最新考研英语一新题型排序题

考研英语一新题型排序题

Passage 1

Directions: For question 1—5, choose the most suitable paragraphs from the list A—G and fill them into the numbered boxes to form a coherent text. Paragraphs A and D have been correctly placed.

[A] Subscription has proved by far the best way of paying for high quality television. Advertising veers up and down with the economic cycle, and can be skipped by using digital video recorders. And any outfit that depends on advertising is liable to worry more about offending advertisers than about pleasing viewers. V oluntary subscription is also preferable to the compulsory, universal variety that pays for the BBC and other European public broadcasters. A broadcaster supported by a tax on everyone must try to please everyone. And a government can starve public broadcasters of money, too—as the BBC is painfully learning.

[B] What began as an interesting experiment has become the standard way of supporting high quality programming. Most of the great television dramas that are watched in America and around the world appear first on pay TV channels. Having shown others how to make gangster dramas with “The Sopranos”, HBO is laying down the standard for fantasy with “Game of Thrones”. Other pay TV channels have

delved into 1960s advertis ing (“Mad Men”), drug dealing (“Breaking Bad”) and Renaissance court society (“The Borgias”). Pay TV firms outside America, like Britain s BSkyB, are beginning to pour money into original series. Talent is drifting to pay television, in part because there are fewer appealing roles in film. Meanwhile, broadcast networks have retreated into a safe zone of sitcoms, police procedurals and singing competitions.

[C] But pay television is now under threat, especially in America. Prices have been driven so high at a time of economic malaise that many people simply cannot afford it. Disruptive, deep pocketed firms like Amazon and Netflix lurk, whispering promises of internet delivered films and television shows for little or no money. Whether the lure of such alternatives or poverty is what is causing people to cancel their subscriptions is not clear. But the proportion of Americans who pay for TV is falling. Other countries may follow.

[D] Pay TV executives argue that people will always find ways of paying for their wares, perhaps by cutting back on cinema tickets or bottled water. That notion seems increasingly hopeful. Every month it appears more likely that the pay TV system will break down. The era of ever growing channel choice is coming to an end; cable and satellite distributors will begin to prune the least popular ones. They may push “best of basic” packages, offering the most desirable channels—and