Episode 1
Wildcatter
Oct 2, 1981
Bill Brodnax (Taurus Petroleum) drills for gas in the Cajun country of southern Louisiana. Witness how drilling is planned, financed, and carried out. In the closing moments, viewers learn alongside the wildcatter and his backers whether the well does in fact strike gas.
Episode 2
The Colonel Comes to Japan
Oct 9, 1981
Loy Weston, the American chairman of Kentucky Fried Chicken Japan, presides over 324 stores. Witness the setting up of a new outlet in northeast Tokyo.
Episode 3
Gulliver's New Travels
Oct 16, 1981
Examining the future of AT&T as its telephone monopoly ends and a new era of tooth-and-nail competition begins.
Episode 4
Fast Horse in a Bull Market
Oct 23, 1981
The bizarre preparations for an auction where millionaires bid for race horses. (Tom Gentry Farms)
Episode 5
Bankrupt
Oct 30, 1981
Inforex was a $70 million-a-year computer firm that rode the high-tech wave to prosperity in the early 1970s. Founded in 1968, it had burst on the scene with the IKE, a television-like data entry machine that had rendered the old punchcard systems obsolete. But the company had never been able to come up with a profitable second product.
Episode 6
The Making of a Package Deal
Nov 6, 1981
Entertainment industries, searching for safer products with bigger returns on investments, have joined forces to create 'properties'. Witness one such property progress from inception to spinoff.
Episode 7
Dogfight Over New York
Nov 13, 1981
One of the new airlines challenging the giants of the industry in the wake of deregulation, New York Air is followed from start-up to inaugural flight.
Episode 8
Catfish Fever
Nov 20, 1981
Unhappy with the unpredictability of cotton prices, many Mississippi Delta farmers are converting their hardscrabble land to catfish "farms" of 80-acre ponds.
Episode 9
Not by Jeans Alone
Nov 27, 1981
Levi-Strauss attempt to market a moderately priced, mass produced men's suit.
Episode 10
The Kyocera Experiment
Dec 4, 1981
The San Diego subsidiary of Japan's fastest-growing company -- Kyoto Ceramic -- illustrates Japan's management techniques.
Episode 11
One Man's Multinational
Dec 11, 1981
Tom Bata, chairman of Bata Shoe, visits his company's manufacturing plants in Chile, Upper Volta, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, and Kenya.
Episode 12
The Jet Set: Boeing vs. the World
Dec 18, 1981
How market leader Boeing stays on top of the world aircraft business.
Episode 13
Start-Up
Dec 25, 1981
John DeLorean, a former executive at General Motors, has used his fortune, reputation, expertise, and connections to produce a new sports car.
Skip to content