Radio age research, manufacturing, communications, broadcasting, television (1941)

TV Teaching Gets A Helping Hand J-HE first live programming ever produced expressly for educational television stations on a national basis will be provided by the National Broadcasting Company beginning in March. The network will furnish specialized educational programs to all of the nation's non-commercial educa- tional stations. The programs will be produced in the NBC studios and furnished live to the educational sta- tions over network lines. The programming service will be provided at no charge to the stations. NBC has committed more than $300,000 for programs, production facilities and per- sonnel in connection with the project. The Educational Television and Radio Center at Ann Arbor, Mich., which has received funds from the Ford Foundation, is supplying the local loops to connect the educational stations with the NBC network lines and is consulting closely with NBC on the design of the programs. The plan was announced December 13 by Robert W. Sarnoff, President of NBC, at the network's 30th Anniversary Convention in Miami Beach, Florida. In other highlights of his convention address, Mr. Sarnoff hailed color television as the "booster charge for our fourth decade," drew a hopeful picture of future net- work radio operations, and warned that television as a communications service will decline if the current flood of feature and syndicated film programs leads to dis- placement of network programs and starts a trend that results in curtailing networks' access to the air. On NBC's educational TV plans, Mr. Sarnoff said: "These programs will be telecast during an after- noon time period which does not conflict with our regular schedule. They will also be kinescoped for repeat broadcast or subsequent classroom use, thus cre- ating an important and enduring educational television library." Conducted By Experts The programs will consist of three half-hour pres- entations each week, with instruction in mathematics, the humanities and government. The project will ex- tend through twenty-six weeks in 1957, beginning in March for thirteen weeks, and resuming in October for another thirteen-week period. The three program series will be conducted by experts in the fields. James R. Newman, author and editor of "The World of Mathe- matics," already has agreed to supervise the mathematics course. Twenty-two non-commercial educational stations are now on the air, and it is possible that this number may be increased to twenty-six by March. The stations fall into two broad classifications — the community-type stations and those run by a single educational institu- tion. In the first group, the general direction is pro- vided by a board representing the various educational and cultural interests of the community. The Pittsburgh and St. Louis stations are of this kind. The second type of educational station is exemplified by those managed and directed by the University of Illinois, Ohio State University and Michigan State University. Alabama has a state-wide network administered by a state com- mission, with production centers at the university, Alabama Polytechnic and the Birmingham area public schools. North Carolina has a single station with pro- grams fed in from several institutions. Twenty-five Hours A Week The educational TV stations operate an average of more than twenty-five hours weekly, with some of them broadcasting as much as fifty hours a week. Broadly speaking, their programs are of two kinds: those planned for in-school use, and those designed for general educa- tion of a less formal nature. The educational stations have a potential audience NBC President Robert W. Sarnoff speaking at Miami Beach where he announced the new educational TV plan. 10 RADIO AGE