Television is one of today's most powerful and widespread means of mass communication. It

directly influences our lives on both a short and long-term basis; it brings worldwide situations into our homes; it affords extensive opportunities for acquiring higher education; and it performs these tasks in a convenient yet effective manner. We are all aware of the popularly accepted applications of television, particularly those relative to entertainment and news broadcasting. Television, however, has also been a vital link in unmanned deep space exploration (such as the Voyager I and Ⅱ missions), in providing visions from hazardous areas (such as proximity to radioactive materials or environments) in underwater research, in viewing storms moving across a metropolitan area (the camera being placed in a weather-protective enclosure near the top of a tower), etc. The earth's weather satellites also use television cameras for vie- wing cloud cover and movements from 20,000 miles in space. Infrared filters are used for night views, and several systems include a spinning mirror arrangement to permit wide-area views from the camera. Realizing the unlimited applications for today's television, one may thus logically ponder the true benefits of confining most of our video activities to the mass-entertainment field.

Conventional television broadcasting within the United States centres around free enterprise and public ownership. This requires funding by commercial sponsors, and thus functions in a revenue-producing business manner. Television in USSR-subjected areas, conversely, is a government-owned and maintained arrangement. While such arrangements eliminate the need for commercial sponsorship, it also has the possibility of limiting the type of programs available to viewers (a number of purely entertainment programs similar to the classic "Bewitched", however, have been seen on these government -controlled networks. All isn't as gray and dismal as the uninformed might unnecessarily visualize). A highly modified form. of television called Slow-Scan TV is presently being used by many Amateur Radio operators to provide direct visual communications with almost any area of the world. This unique visual mode recently allowed people on the tiny South Pacific country of Pitcairn Island to view, for the first time in their lives, distant areas and people of the world. The chief radio Amateur and communications officer of Pitcairn, incidentally, is the legendary Tom Christian-great, great grandson of Tom Christian of "Mutiny on the Bounty" fame. Radio Amateurs in many lands worked together for several months establishing visual capabilities. The results have proven spectacular, yet the visual capabilities have only been used for health education, or welfare purposes. Commercial TV is still unknown to natives of that tiny country. Numerous other forms of television and visual communication, have also been used on a semi-restricted basis. This indicates the many untapped areas of video and television which may soon be exploited on a more widespread basis. The old clich of a picture being worth a thousand words truly has merit.

According to the passage, applications of television are easily accepted in______.

A．metropolitan area

B．deep space exploration

C．programs about entertainment and news

D．remote areas