TeleVISIONS (January/February 1975)

u~ Tele VISIONS/page 2 by ear Friends, I've just finished reading Vol. 2, #2 of CVR -and it’s really fantastic. I wish I had known about it sooner. I’ve been working in community TV/public access here in San Diego for about 2 years -and realized very early how important a national newspaper/letter is to us all. It’s extremely hard to keep up with all that is happening in the field unless you can scan a myriad of different publications -finally it’s all available in one I’ve enclosed a check for $20.00 -$10 for a subscription to Televisions and $10 for whatever you need. I wish it could be more, but my own funds are somewhat strapped right now. Maybe I can do more in the future. As 1c what's happening out here -the San Diego Community Video Center was incorporated last July; we’ve received state tax exemption, and expect IRS clearance any time! We've been working closely with Mission Cable TV (the country’s largest) and expect to have a substantial programming effort going by February Ist. We have applied for an AMC internship and if we get it our efforts should show up Feed back is a vital component of any true communications process. TeleVISIONS Magazine will publish as many reader's leters and reports as possible in each issue. We do reserve the right to cut for size, so try to keep letters to 200 words for publication. Write: Editor, TeleVISIONS Magazine, P.O. Box 21068, Washington, D.C. 20009. as more programming. To date we have been hampered by lack of meney and equipment, but we are lucky in that we have alot of high powered people volunteering alot of time. We’ve managed to stir up alot of interest for public access (in fact, more than we've been able to handle at times) so given the necessary equipment and full time personnel we should have no trouble keeping the channel “‘lit.” We hope to cooperate with the L. A. Public Access Project in putting together a video/public access conference sometime this spring. The L.A. Project has sponsored several already and we hope that some of our own contacts and expertise can be put to use by them. I really think that we should all think seriously about putting together some sort of national community TV public access conference, so that we could all get together and share experiences and knowledge. It amazes me the number of people working in the field that never come in contact with others like themselves. I’m sure one person’s experience can go far in helping another solve the inevitable problems that arise in the work we do. Anyway, i’m really pleased that you folks are putting out Televisions; it’s something we all need to keep us moving ahead. Peter Randolph 4926 W. Mountain View Dr. San Diego, Cal. 92116 Treating the whole person Dear Ray, Thank you for your good review of “An Introduction to Telemedicine’. The report has seemed to fill a need for people who are interested in interactive television’s potentials in the medical field and I’m grateful to have been enabled by the Rockefeller Foundation to write it. Your closing comment about the lack of emphasis on keeping people healthy is certainly true of telemedicine in the main. I think, though, that most telemedicine practitioners are acutely aware of this lack and are beginning to try to do something about it—given that they perceive their first mandate is to tackle a heavy backlog of previously untreated and/or undiagnosed illnesses. Mass General, for example, has started to do large-scale hearing tests of school children who live out near their telemedicine link at Logan Airport and has given courses via [ATV to school teachers to help them identify kids with learning disabilities early on. At the big INTERACT system in New Hampshire and Vermont, there’s a major program of speech therapy for young children; this system trains nurses in preventive medicine techniques. The pediatricians, orthopedists, and child psychiatrists who see children via the Mount Sinai-Wagner Houses link take every opportunity they can to look for incipient problems and to teach mothers and nurses at the clinic not only how to watch for signs and symptoms but also how to keep the kids healthy. I didn’t want to take polemical positions with regard to what I observed in telemedicine because | felt they would put off the highly-placed skeptics who most need to be persuaded to take an unbiased look at the new medium. But my impression (and I do think it must have leaked into the straight descriptions) is that the professionals who are using telemedicine tend overwhelmingly to be of the new breed that believes very strongly in the importance of treating whole people and in prevention rather than crisis intervention. As I indicated above, however, the primary reason for telemedicine is to extend scarce centralized medical resources to places and people who have been medically underserved for a long time. There’s an awful lot of untreated disease to be caught up with, as well as the need to train out-of-touch professionals somewhere near a responsible standard of practice. I like your paper and am chagrined | haven’t been made sufficiently aware of it before. Enclosed is my check for the next ten issues. (Do I still get Vol. 1, No.1?) Ben Park Director of Communications Research Alternate Media Center JVC dealer speaks out Dear Gerry: I must admit that I was immensely impressed with your journalistic professionalism you demonstrated in your article TVTV which appeared in the Winter issue of your newspaper... The experience of many profesional people; both technical and non-technical; with the new JVC GC4800U/PV4800U does not bear out the one bad experience that you described in the article. One bad experience does not give journalistic privilege to damn the whole thing. It might just have been that you had a defective unit, or that the time base corrector you used was not designed to work with the JVC color portable system. There has been much new circuitry design in time-base correctors within the past year. | have demonstrated this equipment for over six months to both soft-ware people and professional broadcast engineers. The response has always been highly favorable... Your organization observed such a demonstration by me and was vociferous with its praise of the equipment after the demonstration. To cite you one recent successful use of the JVC GC4800U/PV4800U color porta-ble television system I refer you to the recent unfortunate crash of a TWA aircraft at Dulles airport area. WMAL rushed Milt Wishard up to the scene. He was unable to get his car closer than one mile from the crash site. He took his JVC GC4800U/PV4800U and hoofed it to the site. This was an easy task with this compact and light weight equipment. The conditions he found on the site were far from conducive for the production of color television pictures with expensive plumbicons, let alone low cost vidicon components. The crash site obviously did not have any convenient AC power and was covered with dense fog, overcast skies, and tall tree limbs obscuring the light... continued on next page