So intense was the industry's devotion to videotex and so rampant its paranoia that some other medium would usurp its place in the media constellation that the American Newspaper Publishers Association lobbied Congress in 1980 to prevent AT&T from launching its own "electronic yellow pages." Washington Post CEO Katharine Graham, then chair of the ANPA, and other publishers met with Senator Robert Packwood to discuss the legislation that would free AT&T to start its service.
As the Wall Street Journal would later report, Packwood said to the publishers, "What you're really worried about is an electronic Yellow Pages that will destroy your advertising base, isn't it?"
Graham's response: "You're damn right it is."
... By the early to mid-1990s, the publishers were pretty sure that proprietary online services were the next wave, but if you remember having used one, you know how badly they sucked.
