Network taps into the hysteria of the television business at a time when the medium was still important, a monolithic and competitive media industry hungry to tap into the next big thing and do anything for ratings.
This tale of a failing network that feeds on the mental breakdown of one of its anchors, cannibalising itself for ratings, feels as savagely relevant now as it did when it was released nearly 40 years ago.
TIME Magazine
July 18, 2011
The plot that Paddy Chayefsky has concocted to prove this point is so crazily preposterous that even in post-Watergate America -- where we know that bats can get loose in the corridors of power -- it is just impossible to accept.
Network can be faulted both for going too far and not far enough, but it's also something that very few commercial films are these days. It's alive.
Radio Times
March 27, 2015
Criticised by some at the time for a certain naivety and lack of subtlety, this remains one of the most devastating condemnations of the media's urge to exploit.
Chayefsky was apparently serious about much of this shrill, self-important 1976 satire about television, interlaced with bile about radicals and pushy career women, and so were some critics at the time.
The mystic quality within "Network" is that it pitches curve balls at us that have meanings relative to our unique situations, and all of them encompass a value that is beyond simple comprehension.
