The season's extraordinary biography: Peter Jones's " Johnny Carson: King of Late Night" ("American Masters, " PBS) is, in its skill and the impact of its probing detail, thebest documentary of an entertainment figure to have come along in years.
Or, in the case of Merritt, a self-conscious artist in thebest sense, he knows that the accretion ofdetail over the course of these 13 songs has resulted in a realism that is vivid, hard-headed and never half-hearted.
Lecturers could also lecture from wherever they are (home, office, classroom), and we can invite thebest lecturers for a variety of topics without having to fly them across the globe - not a minor detail in a carbon-conscious world.