By 1974, the network had retaken nine of the top-ten-rated programs, and television itself had successfully made itself “relevant,” saving it from a slow sapping of its energies, as its first and most faithful viewership began to age and die. … At the same time, Silverman’s success also perhaps showed the challenge and limits of reforming the medium according to Murrow’s vision; for ultimately the business model remained the resale of human attention, and that reality was encoded in the very nature of all the programs. As Paley had first discovered, sometimes you could make the sale with panache; but if not, it still had to be done. Jerry Mander writes, the reformers believed “that television could communicate their message as well as any other….Intent on changing other people’s minds, they did not consider that television might change those who used it.”

Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, loc. 583