TeleVISIONS (Autumn 1976)

RESOURCES PRINT Spies in the Sky, Conference Reports, Policy in Australia, Sweden Our bibliographic read-out Satellite Spies—The Frightening Impact of a New Technology (Bobbs-Merrill) is the first book written on the dangers of the communications toys launched regularly for the last 20 years. The book is a chatty and easy-to-read “investigation” by Sandra Hochman (with Sybil Wong) that weaves an appealing tone of discovery with solid facts and interviews with the satellite high priests and technologists, as well as critics like Ted Conant, Andy Horowitz, and Bert Cowlan of the Public Interest Satellite Association (PISA), who wrote in TELEVISIONS (Vol. 4, no. 1) about the need for greater control of satellites. The subcommittee staff report, Cable Television: Promise vs. Regulatory Performance is available, at the cost of $3.00 per copy, from: The Community Access Television Workshop of Greater Hartford, _ 275 Windsor Street, Hartford, CT 06120. The complete transcripts of the cable television hearings before the House Communications Subcommittee will be available the first week in November. Contact the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, 2125 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515. For Librarians: Video and Cable Communications: Guidelines for Librarians, by Brigitte Kenny and Roberto Esteves, has been prepared by the American Library Association’s Ad Hoc Video/Cable Study Committee. It’s available from ISAD, ALA, 50 E. Huron St., Chicago, IL 60611. Another library resource: the National Information Center for Educational Media (NICEM) has new editions of nine nonprint media indexes, including videotapes, available in book or microfiche form. (NICEM, University of Southern California, University Park, LA, CA 90007.) A conference on “Public Interest Communications Law—Where Should We Be Going? How Should We Get There?’ resulted in a number of public interest lawyers agreeing on a major goal—new Iicense renewal legislation. The Ottinger bill “now in the House would totally revamp Section Ill of the Communications Act. Details of the sessions will be published in a summary paper written by Frank Lloyd of Citizens Communications Center for the sponsoring group, Aspen Institute Program on Communications and Society. Write for info: 1785 Massachusetts Ave., N.W., Washington, DC, 20036. (202) 462-2011. Members of the Committee on Film and Television Resources—better known as the Mohonk group, named so for the conference center where 30 filmmakers, archivists, educators and administrators met f#Peraae 2s 23 -e in Feb. 1973—tell TELEVISIONS that their final report is due in December. As reported last issue, the interim report has been issued. The focus was almost exclusively film, concentrating on different areas like distribution, preservation, education, production, etc. What impact the report will have on the film establishment remains to be seen. The Committee numbers among the heaviest names in the independent film world. The tone is blue-sky, calling for an organization that will do everything that isn’t currently done and is implicitly an indictment of the Hollywood-oriented American Film Institute. : Final copies available from: Mekas, 80 Wooster St., NYC 10012. Jonas The print-out of “Open Circuits’, a widely reported conference: be tor deo, ar art the and television at the Museum of Modern Art in 1974, has been assembled by Douglas Davis and Allison Simmons. The New Television: A Public/Private Art includes not only articles and materials from the conference, but also up-dates and evaluation, and a survey to date. (January 1977: MIT Press, 256 pp, $14.95). As the title indicates, the book attempts to explore the intersection of TV’s public spectacle with the private process of making video and the private experience of watching it in the home. From the intro: “Both art and television have been straining in recent decades against their respective pasts— art to find a larger, public medium in which to act, television to find a smaller, personalized role, akin to print rather than spectacle. It remains to be seen whether either side, by embracing the other, can find itself.’ (TELEVISIONS review next issue.) Telecom 2000 is the name of a major study of telecommunications developments in industrialized countries during the next 25 years. Issued by the Australian government, the report explores most of the major new technologies and their social effects, including satellites, fiber optics, facsimile, mobile radio, telex and data services, videophone, computers, micro miniaturization, etc. For a copy write: Telecom Australia, 199 William St., Melbourne, Victoria 3000, Australia. Swedish studies: A number of interesting reports on experiments with television in Sweden are available from the Commission. for Radio and Television in Education (TRU). Whither video?, Commercial Commodity or Common Property? is a controversial book by Margareta Ingelstam, of the TRU, which recommends, among other things, that the government should aoa ts eee ee Damming the information flow. A catalog of people, meetings, books, survival techniques, and directions on how to find what we left out. block commercial development of the videodisc. Kabelvision Kiruna tells of a CATV experiment in a neighborhood Programme for Sound and Pictures in Education is an overview report of the unit’s research and experiments. All are available from TRU, Stockholmsvagen 30, S-182 74 Stocksund, Stockholm, SWEDEN. An Ohio-wide conference on the use of media in patient and consumer health education brought together over 100 health professionals in Ohio. In addition to the viewing of materials and personal exchange, participants received a very useful packet of information, including _ bibliographies, program materials, article excerpts and papers. Copies of the resource director are available from the Corporation for Health Education in Appalachia Ohio, Inc., PO Drawer 825, Athens, Ohio 45701 (614) 593-5526. Cost: $2.50. The Impact of Foundation Support on Creativity in the Performing Arts, prepared under a research grant from the Management in the Arts Program of UCLA’s Graduate School of Management, is particularly interesting because it probes the subject from both foundation and recipient viewpoints ... sometimes providing information from both ends of the same grant. Some of _ the data developed | has implication for art — groups who seek foundation grants. The report may be ordered from GSM Publication Services, Graduate School of Management, UCLA, Los Angeles, Ca. 90024. The price is $1.50 per copy prepaid. New Media Media: VideoNews is a new $75/year factsheet on cable and pay-TV that merges Broadband Communications Report, Video Publisher and several other random publications. New _ publisher: Philips Publishing, 8401 Connecticut Ave, NW, Washington 20015. ... Videoscope, a much-hyped quarterly from Gordon & Breach, who distributed Radical Software in its waning hours, has gotten some new editorial blood from staff of Global Village, NY. Three issues are reportedly in the can—one is left-overs from RS, the second is on New York State, another on electronic journalism. None has yet been distributed. The summer issue of Jump/Cut, review of contemporary cinema, has a particularly interesting lead story on ‘‘Emile de Antonio and the New Documentary of the Seventies” that includes an analysis of his use of television. (Write: PO Box 865, Berkeley 94701). Communications Tomorrow is the World Future Society’s New (April, 1976 was Vol. 1 #1) newsletter about media. It’s heavy on technology, with quotes from futurists of all ilks. Editor is Wes Thomas, who formerly produced Synergy Access, (606 5th Ave., E. Northport, NY 11731). Telephone in Education Newsletter is a quarterly about the use of the telephone system as an educational tool. Cost: $30/ yr. Write: Lorne A. Parker, Instructional Communications Systems, University of Wisconsin/Extension, 975 Observatory Drive, Madison, WS 53706, for inaugural sub. .. . A new international journal, Telecommunications Policy will appear in December ($52 for four issues until Oct. 31. Thereafter: $78/ four issues). It will feature research on policy and technical developments. Editor: Larry Day of Bell/Canada. Write: IPC Business Press, 205 E. 42nd St, NY 10017 (212) 889-0700. ... Vidicon is the newsletter of the Alternate Media Center’s cable TV interns & friends. For a copy write: 422 S. Park, Madison WI 5Si15. More than 75 special interest periodicals that deal with film and video are now published on a regular basis. (This does not include the dozens of trade magazines and newsletters). For a_ listing of the periodicals, send a legal-sized, self-addressed stamped envelope to American Film Institute, Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C. 20566. The Action for Childrens Television Library in Newton, Mass., contains materials on all aspects of children and television. The collection includes books, unpublished manuscripts, research reports, newspaper clipping files, as well as files on children and TV in specific categories. For example advertising, violence and children’s programs that TV stations produce locally. Bibliographies and reading lists are available for a nominal charge. SOFTWARE The Videomaker = Review Tapes done, to come, sought, and described Visions series of original TV dramas, which premiered on PBS in October, has 21 segments in the can. With three more to complete, a dozen short of its original goal, the “Visions” unit will fold in February. One Reason: CPB, which promised ‘to help raise” over $5 million in the beginning of the project, contributed $2.2 million and didn’t try too hard for the rest. Critical reaction has been mixed thus far, dimming prospects of an 11th-hour save for the unit which was founded to bring innovative American drama to TV. Black American journalists, including videomakers Vernard Gray from CAFAM Il in Washington, D.C., and Bill Robinson from People’s Communication Network in NYC, have been invited by Ugandan premiere Idi Amin to visit the African nation and produce reports for the Afro-American audience. Gray and Robinson left in October taking two Sony cassette rigs, tape, and lots of batteries. Ed Emshwiller is working on anew tape at the TV Lab, WNET: Sir Faces. ... WGBH-TV’s New Television Workshop is producing a $100,000+ project with money from NEA, Rockefeller and others called Collisions. Under the artistic direction of Jane Wagner, co-writer and producer for Lily Tomlin, the project will feature the visions of a variety of artists, ‘including videomakers Peter Campus, Willie Wegman, Louis Falco, Ed Emshwiller, Ron Hays, Nam June Paik, Stan Vander _beek.