When I was a homesick student in India, I used to head across town once a week to the US Consulate, to watch a clumsily edited montage of that week's top stories from ABC World News Tonight. Of course, I could have gotten all these stories by reading The Hindu or The Times of India, but that wasn't the point. It was just so soothing and reassuring to see and hear the familiar North American facial expressions and accents I'd been missing. And above all, silly though it sounds, it was comforting to have the familiar persona of Peter Jenkins presiding over the whole experience. Previously, I would have scoffed at the idea that a news anchor could have had that powerful a cultural presence.