CNN began a revolution in television with the advent of its 24 hour cable news channel out of Atlanta in 1980, challenging the three major television networks headquartered in New York that shaped th perception of current events by Americans. This revolution was to take the world by storm during the next decade as satellite and cable television provided an alternative, if not the only, source of information for people throughout the world. Sidney Pikes story is the most thorough chronicle of these changes that exists. As he met with media and government leaders around the world, trying to sell CNN programming, he faced the forces that stimulated the changes and those which offered resistance to them. Sydney Pike was a pioneer and evangelist for the global television channels and news services that are taken for granted today.
