Episode Two Transcript Act I: The City of the Future
High-tech
information-age businesses are booming in San Diego, attracting venture capital and creating good jobs for many well-educated workers. Join Hedrick Smith as he examines the economic engine powering the city -- and
discovers who is being left behind.Act II: The Jobs of the Past
When General Dynamics, San Diego’s largest employer, left
town in the early 90s, many secure good-paying jobs vanished. And even in this roaring economy, good jobs for the middle class are not being replaced, leaving many veteran workers struggling to make ends meet.
Act III: Working Harder, Not Getting Ahead
Look into San Diego’s middle-class families, and you see a story repeated throughout
America: Mom and Dad working harder than ever just to stay afloat, forced to choose between the job they need and the family life they feel their children deserve.Act IV: Going Global -- Going to Mexico
San Diego aggressively markets the benefits of free trade with Mexico, hoping to attract high-end management and technical jobs to the
city. But critics say this does nothing for the middle, who bore the brunt of the economic downturn five years ago.Act V: Manager at Sea
Gary Randhahn’s story is not unique. His sixty-thousand-dollar-a-year job disappeared in 1995, and the former U.S. Navy Commander, unable to find another management job, is working in a
hardware store. Act I: The City of the Future STANDUP:THE NEW ECONOMY HOLDS OUT THE PROMISE TO
AVERAGE AMERICANS THAT, AFTER A PAINFUL SHAKEOUT, WE CAN BUILD A BETTER LIFE AND A HIGHER LIVING STANDARD ON NEW HIGH-TECH, KNOWLEDGE-BASED INDUSTRIES. IN FACT, OVER THE PAST SIX YEARS, AMERICA HAS SCORED A STUNNING
ECONOMIC COMEBACK: FOURTEEN MILLION NEW JOBS, UNEMPLOYMENT AT A TWENTY-FIVE-YEAR LOW. BUT THERE’S A HITCH. DESPITE DYNAMIC GROWTH, THE INCOME OF THE AVERAGE AMERICAN HOUSEHOLD IS LOWER TODAY, IN REAL TERMS, THAN IT WAS
IN 1989. IN SHORT, THE GLAMOUR ECONOMY OF THE ’90S WORKS WONDERS FOR PEOPLE WITH THE KNOWLEDGE, POWER OR MONEY TO CREATE THEIR OWN TOMORROW. BUT IT’S TOUGH ON AVERAGE AMERICANS WHO COUNT ON HARD WORK AND LOYALTY TO EARN
THEM A SECURE TOMORROW. ONE CITY THAT HAS HITCHED ITS STAR TO THE DREAM -- AND THE TURBULENCE -- OF THE NEW ECONOMY IS SAN DIEGO. ONCE A NAVY TOWN AND A QUIET RETIREMENT PARADISE, SAN DIEGO NOW BOLDLY CALLS ITSELF
THE CITY OF THE FUTURE. IN MANY WAYS, SAN DIEGO’S STORY IS AMERICA’S STORY: HARD HIT IN THE EARLY ’90S, REBOUNDING TODAY AND BETTING ITS FUTURE ON THE PROMISE OF THE INFORMATION AGE. NARRATOR: AND THE CITY’S FUTURE
MAY WELL BEGIN RIGHT HERE -- IN THE LOST CITY OF ATLANTIS... GREG UHLER: We’re in - uh - our version of Atlantis - uh - in 1262 BC and what it might have been like. NARRATOR: THIS IS A COMPUTER VIDEO GAME DESIGNED AND PRODUCED AT A YOUNG COMPANY CALLED PRESTO STUDIOS. MICHEL KRIPALANI: And - um - it was really
exciting because Gundam did really, really well and won two awards. NARRATOR: PRESTO WAS FOUNDED BY A BUNCH OF COLLEGE BUDDIES, MOST OF THEM COMPUTER AND VIDEO ARTS MAJORS AT
THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA IN SAN DIEGO. KRIPALANI: We were a garage band multi-media company. That’s really what we were. We - we rented a big house. It was a four-bedroom
house - um - out in a local San Diego suburb, and we just piled all the computers in.UHLER: There was, you know, a phone call to Mom and Dad saying, “I’m not going to be earning any money for this year. This is my
rent payment. This is how much I eat, and I’m not going to do anything else. So will you let me borrow, you know, ten thousand dollars to live this year?” KRIPALANI: We weren’t married. No one had kids. No one had a
mortgage to pay for. It didn’t matter if we went broke. So we were willing to bet it all. NARRATOR: IN 1992, MICHEL KRIPALANI AND HIS FRIENDS TOOK A PROTOTYPE OF THEIR VIDEO GAME
TO A COMPUTER EXPO CALLED MACWORLD, AND SUDDENLY THEY WERE A HIT. FARSHID ALMASSIZADEH: I will never forget the day where we - uh - one year later, after we shipped the product,
and we repaid everybody their loans that they’d given us. So that was the - that was the most exciting part for me. That was when I said, “OK, we’d done it. We can move on from here.” NARRATOR: TODAY, PRESTO IS A TWO-MILLION-DOLLAR-A-YEAR COMPANY. MOST OF ITS FOUNDERS, VIDEO WHIZKIDS STILL IN THEIR LATE TWENTIES, DRIVE SPORTS CARS AND LIVE IN HOUSES WITH OCEAN VIEWS. KRIPALANI: You can see all the way out to La Jolla. NARRATOR: PRESTO IS PRECISELY THE KIND OF STARTUP COMPANY THAT SAN DIEGO IS BANKING ON TO BUILD ITS FUTURE. AS A
HOTHOUSE FOR ENTREPRENEURS, THE CITY HOPES THAT FROM THESE SMALL SEEDS THOUSANDS OF COMPANIES WILL FLOWER AND CREATE THE JOBS OF THE FUTURE.NARRATOR: THIS STRATEGY EMERGED AFTER THE ECONOMIC EARTHQUAKE THAT SHOOK
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA IN THE EARLY 1990’S. IT WAS SAN DIEGO’S WORST ECONOMIC SLUMP SINCE THE GREAT DEPRESSION. THE AEROSPACE INDUSTRY -- ANCHOR OF THE LOCAL ECONOMY -- WAS LEFT IN RUINS. BUSINESSES WERE ON THE BLOCK,
AND UNEMPLOYMENT SOARED. WITH THE CITY FLAT ON ITS BACK, THE HOT ISSUE FOR SUSAN GOLDING AND OTHER CANDIDATES FOR MAYOR IN 1992 WAS ECONOMIC RECOVERY. SUSAN GOLDING: All
candidates running for office ran on a platform of reviving the economy and getting people jobs because the unemployment rate was, I think, something like seven-point-four percent, the highest in California at the time,
one of the highest in the nation at the time. We’d lost - uh - depending on who estimates, sixty to a hundred thousand - thousand jobs. - uh - it was very, very grim, and businesses were leaving like crazy.
NARRATOR: GOLDING HAD AN AMBITIOUS PLAN... GOLDING: “I’d like to talk to you about the first great city of the Twenty-First Century.”
NARRATOR: SAN DIEGO WOULD CREATE WHAT GOLDING CALLED ‘THE CITY OF THE FUTURE’ BY NURTURING CLUSTERS OF HIGH-TECH COMPANIES IN SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT, BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH AND WIRELESS
COMMUNICATIONS. THESE WOULD BECOME THE NEW ENGINES OF ECONOMIC GROWTH INTO THE NEXT CENTURY.THE FUTURE HAS ARRIVED FOR THE CITY OF THE FUTURE. ITS HIGH TECH COMPANIES NOW SHIMMER IN THEIR GLASS BOXES ON THE HILLTOPS
OVERLOOKING THE CITY. AND SAN DIEGO’S CHAMPIONS CLAIM THEIR CITY IS THE NEXT SILICON VALLEY. NEIL WHITELEY-ROSS: What happened was we as a community got behind the high-tech
industries and said, “OK, this is our future. Let’s get working on it.” Silicon Valley has peaked and is starting to come down the other side of the mountain. San Diego is right now striving to reach that peak, and
we’re growing very rapidly. NARRATOR: LIKE AMERICA, SAN DIEGO HAS REBOUNDED, AND THE GOLD RUSH IS ON. BARBARA BRY: I think it is
significant that the stock market is over eight thousand, and big money is once again chasing good deals. NARRATOR: VENTURE CAPITALISTS ARE SWARMING SAN DIEGO, HUNTING FOR THAT
ONE HOT IDEA THAT WILL MAKE THEM RICH. Voice One: We’re looking for a million, a million and a half dollars to start.Voice Two: Our fund is here ’cause we think there is
tremendous opportunity in San Diego. Voice Three: The risk is huge. Voice Four: There are a large number of deals out there. NARRATOR: SEVEN SAN DIEGO COMPANIES RECENTLY MADE
IT ONTO INC. MAGAZINE’S LIST OF THE PRIVATE COMPANIES WITH THE FASTEST GROWING REVENUES IN AMERICA HELPING TO FEED FEVERISH SCHOOLS OF DEAL-MAKERS, LAWYERS, ACCOUNTANTS, CONSULTANTS.BUT THERE’S A RAIN CLOUD IN THE
SILVER LINING. EVEN WHILE THESE NEW FIRMS DOUBLE AND TRIPLE THEIR REVENUES, THEY FAIL TO REPLACE THE MASS OF GOOD MIDDLE-CLASS JOBS OF THE OLD MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES. JEREMY RIFKIN: There will be new jobs. There
will be new goods and services. There will be new opportunities. But there’ll never be enough jobs in the knowledge sector in any country to absorb the millions of young workers let go from the traditional blue- and
white-collar industrial work. NARRATOR: CRITICS ARGUE THAT, BY THEIR VERY NATURE, MOST INFORMATION AGE COMPANIES RELY ON A SMALL AND HIGHLY SPECIALIZED WORKFORCE. CONSIDER PRESTO STUDIOS. THEIR VIDEO GAMES ARE DREAMED
UP AND CREATED BY A SMALL TEAM OF CLEVER PROGRAMMERS AND ANIMATORS AND RECORDED ONTO WAIFER-THIN DISKS. KRIPALANI: There’s the one thing that you can’t lose focus on, and that is
that a small group of people with a very good idea can write - uh - a piece of software that can sell millions of copies. NARRATOR: SO PRESTO DOESN’T NEED A LARGE WORKFORCE.
KRIPALANI: I think that we’ll comfortably grow to maybe fifty people - possibly, on the upside, a hundred. NARRATOR: BESIDES, IT’S HARD
TO GENERATE JOB GROWTH AND CAREER STABILITY IN AN INDUSTRY LIKE COMPUTER SOFTWARE WHERE SURVIVAL ITSELF IS IN DOUBT. KRIPALANI: You know, the last two years have been a bloodbath
around Christmas. There was four thousand products introduced for Christmas of last year. And, if you’re not in the Top Ten, you’re not surviving. SMITH: You’ve been in business
six and a half years. In that period, do you have any idea how many software companies have died while you guys are going on? KRIPALANI: Oh God, just in the game industry?
Hundreds - literally hundreds. [Back to top] |
