Lesson Eleven

Section One: News in Brief

Tapescript
1. Texas Air announced today that it will buy the troubled People
Express Airlines for about a hundred and twenty-five million
dollars. The proposed deal would allow most People Express em-
ployees to keep their jobs, although the company will eventually lose
its identity and become part of Texas Air. Federal officials must ap-
prove the merger. Texas Air is also trying to buy Eastern Airlines.

2. A rally on Wall Street today after six consecutive losing sessions,
the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended the day up nearly nine
points, to close at seventeen sixty-seven point fifty-eight.

3. What's being called a 'freedom flight" of seventy former Cuban
political prisoners landed in Miami today to an ecstatic reception by
thousands of relatives and well-wishers. The plane also carried
forty7one relatives of former prisoners. The flight culminated nearly
two years of negotiations with the Castro regime.

Section Two: News in IDetail

Tapescript
Texas Air Corporation today announced that it has agreed to

buy People Express Airlines for one hundred twenty-five million
dollars in securities. Texas Air already owns Continental Airlines
and New York Air. It is in the process of acquiring Eastern Airlines.
People Express, one of the first no-frills, low-fare air carriers, has
been in financial trouble lately. It was forced to shut down its subsid-
iary, Frontier Airlfiies. Texas Air now says it will acquire Frontier's
assets as part of its deal with People Express. Joining us now from

New York, NPR's business reporter Barbara Mantel.
' Barbara, it is said this is a very attractive low price, this one

hundred twenty-five million dollars in securities. Besides that, why

does Texas Air want People Express?'
"Well, Frank Lorenzo, who is Chairman of Texas Air, will get

airplanes from People Express, which he might need. He will get the
lowest cost work-force in the industry at People Express. He will get
a new terminal at Newark, New Jersey that People Express is build-
ing. He'll get flights to London, and he will get control over competi-
tion. People Express competes heavily, especially in the northeast

corridor, with Texas Air.'
'This issue of competition has been a sticking point before for
the Department of Transportation when two airlines wanted to get

together. How will Texas Air get around it this time?'
'Well, they might not. Texas Air wanted to acquire East ..., or

wants to acquire, Eastern Airline, and the Department of Transpor-

. I
tation said, 'No, not unless you sell more landing slots, more slots in
the northeast corridor to Pan Am so that we'll have some competi-
tion there.' And Texas Air agreed to that just last week. That may
happen again here. The Department of Transportation may require
that Texas Air sell some slots or some gates to another airline to en-
sure that there is still competition in the northeast part of the
marketplace. But Texas Air has some leverage here with the De-
partment of Transportation because People Express is a failing com-
pany. And the Department of Transportation may feel, 'Well, we'll
let them'buy People Express and keep it running, rather than let ii
fail and lose all those jobs.'"

'Mm hm. Now, if the deal is approved by the Department of
Transportation, what is it likely to mean for consumers? If there's
less competition the fares could possibly go up. "

'Well, yes. You would think that when you move from two
competitors in a market to just one airliner that prices would just

have to go up. But I want you to keep in mind that unrestricted fares
of the kind People Express offered, you know, wholesale unrestricted
fares, were being eliminated and phased out anyway, because they
were not profitable. And the Department of Transportation theory
here is that if you allow mergers to take place, or many mergers to
take place, you might create more efficiencies and low costs, leading
possibly to lower fares. And also the Department of Transportation
believes that there's a lot of potential competition in the
marketplace. Airlines can move planes around and buy gates, and so
that if an airline in a particular market segment was making a lot of
money and raising prices excessively, other airlines would move in

and prices would be brought down through competition. So that it's
a nice theory, the theory of potential competition keeping prices in
line, but it's sort of a new idea and it's not clear that that's really the
way it would work.'

'Thanks.' From New York, NPR's Barbara Mantel.

Section Three: Special Report

Tapescript
"My audiences have been very devoted over the years through-

out the country. And they've expanded and grown and the country
audience has been just as kind and as supportive as the folk audience

has been.'
'I was thinking though, nonetheless, when I put on this album,
'The Last of the True Believers,' especially the title cut, that I heard

more country there than I'd perhaps heard before."
"Well, I guess it has .-.. I've moved in that direction, mainly be-

cause I am playing with the band more. My natural roots are there in
country and hillbilly music. And so I think that that just comes out

more when you put the band with it."
I 'I want to ask you some questions, please, about this album,

aboutthe ... not so much what's on the inside right now, but whaes

on the outside - a picture on the front of you in front of a

Woolworth store, someplace, I guess, in Texas or Tennessee, and

'Houston, Texas.'
In Houston, Texas? Is it the Woolworth store that has the

hardwood floor still'and the parakeets in the back and that sort of

thing?'
"Well, this one that we shot this in front of in Houston Texas is
one of the largest ones in the country. It's a two-storey and it's got
the escalator that does a little pinging noise every couple of minutes.

And it takes up a whole city block."
"But, why a cover photo in front of Woolworth's?'
'Well,, that comes from the song 'Love at the Five and Dime,'
which was a song that Cathy Mattea also cut this year and had my
first, you know, top five country hit with. And it deals with the

Woolworth store.'
"There is, on the cover, you are holding a book, and you can/t

really see. ... What is the name of the book on the cover you're hold-
ing?'

'In the Kindness of Strangers, the latest Tennessee Williams' bi-
ography.'

'And on the back is Larry McMurtrie's book about a cattle
drive around the turn of the century, Lonesome Dove.'
"He's my main prose hero.'

'Now, why? Why would you do that? Why would you pose
with a book?'

"Well, I have, my audience consists of a lot of young people be-
tween the ages of, maybe you know, fourteen and twenty-f'ive. And I
read a lot, and I alsowrite short stories and have written a novel.
And I just feel like young people are missing out because they don't
read books. And any time I have the opportunity to influence the
young person to pick up a book and read it, I would try to do that.'
'When you hear these lyrics, when the words come to you, are
you hearing the stanzas'as poetry or as music?'

'Well, I'm hearing them as music. Lyrics usually come to me,
and songs come to me as a total picture. And the music and the lyrics
come at the same time. Sometimes they shoot me straight up in bed,
you know, in the middle of the night. 'The Wing and the Wheel' is a
very special song to me. It's probably my favorite song that I've ever
written. And that song was inspired at the Vancouver Folk Festival
by two people who are from Managua, Nicaragua. They have a duo
call Duo Guar Buranco. And just about four o'clock in the morning,
I was sitting in my hotel room and listening to them sing in the room

next door, and looking out the window at this little fingernail moon
hanging out over the Vancouver Bay, and that song just came flow-
ing, you know, and was inspired by those two people.'
'Now, that sounds easy.'

'Well, it IS easy. If you listen. to yourself and you listen to the
inspiration that's bringing on that particular song, it's easy. It's just a

matter of getting up and writing it down.'
Nancy Griffith, talking with us in WPLN in Nashville. She is
continuing her national tour with the Everly Brothers. Her latest al-
bum is called "The Last of the True Believers.'

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