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THE WEEK in 'WA.SHIN'GTON'
AS VIEWED BY OUR WASHINGTON NEWS BUREAU
December llj 196h
"Whatever else it is, educational tv is a part of television — a medlujii whose staggering iirpact on our society -we but dimly coirprehend. " So said. FCC chairman E. William Henry last week when he was guest speaker at a twoday Washington meeting of educational tv people here.
The immediate problem of the 280 delegates to the National Association of Educational Broadcasters (NAEB) conference was to organize long-range financing for ETT^ But the impact of all forms of television on America and, the need for something more in today's tv programing, were clearly the coequal concern of the FCC chairman.
Television's impact is, in fact, becoming everybody's primary concern. Not only in commercial and. education broadcast tv circles, but in government and industry, in politics and religion and. in the White House, speculation grows about tv's intimate and penetrating effect on American thinking and living.
The FCC chairman told the tv educational station managers and governing board members; "We know that more families own tv sets than own bathtubs. We know that children up to the age of 12 spend, as much time in front of those tv sets as they do in school. These statistics do not tell us exactly what the effect of the tv revolution will be. They force us to presume, however, that its importance for the quality and content of our daily lives will be overwhelming."
Advertisers and networks would bristle at Henry's description of their role in the "Tv Revolution." He quotes John Fischer in "Harpers" magazine, and tv writer Merle Miller, both pungent critics of the brains and money lavished on committee-created programing. Fischer calls it programing designed to "make the American people fat, dumb and happy."
The broadcast-advertiser partnership might be slightly mollified by chairman Henry's admission that not all cultural and educational programs are worth watching. Also, "advertiser dollars support significant amounts of competent, sometimes brilliant, news and public affairs programing. But the bedrock of truth in the criticisms (of commercial tv programing) must be considered by anyone who is concerned about the role of tv in the future of this country."
Henry looks now on educational tv as the white hope of that "better" type of programing he has been trying to coax broadcasters to accommodate ' on prime time on the VHF channels. Henry hopes that with the spread of allchannel sets, and broadening of ETV's scope and expertise, "knowledge and enlightenment, culture and beauty, stimulation and controversy will be avail
II able to everyone who cares for them, and not merely to an elite. . ." He urged the educational tv-ers to reach out beyond the halls of ivy —
}«c«inb«r 14, 1964
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