大学英语四级模拟试题

presentations, award-winning movies, and intelligent discussions of national problems often take up the evening hours on public TV. For those who seek self-improvement with the help of TV, there are "how-to" shows (daytime and evening) which teach cooking, skiing, sewing,

instrument-playing, and dozens of other skills. Also offered are college courses which give academic credit to enrolled listeners.

Movies

Most American movies are produced in Hollywood, California. Hollywood, which is actually not a separate city but a part of Los Angeles, is an ideal spot for the movie industry. The sun shines most of the time, and the climate is mild. Almost every kind of natural scenery is within a few hour's drive.

Hollywood becomes the center of national attention on one evening each year-Academy Award night. At the Academy Award presentations held each spring, awards called Oscars are given to film industry winners in dozens of categories, including best actor, best actress, and best picture. The winners are chosen by members of the industry before the ceremony, but their names are kept secret until the presentation night, when they are announced in a long program broadcast on television.

Motion pictures were extremely popular in the United States until after World War II, when

television captured much of the movie audience. Geared to the masses, Hollywood movies offered much the same type of entertainment as television does. With free entertainment in their homes, many Americans simply stopped going to movies. Between 1946 and 1956, movie attendance was cut in half. At the same time, production costs increased. The movie industry was in trouble. The industry adjusted itself in a number of ways. Movie companies rented sound stages to TV companies and sold old movies to TV. To cut costs, Hollywood produced fewer movies and filmed many of them overseas. To attract audiences, the industry started using wider screens. Studios also began producing kinds of entertainment that could not be offered by TV-films with

controversial or shocking themes, films with huge casts and expensive settings. As a result of these changes, today the American motion picture industry is prosperous.

Since industries prefer to advertise where they will reach the largest number of potential

customers, the mass media do everything they can to hold the largest audience possible. On commercial TV, this goal leads to a great deal of sports and generally inadequate analyses of the national and international situations. It also means very little opera, classical music, or

Shakespearean drama, and a great deal of unsophisticated comedy. Generally, the mass

communications media try to please the public by reinforcing popular and traditional ideas rather than helping the public to understand (or at least, accept) new ideas.

It would be foolish to think that news in the United States is always "the whole truth and nothing but the truth." However, the concerned citizen who exposes himself to a wide variety of publications and broadcasting stations can obtain a reasonably accurate picture of what's

happening in the world. The United States government cannot control the news and entertainment media except to protect the public. It can prohibit misleading advertising and ban the sale of unhealthy materials, but it cannot examine and thus delete the news or ban its release. Public officials sometimes keep back information concerning governmental activities from the news media. Attempts to do this, however, are often exposed by persistent reporters.

The guarantee of freedom of expression allows writers, news reporters, and public figures to state their opinions openly, without fear of governmental evaluation. No official power controls what is said to the public. No particular point of view is forced upon the news media. No American needs be ignorant about public affairs in this nation where freedom of speech makes a wide range of