Before it was called Celebrated Weekend, our signature
column featuring a celebrity talking about a particular city was
known as Celebrated Places. With Mark Seal at the helm as
the celebs writer, it debuted on December 1, 1990, and featured
"Jackie Collins's Hollywood." The name was changed to
Celebrated Weekend in September 1996.
With our April 15, 1999, issue, we began consistently putting
celebrities on the cover as part of this feature.
STAFFING ISSUES
American Way's editorial staff was brought in-house in
1972, making it the first - and to this day, the only - airline
magazine to be produced within an airline. Led by Glen Walker, this
staff would lay the blueprint for the magazine you read today.
In 1973, Walker brought author Granville Hicks and chef James Beard
onboard as regular contributors. In 1974, he added Isaac Asimov to
the list.
Sam Greengard holds the record for being the writer who has been
with American Way the longest. He began writing for AW in
1985 and has stayed with us ever since. (In fact, you can read one
of his stories in this issue, on page 44.)
In 1986, American Way's production, advertising/sales,
finance, and art departments were all brought in-house, and an
American Airlines publishing company was formed. It was called AA
Magazine Publications.
In March 1996, AA Magazine Publications was renamed American
Airlines Inflight Media. In May 1997, it became American Airlines
Publishing, which it remains today.
The six employees who have worked at American Airlines Publishing
the longest have given American a combined total of 103 years of
service. They are Janice Dickerson (20 years), John Depew (20
years), Jona Cherry (18 years), Marilyn Calley (18 years), Eva
Wojnar (17 years), and David Moreno (16 years). They continue on a
daily basis to share their enormous wealth of knowledge with the
rest of us.
Entertaining the Masses
1-American Airlines’ earliest form of Inflight Entertainment (IFE) was a 1953 radio program called Music Till Dawn, which aired on stations along our transcontinental routes. Aircraft cockpits received the AM broadcasts and piped them into the cabins.
2-In the early 1960s, American officially entered the IFE arena when it began showing in-flight movies. American was the first airline to offer movies on domestic routes.
3-In 1967, American, in collaboration with Bell & Howell, introduced the Astrocolor film system — widely regarded as the most unusual IFE system ever devised. It consisted of a reel of 16 mm film that began at a station behind the last coach seat on the starboard side of the plane, continued through seven rearview projectors on that side, did a U-turn forward, and returned through seven more projectors on the port side to the take-up reel. Needless to say, it was a very short-lived system.
4-AA began showing weekly CBS News programs in-flight in 1982. Daily CNN programming was added in March 1990. The current CBS Eye on American (with news, sports, and entertainment segments) launched in 1998.