ues that the AT&T brand represented. Many people in the United States grew up with the AT&T brand. The experiences and feelings they associate with it tend to be centered on their family at important moments in their lives. Only a generation or two ago, a long-distance call was a Big Deal that usually indicated that something significant was happening at one end of the line. Dads announced the birth of new babies; soldiers called home from the front; little Johnny introduced Grandma to his new puppy over the phone. It was warm; it was fuzzy; it was AT&T. Much of the company's imagery was inherited simply because it had the good fortune to have been around for IOO years. But a good deal of it was also the result of deliberate calculation-carefully select- ing, defining, and modulating rational and emotional associations until AT&T was a member of the family. For example, the company sponsored the 1984 Torch Run, which brought the Olympic Flame through every state on its way to the Summer Games in Los Angeles. More recently, contestants on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire got help answering questions "thanks to our friends at AT&T." AT&T's apparent embrace of pornography-especially compared to the claimed reluctance of other cable companies to carry it (which proved to be largely untrue)-sent the mother of all mixed signals to consumers. It was like parading Ma Bell down Main Street clad only in a thong and pasties. The AT&T board recognized this and asked for a full briefing on the Hot Network issue. Somers's case essentially boiled down to three points: There is a large demand for this programming, we've taken unusual steps to keep it out of the hands of minors, and it makes us upwards of $50 million a year in profit. He chose not to show them an industry chart that described in clinical detail the difference be- tween "soft" and "hard core" adult entertainment in terms of permit- ted sexual activity, anatomy, and camera angles. In the end-with assurances that the AT&T brand would never be used in proximity to the a