IN this space we usually talk about ourselves. This week we're going to let someone else talk about us. Speaking is Harry Reasoner of the Columbia Broadcasting System, who frequently comments on TIME--sometimes with a rather sharp needle, often with insight. What we're printing here are excerpts from two of his recent broadcasts on the CBS program Dimension:

"It's been my experience, since beginning to read TIME when I was a freshman in college in 1939, that if I'm worried about something, sooner or later TIME will write up the subject and relieve my mind. Thank goodness, TIME and its perceptive editors have finally gotten around to the subject of the middleaged. TIME calls the middle-aged the Command Generation, which is a felicitous phrase and makes you feel a little bit better already, doesn't it? So often a tactful phrase can change your whole picture.

"Among the things that TIME takes up in its article on middle age, there's the fact that in the period there are frequently last grasps at youth. Middle-aged men in particular, TIME says, will sometimes see a couple of young lovers in the park or somewhere and feel an actual physical pang, or they divorce their wives of 20 years' standing and go leaping off into a new marriage with a secretary. But these are the exceptions. The average middle-ager sublimates, and instead of pinching his secretary, he buys a convertible or starts drinking more than he used to. Most of the middle-aged men in my set are too tired to drink that much. Anyhow, I guess that overall, TIME'S conclusion is that the thing to do with your middle age is to relax and enjoy it."

"MAGAZINES like TIME, for in-'"' stance, in summer seem to be 90% filled with advertisements by companies who build something for the space program. And since it's highly unlikely that the number of nose cones sold to individuals reading TIME and then writing in would ever justify the cost of a double-page ad in the magazine, the conclusion has to be that other elements enter into the decision to place the ad. This is what is called 'institutional advertising.'

"It is not as valid to deduce in formation about people's habits and desires from reading magazine advertisements as it is to deduce them from noting the big billboards over retail establishments in their home neighborhoods.

"But some conclusions are probably reasonable from a study of a magazine. For example, you have to assume that the people who advertise have some expectation based on previously known facts of selling their products, so they must make surveys as to whether or not this is a good bet among a given magazine's readership.

"On that basis, the most popular thing among TIME readers apparently is buying things for industrial plants or moving plants around. And the second most popular thing seems to be drinking. Two of the full-color ads are for liquor or mix. A close third in popularity is smoking.

"Two of the cover ads are for cigarettes, and those, of course, cost a premium. Then, too, readers of TIME apparently are always about to go somewhere. There are a lot of advertisements for airlines and hotels, and there's even one for a railroad, and railroads usually pay to keep their names out of places where potential passengers might see them and try to buy a ticket. There are also a lot of ads relating to the making and handling of money--mostly by banks that are only interested in getting pretty big accounts.

"So, if you've got a picture of a typical TIME reader, cigarette and drink in hand, planning where he can go next, you probably don't need to worry about him. He can afford it."

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