Reply #13: there won't be, not to the same degree.

[Spider Jerusalem]

The media are more fractured now; there's cable television, and the Internet, and more consumer-driven choices in news/entertainment. Smaller and more self-selected audiences. The media was a lot more concentrated a generation, two generations, ago. No-one is going to be the next Walter Cronkite in terms of TV news. No-one is going to be the next Elvis, or Beatles, or Michael Jackson. The media structures that in part created those past icons? Largely supplanted by the rise of new forms of media. Radio? Album sales? Audience and market share declined thanks to pay-per-song music downloads and CDs. TV news? The big three networks were the only game in town, upon a time. That hasn't been the case for years now. How many people watched Walter Cronkite every night circa 1968? Many, many more than watch John Stewart NOW. That level of cultural penetration and relevance probably won't happen today or in the future.