers a window on the intensely secretive diamond market as we see newly mined diamonds graded, cleaved, sawed, polished, traded, designed, and sold as jewelry in fashionable Fifth Avenue showrooms.
The high-stakes world of international banking in Sao Paulo, Brasilia, New York, and Zurich.
Hyatt-Clark, a former General Motors subsidiary, is now one of the largest experiments in employee ownership in the country.
A despondent fired executive must pull himself together and find another job in this Oscar-nominated docudrama produced by the National Film Board of Canada.
Chef David Garo Sokitch arranges and oversees every complex detail that precedes the opening of his new San Francisco restaurant.
The Oakland A's and their new management group encounter the hard realities of the business of baseball during the 1982 season.
Textile magnate S.T. King and his company Wearbest manufacture designer jeans in one of the most regulation-free economies in the world.
Four employees of California-based National Semiconductor Corporation tour Japan to observe how the Japanese are rivaling and surpassing American industry in a variety of fields.
The business of video games, focusing on William Grubb, who left a vice president's position at Atari Inc. to start Imagic.
Space Services, Space Transportation, and other private companies compete to develop astronautical shipping and traveling services in the business of communications satellites.
Sun Oil Company prepares to bid on tracts off the California coast, in the risky and expensive business of oil leases.
