About this season
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."
Episodes (13)
1. Tailspin
Aired 6 January 1983 • 27 min
Braniff executives try to restructure their company in this behind-the-scenes story of America's first major airline bankruptcy.
2. The Selling of Terri Gibbs
Aired 13 January 1983 • 29 min
Terri Gibbs, award-winning country-and-western singer, tries for a second hit album and super-stardom.
3. The Diamond Game
Aired 20 January 1983 • 28 min
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.
4. The Buck Stops in Brazil
Aired 27 January 1983 • 28 min
The high-stakes world of international banking in Sao Paulo, Brasilia, New York, and Zurich.
5. Buy-Out
Aired 3 February 1983 • 28 min
Hyatt-Clark, a former General Motors subsidiary, is now one of the largest experiments in employee ownership in the country.
6. Fired
Aired 10 February 1983 • 59 min
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.
7. Chef's Special
Aired 17 February 1983 • 29 min
Chef David Garo Sokitch arranges and oversees every complex detail that precedes the opening of his new San Francisco restaurant.
8. Hardball
Aired 24 February 1983 • 28 min
The Oakland A's and their new management group encounter the hard realities of the business of baseball during the 1982 season.
9. Hong Kong Dresses Up
Aired 3 March 1983 • 28 min
Textile magnate S.T. King and his company Wearbest manufacture designer jeans in one of the most regulation-free economies in the world.
10. West Meets East
Aired 10 March 1983 • 29 min
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.
11. All in the Game
Aired 17 March 1983 • 27 min
The business of video games, focusing on William Grubb, who left a vice president's position at Atari Inc. to start Imagic.
12. The New Space Race
Aired 24 March 1983 • 29 min
Space Services, Space Transportation, and other private companies compete to develop astronautical shipping and traveling services in the business of communications satellites.
13. California Crude
Aired 31 March 1983 • 28 min
Sun Oil Company prepares to bid on tracts off the California coast, in the risky and expensive business of oil leases.