Tim Haight, co-author of The Mass Media: Aspen Institute Guide to Communications Trends and editor of Telecommunications Policy and the Citizen, gives a page by page critical reading of Channels Magazine. Channels was a twice-monthly publication started in 1981 by Les Brown, a former TV correspondent for The New York Times and Variety and, as Haight acknowledges, was oft referred to as “TV Guide for intellectuals.” Channels magazine board of directors was made up of media critics and “foundation types” and thus had a reputation of being hip and liberal. Haight, Green-screened into a broadcast room monitor, describes how despite being “liberal” not-for-profit corporation, the publication was nonetheless embedded in the corporate systems of the television industry. Although the magazine is informative, including news of such such things as India starting a low-power television broadcasting infrastructure, its pages are also 50% advertisements. In turn, this seemingly critical magazine, which at one point refers to American television as “chewing gum for the eyes” undermines it’s own critique by including ads for major networks and media conglomerates. Haight points to the fact that while the publication does push for media reform, this reform has a very narrow range. It is to media reform what the democratic party is to radical politics. The magazine pushes an agenda of adjusting new technologies to fit society, but neglects to acknowledge the need for change within the society itself. This contradicts the self-proclamation, which Channels makes in an ad for itself, that it is “the magazine which covers the revolution.” According to Haight, the publication implies, through that which is not said, that we have accepted the evil in the world, and that we will work through it. Haight’s final question is “Can you handle that?”