World's best airport is ...

Singapore Changi Airport was named the world's best airport for the second year in a row at the World Airport Awards in Barcelona, Spain. Changi also won the award for best airport leisure amenities.

South Korea's sprawling Incheon International Airport came in second place in the best airport category for the second year in a row. It also won for best immigration experience and best transit.

Munich Airport jumped three spots to come in third place in the best airport category this year, and no wonder: This airport has its own brewery and beer garden.

Hong Kong International Airport kept its fourth-place spot in the best airport award category. It also won awards for best dining experience and best baggage delivery.

Amsterdam Schiphol Airport came in fifth place in the best airport category this year, falling two spots.

Tokyo's Haneda Airport moved up three spots in the best airport category to come in sixth place this year. It also topped the list for airport cleanliness.

Beijing Capital International Airport dropped two spots from last year, still coming in a respectable seventh place in the best airport category.

Generating part of its energy requirements through a solar power system, Zurich Airport came in eighth place.

Still the only North American airport in the top 10, Vancouver International Airport sets a calm mood with a 114,000-liter aquarium and an indoor creek. It came in ninth place in the best airport category.

London Heathrow Airport kept its 10th place spot for another year, also winning the award for best airport shopping.

• The No. 1 airport won the top slot for a second consecutive year


• It also took the prize for best airport leisure amenities


• Five Asian and four European airports made the list


• Only one North American airport made the top 10

(CNN) -- Singapore Changi Airport has been crowned the best in the world for the second year in a row at the World Airport Awards, announced Wednesday in Barcelona, Spain.

Changi, which also won the award for best airport leisure amenities, beat out second-place Incheon International Airport in South Korea and third-place Munich Airport in Germany.

The awards are based on surveys conducted by Skytrax, an international travel research and consultants firm, which polled 12.85 million passengers across 110 nationalities about 395 airports worldwide.

7 of the world's most entertaining airports

"Changi Airport offers a travel experience in itself and continues to develop its quality standards to be named the world's favourite airport again," Edward Plaisted, CEO of Skytrax, said in a news release.

"Changi Airport is a well-known leader and innovator for the airport industry and genuinely delights and surprises travellers who are lucky enough to enjoy the airport facilities. Changi Airport demonstrates how to make the airport experience an enjoyable part of the journey that is so important in today's fast-moving world."

Changi served more than 52 million passengers in 2012. No wonder it's popular: The airport has an on-site movie theater, swimming pool, gardens and trails.

A day in the life of the world's busiest airport

Five of this year's top 10 airports were based in East Asian cities, and four were in Europe, just like last year's award winners. Just one North American airport -- Vancouver -- cracked the top 10.

The World's Best Airports 2014

1. Singapore Changi Airport

2. Incheon International Airport (South Korea)

3. Munich Airport (Germany)

4. Hong Kong International Airport

5. Amsterdam Schiphol Airport

6. Tokyo International Airport (Haneda)

7. Beijing Capital International Airport

8. Zurich Airport (Switzerland)

9. Vancouver International Airport (Canada)

10. London Heathrow Airport (England)

A full list of the winners and prize categories from the World Airport Awards can be found at http://ift.tt/10VmUZz.

Wow! Making airplanes in the world's biggest building

Amazing time-lapse of Corfu

• Vasilis Metallinos captured Corfu's starry night in a five-minute time-lapse video, "Corfu Nightscapes -- A Company of Stars"


• Right equipment, knowledge and patience are the keys to astrophotography, he says


• Metallinos shares his tips for photographing the moon so it looks enormous


• Chalikounas Beach is one of the best spots to photograph Corfu's nightscapes

(CNN) -- Corfu's tourism board should thank Vasilis Metallinos and John Miliadis.

"Corfu Nightscapes -- A Company of Stars" is the pair's stunning five-minute video comprising 60,000 photos taken between 2010 and 2014 by Metallinos.

If you're not inspired to head to Greece after seeing it, you probably didn't full-screen this tribute to Hellenic beauty.

The music is composed by Miliadis.

Metallinos, 29, became interested in astronomy a decade ago and has been practicing astrophotography for the last seven years.

What's on his list of must-have equipment and his secrets for capturing a "bigger" moon?

He shared that and more with CNN.

CNN: What inspired you to create this gorgeous video?

Vasilis Metallinos: This is my fifth time-lapse video so far and it was inspired by my love for Corfu island, my birthplace -- its long and rich history, breathtaking landscapes and my passion for the night sky.

It's a dreamy, magical thing to look up in the sky and watch the stars, our neighbors, traveling to distant lands!

View from Mount Pantokrator in Corfu.

CNN: What makes Corfu a good place for stargazing?

Metallinos: Corfu's night sky is not perfect but we still enjoy dark skies and see lot of celestial objects within the city walls of the Old Town of Corfu -- a UNESCO World Heritage Site -- next to our monuments.

What could be more beautiful than seeing Saturn's rings or clouds and Jupiter's Great Red Spot from the Esplanade Square, one of the largest squares in Europe with Venetian fortifications and French and English buildings?

Corfu also has an important astronomical heritage.

The first Astronomical Society of Greece was founded in Corfu in [1927] by French astronomer Felix Lamech.

Both Lamech and the Corfiot astronomer Ioannis Fokas have a lunar crater named after them and Fokas also has an eponymous Mars crater.

READ: 22 spots for spectacular starry skies

CNN: What's your advice for budding astrophotographers?

Metallinos: Experience and knowledge are the most valuable tools.

One needs to know how the celestial objects move and how to capture them with the camera.

Until you get better, take as many photos as you can.

Astrophotography requires patience.

The weather isn't always our ally and we often have to wait for more than a month for a clear sky.

One shouldn't give up easily, otherwise you might miss that one special photo that could come when you least expect it.

CNN: What equipment do you use?

Milky Way above Lake Korission.

Metallinos: A photo camera that can capture long-exposure images, a tripod and a remote control for the camera.

I started with a DSLR Canon EOS 40D and a tripod.

Now I also have three other DSLR's for nightscapes and landscapes.

Some are specially modified to capture in infrared.

I've got some CCD cameras especially for planetary photography, like the DBK 21 camera.

I also use telephoto lenses like EF70-200 f2.8 or EF100-400mm f4 as well as telescopes like the SW ED80 f7.5 or Takahashi Toa130 f7.7.

Also very useful is planetarium software like Stellarium, Carte du Ciel, Starrynight and Skysafari.

They help you identify the stars or planets easily as well as calculate where the stellar objects will rise and set on the horizon.

With software like The Photographer's Ephemeris (TPE), we can calculate where we should be.

CNN: What are your favorite shots in the video?

Metallinos: There are so many memorable ones.

The one with the big fireball at 2:39 that blinded us and turned the sky blue or the one with the honeymooners and the lighthouse at 3:49 are good examples.

"Honeymoon" taken to the extreme.

For that shot, I was calculating for hours how to shoot my just-married sister inside the August full moon.

But I (ended up) missing them by setting up the telescope just two meters wrong -- a very difficult shot when you're using a 1,000-millimeter telescope with almost 150 kilos of equipment.

But my very best is the one with the Supermoon (when the full moon is at its closest point to Earth in its orbit) and the Old Fortress of Corfu at 3:21. The result would look great even if it was a cloudy night -- I set up in the right place at the right time.

MORE: Best places to see the Northern Lights

CNN: In some of the shots, the moon looks enormous -- how did you do that?

Metallinos: You set up up the telephoto lens or a telescope at least a few kilometers away from the landscape you want to include in the shot.

Use a lens with a long focal length to magnify the moon from afar.

For example, the shot with the moon rising behind the Old Fortress was shot eight kilometers away using a 1,000-millimeter lens.

Theoretically, you can capture a full moon every 29 days from a different azimuth 76° - 116° but it's actually challenging to shoot the moon due to the unpredictable weather and difficulty in getting the exact shooting angle correct.

After calculating the exact point of the azimuth and setting up where you can put the landscape in the same shot, you'll then need a clear horizon.

I manage to capture the moon only a few times every year. So the shots in the video are from 2010 till February 2014.

Chalikounas Beach along Lake Korission is one of the best spots for astrophotography in Corfu.

CNN: The most time-consuming process is ...

Metallinos: Some shots took more than eight to nine hours of continuous capturing.

I climbed up the cliff with my camera and telescope for almost eight hours continuously to capture the shot with the trees.

The shots with the moon took an hour or two, but it required an hour or two of pre-calculation for where to set up, and then we had to be there an hour earlier with the heavy equipment.

But that is not the end -- we had to process thousands of raw pictures.

It took me more than a month to archive my 200,000 pictures of time-lapse to a library of more than 1.5 million pictures I have.

Then, it took us another month to create the video with the right shots and the right sound.

MORE: 10 of the world's coolest underground wonders

CNN: The best places to photograph Corfu are ...

Metallinos: To capture the old town of Corfu in the photograph, the best angle is from Kontokali Bay, about seven kilometers northwest of Corfu town.

Vasilis Metallinos' favorite shot.

Other beautiful places with a nice dark sky include Chalikounas Beach (Lake Korission) in southwest Corfu and near Aggelokastro Castle just above Palaiokastritsa Bay.

CNN: What are your favorite places to photograph Greece?

Metallinos: I once captured nice star photographs from the Parnon mountains at Peloponnisos in southern Greece, with a perfect dark sky.

Pelion at the city of Volos and the Gramos mountain range both yield beautiful photos.

More of Metallinos' videos can be found on his Youtube page .

Conservatives wrong on corporations

• General Motors may have known about problems with Chevrolet Cobalt back in 2005


• Sally Kohn: GM recall and recent Toyota settlement shows companies cannot be trusted


• She says conservatives say private sector is efficient, but it's also about fraud and deaths


• Kohn: Despite occasional shortcomings, government exists to advance public good

Editor's note: Sally Kohn is a progressive activist, columnist and television commentator. Follow her on Twitter @sallykohn.

(CNN) -- According to court documents that surfaced this week, General Motors' engineers knew about ignition-switch problems in the Chevrolet Cobalt as early as 2009. The company may have been aware of the dangers as early as 2005 soon after the first Cobalts rolled off the assembly line in 2004. Since 2009, at least a dozen deaths have resulted from the flaw in which, upon impact, the ignition switch slips out of the "on" position and thus prevented airbags from deploying. Last month, GM announced the recall of 1.6 million Cobalts.

In a June 2013 deposition, Gary Altman, program engineering manager for the 2005 Cobalt, was asked whether GM made a business decision not to address the problem. "That is what happened, yes," said Altman.

This news comes just a week after Toyota Motor Corporation announced it would pay $1.2 billion to settle pending criminal charges from the Department of Justice alleging Toyota covered up evidence of safety defects in its vehicles.

"The private sector is more efficient," says Sen. Rand Paul and his fellow conservatives. Really? Efficient at what, exactly — fraud, deception and disaster?

Many of the public policy disagreements between conservatives and progressives are at essence a debate over whether government or the private sector is best equipped to provide vital services. Conservatives argue that government can be bloated and inefficient, which is certainly true sometimes, but attributing those characteristics to all government is like accusing every small businessperson of being Bernie Madoff.

At its heart, whatever the occasional shortcomings, government exists solely for the purpose of advancing the public good. That's the mission. That's the entire design of the enterprise. Corruption, waste and falling short on delivery are inherently anathema to the core principles and existence of government.

On the other hand, the point of the private sector is to make money. That's a good thing. Private enterprise is a vital engine of economic growth and opportunity in America and worldwide. That said -- if your primary goal is to make money, then hiding inconvenient facts, deceiving customers, cutting corners or sweeping risks under the rug are endemic to your enterprise.

In an era of capitalism where businesses are increasingly massive and removed from the direct consequences of their business practices on employees, customers and communities, these profit-at-all-cost impulses are increasingly unbound.

That's how you end up with companies knowing that its products are killing or hurting people and yet still refusing to do something about it lest it hurt their bottom line. Today we're talking about the Chevy Cobalt, but before that it was securitized sub-prime mortgages and before that it was tobacco companies selling cigarettes to kids. The list goes on and on and on.

And this week, we have the Supreme Court hearing arguments in the Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood cases that private businesses should be able to claim religion in order to evade tenets of the law. The litigants want to evade compliance with the Obamacare mandate that they provide health insurance that covers contraception.

But, as Justice Elena Kagan asked during oral arguments, what's to stop a company from using religion to object to vaccinations? Or blood transfusions? Or minimum wage laws or family medical leave or child labor laws? We've already ushered in unprecedented corporate rights through Citizens United and various doctrines of corporate personhood. Do we really need to go a step further and let corporations use religion as a loophole to rationalize their whims?

More importantly, in spite of example after example to the contrary, why do we trust corporations to tell us the truth and do the right thing when they are not only designed but incentivized to do the opposite? Why on earth would we trust oil companies to tell us that fracking poses no harm to our drinking water? Or that our old health insurance policies are good ones? Or that our education system would be better off in their hands?

It seems that almost every day there's yet another corporation covering up how it endangered people's safety and well-being for the sake of profit. This is why we need to strengthen checks and balances of government regulation and be wary of privatizing vital public services.

Follow us on Twitter @CNNOpinion.

Join us on Facebook/CNNOpinion.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Sally Kohn.

The angriest movie of all time

"Network" may be the angriest movie ever made. Writer Paddy Chayefsky's satire takes no prisoners, making dark fun of the news media, television, corporations, left-wing radicals -- and a population that swallows it all without question. In the almost four decades since its release in 1976, the movie has found its way into the DNA of popular culture, through the passionate rants of anchorman Howard Beale (Peter Finch), fans who have taken its message to heart -- and, sometimes, in echoes that aren't so outlandish anymore.

In his 1985 book "Amusing Ourselves to Death," the influential media critic Neil Postman (1931-2003) suggested that we were likely to be victims of a "Brave New World" existence in which we would be too pacified to care about challenging the status quo. Sounds a lot like what Howard Beale railed against -- and what "Network's" corporate titan Arthur Jensen (Ned Beatty) proposed.

Perhaps the greatest media circus of modern times started with O.J. Simpson's slow-speed car chase down a Los Angeles freeway after the murder of his wife. The ensuing trial may not have done much for the national politic, but it was a terrific distraction -- and great for ratings.

In 1999, talk-show host Phil Donahue, whose daytime program paved the way for many to follow, told CNN's Larry King that he wanted to put a live execution on air. He believed it would "provoke discussion," but given that people throughout history had gathered to watch hangings, lynchings and beheadings as entertainment, he may have found that "death of the week," as William Holden calls it in the beginning of "Network," was more a ratings winner.

"Network" essentially begins with Beale declaring he's going to commit suicide on national television. Others have done so. In 1974, a Tampa morning anchor named Christine Chubbuck shot herself during her show. In 2006, British professor Craig Ewart allowed a crew to film him as he underwent assisted suicide in Switzerland. The ensuing documentary, "Right to Die?", aired in the UK in 2008 and in the U.S. in 2010.

How low would TV networks go for ratings? In Spike Lee's 2000 film "Bamboozled," a black TV executive puts on a minstrel show in hopes of shutting up a boss -- only to watch it become a huge hit.

In "Network's" time, there were few "mad prophets of the airwaves" like Howard Beale. (Joe Pyne, a cranky California-based talk-show host, was probably the closest.) But the growth of cable brought with it a more personal, confrontational style. Former CNN and Fox News host Glenn Beck told The New York Times in 2009 that he identified with Beale. "I think that's the way people feel," Beck said. "That's the way I feel."

The 1987 film "RoboCop" featured a happy-talking pair of news anchors, Casey Wong and Jess Perkins, hosting a show called "Mediabreak" that never failed to put a positive spin on a world out of control. The 2014 version features Samuel L. Jackson as Pat Novak, who shouts down his opponents to further his own interests.

Stephen Colbert has taken the news network hosts' me-first, confrontational style and parodied it mercilessly. There are times, however, when the joke cuts a little too close to home.

"Network's" satire hasn't gone unnoticed by one of the great satires of our age, "The Simpsons." The show's Kent Brockman is a walking parody of every pompous news anchor in existence, and its MAD magazine outlook that nothing is sacred pops up in almost every episode.

Aaron Sorkin, the creator and writer of shows such as "The West Wing" and "The Newsroom," rarely misses a chance to echo a Howard Beale speech. He did it in "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," with Judd Hirsch as an angry producer, and "The Newsroom," with Jeff Daniels telling an audience why the United States isn't the greatest country in the world.

Maybe "The Mao Tse-Tung Hour" never made it to television, but nowadays we have "reality" shows, like "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo" and "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" -- for every interest. Are they forms of documentary -- or forms of exploitation? Discuss.

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• "Network" subject of new book about its making and impact


• 1976 film was about "Mad Prophet of the Airwaves," news, ratings, money


• Satire has proven tremendously influential, some has even come true

(CNN) -- Paddy Chayefsky heard voices.

They were the voices of angry Americans. They were the voices of proud newsmen. They were the voices of crass corporate executives, conniving revolutionaries, wounded wives and, above all, a "mad prophet of the airwaves."

He put them together and came up with "Network."

The 1976 film, starring Peter Finch as disintegrating news anchor Howard Beale, William Holden as veteran news exec Max Schumacher, Faye Dunaway as programmer Diana Christensen and Robert Duvall as network honcho Frank Hackett, was a scathing satire on news and television in a country that the mercurial Chayefsky saw in rapid decline.

And why not? As Beale ranted in the film's most famous speech, "Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth. Banks are going bust. Shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it."

He concluded by imploring his audience to yell some of the most famous words in movie history: "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take this anymore!"

In his new book, "Mad as Hell," author and New York Times reporter Dave Itzkoff chronicles the making of the Sidney Lumet-directed film -- which won Oscars for Finch, Dunaway, supporting actress Beatrice Straight and Chayefsky -- and how it proved eerily prescient in forecasting our modern age of infotainment, reality shows, corporate takeovers and the commodification of anger.

Who was Paddy Chayefsky?

Born: Sidney Aaron Chayefsky in Bronx, New York, 1923

Early career: Key writer during 1950s "Golden Age of Television," including scripts for "Marty" and "The Bachelor Party"

Movies: "Marty" (1955); "The Americanization of Emily" (1964): "The Hospital" (1971); "Network" (1976); "Altered States" (1980, as Sidney Aaron)

Honors: Only winner of three solo screenwriting Oscars, for "Marty," "The Hospital" and "Network"

"Paddy"?: During basic training, the Jewish Chayefsky tried to avoid KP by claiming he had to attend Mass. His officer said, "Sure you do, Paddy." The name stuck.

As writer Aaron Sorkin -- who has channeled Chayefsky in characters from his series "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" and "The Newsroom" -- put it to Itzkoff, "You wish Chayefsky could come back to life long enough to write 'The Internet.' "

Itzkoff spoke to CNN about Chayefsky's personality, what journalists thought of the film and its impact on pop culture. The following is an edited and condensed version of the interview.

CNN: What did you think of the film before doing the book?

Dave Itzkoff: I appreciated the film, (but) I've learned so much more about it over the last three years and have come to appreciate it in so many more ways. But also, that period of filmmaking history is especially fascinating to me. You still have a lot of tremendously talented people working within the Hollywood system to create these really subversive films, films that have strong messages and polarizing messages. To be able to tell a tale of a movie from that period, and a story that would touch on both the history of TV, the history of film and the present history of media, all of that was irresistible for me.

CNN: It's surprising that Chayefsky, coming off an Oscar for (1971's) "The Hospital," had nothing lined up, no clamor for his services. Was it because he was a difficult man?

Itzkoff: I don't think he had burnt all of his bridges. But Chayefsky did not work with an agent or a manager, he just had a lawyer at that point, so he didn't have the kind of mechanism of people who would set up your next five gigs so you have your next 10 years planned out.

Also, he was very particular about what he would take on, and was really only looking for situations where he could exercise an unprecedented degree of control. And once you stipulate that, you're really narrowing what's available to you.

CNN: "Network" is often called a Paddy Chayefsky film but Sidney Lumet seems to have put his stamp on it.

Itzkoff: Absolutely. He entered into this knowing he was going to be a collaborator, if not a subordinate, in a way a director often is not.

By all accounts, Lumet was an easygoing and hospitable guy and really did foster a spirit of collaboration on his movies. The dynamism of all the in-studio scenes -- the Howard Beale on-camera scene -- that's all Lumet. Some of the scenes are more static, more a function of the screenplay itself -- it's hard to be truly inventive when you're basically filming a person standing and speaking. But he still finds ways.

CNN: Chayefsky was also very funny and charming. How much was he driven by his anger?

Itzkoff: Among people he worked with, (he was) very congenial and very funny, liked to crack jokes. But there was that side that wanted to be in control of things and the side that was genuinely pessimistic about the fate of humanity and the direction the country was going. There were TV appearances he would do, just kind of draining the life out of conversation.

If you look across the breadth of writing he did, going all the way back to the TV plays like "Marty," you see this recurrence of characters who are very wound up and not given opportunities to express themselves, and they get this one moment to cut loose and it all explodes out of them. I think there's a lot of him in those kinds of people.

CNN: What were some of the surprises you found?

Itzkoff: I think the whole perception that the movie was written as an act of revenge, or it was a big salvo at television because it had somehow spurned him back in the day -- I think that's pretty much disproved. When you really look at the evolution of the screenplay it's clearly not the case. He didn't know what he was going to write. He certainly couldn't have gone into it with the design of writing the specific movie that comes out at the other end.

But it's also interesting for me to see the very polarized reaction that it elicited. Certainly the news industry itself completely disowned the film, and that's what necessitates his letters of apology to (Walter) Cronkite and John Chancellor. Even among the film critics who reviewed it, there were some who were proud supporters of it, and there were some who were fiercely negatively opposed to it. You look at some of the reviews and it's one thing to say you don't particularly find the movie entertaining, but the vitriol with which people were pushing against it I find surprising. It's as if they have to defend TV from Chayefsky.

CNN: In retrospect, it's surprising the journalists who protested the film didn't see what was coming down the pike -- that news could be a profit center and, critics have charged, another form of entertainment.

Itzkoff: To give the people of that era the benefit of the doubt, there was also a feeling that, to the extent they'd helped Chayefsky conduct the research for the film, I can understand if they felt he stabbed them in the back. But I think there's truth in what you're saying. They had this kind of faith (that) their industry would preserve its own dignity out of a sense of knowing it was the right thing to do. Those firewalls between news and entertainment would always exist because news would always be run by upstanding people. Chayefsky understood it was human nature to eventually do away with that.

CNN: If you look at the history of newspapers -- in the '20s the tabloids put an electric chair victim on the front page -- it seems natural.

Itzkoff: You don't even have to reach as far back. In the '70s in the local news markets, the ones who would emerge victorious were the ones who went tabloid -- who ran with more salacious segments and drifted away from hard national or international reporting. So it was very easy to extrapolate and figure, if it's happening at the local level, why shouldn't it happen at the network level?

CNN: Your last chapter deals with the impact of the movie and the people who love it. Colbert gets it. But how about Bill O'Reilly?

Itzkoff: His reading of the film as not only an indictment of news personalities but an indictment of the audience is very perceptive and I think very true. There is that element of commentary on the viewing public -- they are in some ways at fault for being led along so easily and giving into, or going along with, whatever the person on the box tells them to do. I thought O'Reilly brought that out well.

CNN: True. There's one point in the movie when Beale's asked to go on the air and rant and Max doesn't object. They're in the game, too.

Itzkoff: One thing I've come to appreciate is there is a kind of gradual corrupting that takes place over the course of the movie. In those very opening scenes, when Holden and Finch are drunkenly sitting about the bar, there's almost this gallows humor as they laugh about the terrible things TV could turn into, and little by little it starts to come true.

There is agency in the movie. These events don't just happen by accident. People want them to occur, people allow them to occur. There's definitely plenty of blame cast around in the world of the film. We can decide for ourselves if that blame should be shared by people in the viewing audience.

'Network': The angriest movie of all time

"Network" may be the angriest movie ever made. Writer Paddy Chayefsky's satire takes no prisoners, making dark fun of the news media, television, corporations, left-wing radicals -- and a population that swallows it all without question. In the almost four decades since its release in 1976, the movie has found its way into the DNA of popular culture, through the passionate rants of anchorman Howard Beale (Peter Finch), fans who have taken its message to heart -- and, sometimes, in echoes that aren't so outlandish anymore.

In his 1985 book "Amusing Ourselves to Death," the influential media critic Neil Postman (1931-2003) suggested that we were likely to be victims of a "Brave New World" existence in which we would be too pacified to care about challenging the status quo. Sounds a lot like what Howard Beale railed against -- and what "Network's" corporate titan Arthur Jensen (Ned Beatty) proposed.

Perhaps the greatest media circus of modern times started with O.J. Simpson's slow-speed car chase down a Los Angeles freeway after the murder of his wife. The ensuing trial may not have done much for the national politic, but it was a terrific distraction -- and great for ratings.

In 1999, talk-show host Phil Donahue, whose daytime program paved the way for many to follow, told CNN's Larry King that he wanted to put a live execution on air. He believed it would "provoke discussion," but given that people throughout history had gathered to watch hangings, lynchings and beheadings as entertainment, he may have found that "death of the week," as William Holden calls it in the beginning of "Network," was more a ratings winner.

"Network" essentially begins with Beale declaring he's going to commit suicide on national television. Others have done so. In 1974, a Tampa morning anchor named Christine Chubbuck shot herself during her show. In 2006, British professor Craig Ewart allowed a crew to film him as he underwent assisted suicide in Switzerland. The ensuing documentary, "Right to Die?", aired in the UK in 2008 and in the U.S. in 2010.

How low would TV networks go for ratings? In Spike Lee's 2000 film "Bamboozled," a black TV executive puts on a minstrel show in hopes of shutting up a boss -- only to watch it become a huge hit.

In "Network's" time, there were few "mad prophets of the airwaves" like Howard Beale. (Joe Pyne, a cranky California-based talk-show host, was probably the closest.) But the growth of cable brought with it a more personal, confrontational style. Former CNN and Fox News host Glenn Beck told The New York Times in 2009 that he identified with Beale. "I think that's the way people feel," Beck said. "That's the way I feel."

The 1987 film "RoboCop" featured a happy-talking pair of news anchors, Casey Wong and Jess Perkins, hosting a show called "Mediabreak" that never failed to put a positive spin on a world out of control. The 2014 version features Samuel L. Jackson as Pat Novak, who shouts down his opponents to further his own interests.

Stephen Colbert has taken the news network hosts' me-first, confrontational style and parodied it mercilessly. There are times, however, when the joke cuts a little too close to home.

"Network's" satire hasn't gone unnoticed by one of the great satires of our age, "The Simpsons." The show's Kent Brockman is a walking parody of every pompous news anchor in existence, and its MAD magazine outlook that nothing is sacred pops up in almost every episode.

Aaron Sorkin, the creator and writer of shows such as "The West Wing" and "The Newsroom," rarely misses a chance to echo a Howard Beale speech. He did it in "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," with Judd Hirsch as an angry producer, and "The Newsroom," with Jeff Daniels telling an audience why the United States isn't the greatest country in the world.

Maybe "The Mao Tse-Tung Hour" never made it to television, but nowadays we have "reality" shows, like "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo" and "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" -- for every interest. Are they forms of documentary -- or forms of exploitation? Discuss.

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• "Network" subject of new book about its making and impact


• 1976 film was about "Mad Prophet of the Airwaves," news, ratings, money


• Satire has proven tremendously influential, some has even come true

(CNN) -- Paddy Chayefsky heard voices.

They were the voices of angry Americans. They were the voices of proud newsmen. They were the voices of crass corporate executives, conniving revolutionaries, wounded wives and, above all, a "mad prophet of the airwaves."

He put them together and came up with "Network."

The 1976 film, starring Peter Finch as disintegrating news anchor Howard Beale, William Holden as veteran news exec Max Schumacher, Faye Dunaway as programmer Diana Christensen and Robert Duvall as network honcho Frank Hackett, was a scathing satire on news and television in a country that the mercurial Chayefsky saw in rapid decline.

And why not? As Beale ranted in the film's most famous speech, "Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth. Banks are going bust. Shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it."

He concluded by imploring his audience to yell some of the most famous words in movie history: "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take this anymore!"

In his new book, "Mad as Hell," author and New York Times reporter Dave Itzkoff chronicles the making of the Sidney Lumet-directed film -- which won Oscars for Finch, Dunaway, supporting actress Beatrice Straight and Chayefsky -- and how it proved eerily prescient in forecasting our modern age of infotainment, reality shows, corporate takeovers and the commodification of anger.

Who was Paddy Chayefsky?

Born: Sidney Aaron Chayefsky in Bronx, New York, 1923

Early career: Key writer during 1950s "Golden Age of Television," including scripts for "Marty" and "The Bachelor Party"

Movies: "Marty" (1955); "The Americanization of Emily" (1964): "The Hospital" (1971); "Network" (1976); "Altered States" (1980, as Sidney Aaron)

Honors: Only winner of three solo screenwriting Oscars, for "Marty," "The Hospital" and "Network"

"Paddy"?: During basic training, the Jewish Chayefsky tried to avoid KP by claiming he had to attend Mass. His officer said, "Sure you do, Paddy." The name stuck.

As writer Aaron Sorkin -- who has channeled Chayefsky in characters from his series "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" and "The Newsroom" -- put it to Itzkoff, "You wish Chayefsky could come back to life long enough to write 'The Internet.' "

Itzkoff spoke to CNN about Chayefsky's personality, what journalists thought of the film and its impact on pop culture. The following is an edited and condensed version of the interview.

CNN: What did you think of the film before doing the book?

Dave Itzkoff: I appreciated the film, (but) I've learned so much more about it over the last three years and have come to appreciate it in so many more ways. But also, that period of filmmaking history is especially fascinating to me. You still have a lot of tremendously talented people working within the Hollywood system to create these really subversive films, films that have strong messages and polarizing messages. To be able to tell a tale of a movie from that period, and a story that would touch on both the history of TV, the history of film and the present history of media, all of that was irresistible for me.

CNN: It's surprising that Chayefsky, coming off an Oscar for (1971's) "The Hospital," had nothing lined up, no clamor for his services. Was it because he was a difficult man?

Itzkoff: I don't think he had burnt all of his bridges. But Chayefsky did not work with an agent or a manager, he just had a lawyer at that point, so he didn't have the kind of mechanism of people who would set up your next five gigs so you have your next 10 years planned out.

Also, he was very particular about what he would take on, and was really only looking for situations where he could exercise an unprecedented degree of control. And once you stipulate that, you're really narrowing what's available to you.

CNN: "Network" is often called a Paddy Chayefsky film but Sidney Lumet seems to have put his stamp on it.

Itzkoff: Absolutely. He entered into this knowing he was going to be a collaborator, if not a subordinate, in a way a director often is not.

By all accounts, Lumet was an easygoing and hospitable guy and really did foster a spirit of collaboration on his movies. The dynamism of all the in-studio scenes -- the Howard Beale on-camera scene -- that's all Lumet. Some of the scenes are more static, more a function of the screenplay itself -- it's hard to be truly inventive when you're basically filming a person standing and speaking. But he still finds ways.

CNN: Chayefsky was also very funny and charming. How much was he driven by his anger?

Itzkoff: Among people he worked with, (he was) very congenial and very funny, liked to crack jokes. But there was that side that wanted to be in control of things and the side that was genuinely pessimistic about the fate of humanity and the direction the country was going. There were TV appearances he would do, just kind of draining the life out of conversation.

If you look across the breadth of writing he did, going all the way back to the TV plays like "Marty," you see this recurrence of characters who are very wound up and not given opportunities to express themselves, and they get this one moment to cut loose and it all explodes out of them. I think there's a lot of him in those kinds of people.

CNN: What were some of the surprises you found?

Itzkoff: I think the whole perception that the movie was written as an act of revenge, or it was a big salvo at television because it had somehow spurned him back in the day -- I think that's pretty much disproved. When you really look at the evolution of the screenplay it's clearly not the case. He didn't know what he was going to write. He certainly couldn't have gone into it with the design of writing the specific movie that comes out at the other end.

But it's also interesting for me to see the very polarized reaction that it elicited. Certainly the news industry itself completely disowned the film, and that's what necessitates his letters of apology to (Walter) Cronkite and John Chancellor. Even among the film critics who reviewed it, there were some who were proud supporters of it, and there were some who were fiercely negatively opposed to it. You look at some of the reviews and it's one thing to say you don't particularly find the movie entertaining, but the vitriol with which people were pushing against it I find surprising. It's as if they have to defend TV from Chayefsky.

CNN: In retrospect, it's surprising the journalists who protested the film didn't see what was coming down the pike -- that news could be a profit center and, critics have charged, another form of entertainment.

Itzkoff: To give the people of that era the benefit of the doubt, there was also a feeling that, to the extent they'd helped Chayefsky conduct the research for the film, I can understand if they felt he stabbed them in the back. But I think there's truth in what you're saying. They had this kind of faith (that) their industry would preserve its own dignity out of a sense of knowing it was the right thing to do. Those firewalls between news and entertainment would always exist because news would always be run by upstanding people. Chayefsky understood it was human nature to eventually do away with that.

CNN: If you look at the history of newspapers -- in the '20s the tabloids put an electric chair victim on the front page -- it seems natural.

Itzkoff: You don't even have to reach as far back. In the '70s in the local news markets, the ones who would emerge victorious were the ones who went tabloid -- who ran with more salacious segments and drifted away from hard national or international reporting. So it was very easy to extrapolate and figure, if it's happening at the local level, why shouldn't it happen at the network level?

CNN: Your last chapter deals with the impact of the movie and the people who love it. Colbert gets it. But how about Bill O'Reilly?

Itzkoff: His reading of the film as not only an indictment of news personalities but an indictment of the audience is very perceptive and I think very true. There is that element of commentary on the viewing public -- they are in some ways at fault for being led along so easily and giving into, or going along with, whatever the person on the box tells them to do. I thought O'Reilly brought that out well.

CNN: True. There's one point in the movie when Beale's asked to go on the air and rant and Max doesn't object. They're in the game, too.

Itzkoff: One thing I've come to appreciate is there is a kind of gradual corrupting that takes place over the course of the movie. In those very opening scenes, when Holden and Finch are drunkenly sitting about the bar, there's almost this gallows humor as they laugh about the terrible things TV could turn into, and little by little it starts to come true.

There is agency in the movie. These events don't just happen by accident. People want them to occur, people allow them to occur. There's definitely plenty of blame cast around in the world of the film. We can decide for ourselves if that blame should be shared by people in the viewing audience.