NAEB Newsletter (October 1, 1960)

California department of social welfare, which had ordered the nursery school closed because of tech¬ nical violations. PERSONNEL ^ Gregory Heimer has become general manager of WJCT, Jacksonville, Florida. Jay Rayvid, formerly with WTHS, Miami, is the new production director. ^ Lewis A. Rhodes is the director of TV at Central Michigan University; he remains assistant director of the Central Michigan ETV Council. ► Blair McKenzie is production manager at Central Michigan’s TV production center. He was formerly with commercial WVEC-TV, Norfolk, Virginia. ► Two new staff members have joined the Arizona State University bureau of broadcasting preparatory to activation of an ETV station this fall. Phillip Rock, TV producer, was formerly with commercial KVAR, Phoenix. Jack Daniels, TV studio engineer, was formerly an engineer for WOSU-TV, Ohio State University. ^ Robert F. Schenkkan, radio-TV director at the University of Texas, served as a special consultant for the Ford Foundation to the Congress of the International Association of Universities this week in Mexico City. He discussed the use of videotape in teaching by TV. ► William Bender, Jr., head of Health Sciences Relations at the University of Michigan Medical Center, and former NAEB public relations committee chairman, recently won honorable mention in the MacEachern PR Awards sponsored by the Amer¬ ican Hospital Association. ► Don C. Smith has been appointed associate pro¬ fessor of telecommunications at the University of Southern California. He was formerly at the Uni¬ versity of Alabama, as associate professor of radio and TV. ► John M. Kittross has been promoted to assistant professor in the department of telecommunications at the University of Southern California. ► Laurence C. Blenheim, senior announcer at com¬ mercial WMGM, New York, has joined the Temple University radio and TV faculty as assistant pro¬ fessor. He will direct the university’s two radio stations and supervise the courses in announcing. PRESIDENT'S COLUMN —H. J. Skornia This is my last column as NAEB president. It will not be unduly sentimental. It will also not con¬ tain my “farewell” message. I prefer to deliver that in person at San Francisco. Events of the last year — in commercial broad¬ casting, foreign affairs, educational technology, and NAEB affairs — have come so rapidly that looking back makes one a bit giddy. In all these developments, 1 have increasingly come to think how fortunate it is that there has been an NAEB, however inadequate those of us who have been responsible for its administration may sometimes have felt in implementing its objectives on your behalf. The past year has been particularly replete with review and decision. Possible mergers with other groups were considered, and finally dismissed for now. There was much remembering of Disraeli’s famous words: “Centralization is the death blow of public freedom.” Possible terms for turning over the operation of the NAEB Radio Network to the NETRC were considered. At this writing, although this problem has now been submitted to the full institutional vot¬ ing membership (Actives and Associates) for de¬ cision — with discussion and voting scheduled for October 18 and 19, respectively, at our convention at San Francisco — it appears unlikely that such a transfer will be made at this time. Here, too, the factor of diversity of offering is a powerful one in influencing the feelings of your officers and board. After years of calling for attention, it is sur¬ prising and unexpected to many radio and TV “be¬ lievers” to have spotlights turned on the tools we have believed in and worked on in musty basements through lonely nights and in the face of all sorts of accusations about our being gadgeteers. Here, we read, is a new movement; you and I know that it is not really so new, after all, since many of us have been in it twenty years or more. Yet we must try to behave like gentlemen to those newcomers who feel that they have invented all that is now known, or who believe that all that is old is bad. As of now the membership of the NAEB is something over a thousand in all categories. Soon it will number 2,000, 3,000, 5,000, 10,000. What should these members expect to get from it? Is the NAEB a slot machine into which members pay their dues in the hope of hitting the jack pot? The answer, of course, is No. The NAEB is what members make it, by giving to it as well as receiving from it. Is it only a “technical assistance” organization, limiting itself to helping stations to get on the air, and hire and train staffs and grind out a given number of hours a day of something which will qualify for the educational label? I don’t think so. Are we to help people, with these instruments, to do the educational job of today and yesterday? Not in my opinion. For the mere presence of these tools — and the effects they have on our culture, whether OCTOBER 1960 3