WASHINGTON – Sometimes to know where you are going it is useful to know where you have been.
As we examine the future of public service media in the US, a good starting point is the original intended mission of public broadcasting, which was formalized in the 1967 report of the Carnegie Commission on Educational Television. This report led to the start of public television as we now know it. Radio came later and was added by Congress.
The Commission grew out of a meeting of educational broadcasters – mostly classroom TV – convened by the U.S. Department of Education in December of 1964. The Commission was formed the next year, according to the Preface of the Commission’s report.
Its fifteen members included academic leaders from Harvard, MIT, Caltech and Illinois, corporate CEO’s (Polaroid, Reynolds Metals), a labor leader (United Auto Workers), a former governor, an author, a musician and two Texas media executives (remember, Lyndon Johnson was president).
The Commission heard from 225 people, visited 92 educational TV stations in 35 states, and studied 7 educational television services in other countries.
The Commission delivered its report in January of 1967, in the words of the preface, “addressed to the American people.” In its “Introductory Note: What Public Television Is,” the Commission’s definition of this new term, “Public Television,” is worth remembering:
“All television, commercial television included, provides news, entertainment, and instruction; all television teaches about places, people, animals, politics, crime, science. Yet the differences are clear. Commercial television seeks to capture the large audience; it relies mainly upon the desire to relax and to be entertained. Instructional television lies at the opposite end of the scale; it calls upon the instinct to work, build, learn, and improve, and asks the viewer to take on responsibilities in return for a later reward. Public Television, to which the Commission has devoted its major attention, includes all that is of human interest and importance which is not at the moment appropriate or available for support by advertising, and which is not arranged for formal instruction.”
This was often summarized as “serving the underserved.” Public television was explicitly created to serve low-income and minority audiences. But when re-reading the 1967 definition after all of these years, what may especially stand out are two exceptions:
1. Public television is not instructional television.
In other words, classroom television is not public television. Julia Child taught a generation how to change their kitchen habits, but it was hardly a classroom lecture. And “MIT Science Reporter,” also from WGBH in Boston, was basically a classroom lecture, but it was for a general audience, not for credit. For a blast from the past, watch “Computer For Apollo” – note the computer was built by hand by women (in the broadcast, “girls”). And was Steve Jobs watching “Computer Sketchpad” in 1964? See for yourself.
Little remembered now is that the commercial TV networks also had classroom programs: “Sunrise Semester” on CBS and “Continental Classroom” on NBC broadcast classroom lectures every weekday morning. (I especially remember getting up early to watch the science courses on NBC.) But those were not to be part of the new “public television.”
2. Public television is not for programs that could run on commercial TV.
Public television was for programming “which is not at the moment appropriate or available for support by advertising,” If the program could be commercially supported on ABC, CBS, or NBC, it should not run on public television.
But all three commercial networks back then had news reports, documentaries, plays, and concerts, supported by advertising. So what did the Carnegie Commission have in mind? It was clearly stated in the Commission’s recommendations, specifically in recommendation #7:
“Public Television should be free to experiment and should sponsor research centers where persons of high talent can engage in experimentation. The kind of experimentation once sponsored by the Ford Foundation TV-Radio Workshop is an example of what we are reaching for.”
One broadcast that they had in mind was “Omnibus,” a weekly program from the Ford Foundation Workshop that ran from 1952 to 1961 and which introduced Alistair Cooke and Leonard Bernstein to U.S. television audiences. Every Sunday, “Omnibus” featured performances, interviews and discussions about the arts, science, and the humanities.
But the key was to “be free to experiment.”
The very first experiment, the first public television series distributed live from coast to coast, only lasted two years. “PBL: The Public Broadcast Laboratory” was a weekly, live, three-hour Sunday night magazine series when it started on November 7, 1967. By the time it ended it was 90 minutes long and recorded. An attempt to combine the “Omnibus” sensibility with muckraking documentaries and live news coverage, “PBL’s” featured segments were produced and/or hosted by Glenn Gould, Gordon Parks, Walter Lippmann, Douglas Turner Ward and Amiri Baraka (then Leroi Jones). Executive Producer Av Westin conceded in a Time magazine interview that the series was uneven, but it certainly was different and bold – too bold for some stations. (Disclosure: I was on the staff – and even hosted a segment.)
After two seasons, “PBL” was canceled and replaced by “The Forsythe Saga” – and thus was set the pattern for public TV Sunday nights to the present day.
Perhaps the most successful of those early experiments was a research-driven program from a new production company, the Children’s Television Workshop – later renamed Sesame Workshop. “Sesame Street” was unlike anything on television. It immediately became both popular and essential viewing in homes with children, and 42 years later, it is still the cornerstone of the PBS children’s schedule.
As we approach the 44th anniversary of “PBL” this fall – the date is celebrated by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting as the birth of public broadcasting in the US. The mission and future of public broadcasting and public service media are under examination as never before, from inside “the system” and from viewers, funders, and policymakers. See, for example, the frank exchanges at the July 25th CCLP forum on public broadcasting.
The very definitions of public service and public broadcasting may be up for review, as they should be from time to time. The 1967 definitions may or may not apply. Today almost all Americans get their television by cable or satellite. This raises a question of whether public television should be considered as an alternative for over-the-air broadcasting or whether it should be an alternative in a universe of hundreds of cable and satellite program channels. If the mission of public television is still to avoid duplicating programs seen on commercial television, meaning it avoids anything that could find a home on cable television, that now excludes broad categories of programming including concerts and nature documentaries.
In addition, most Americans today have access to the Internet, which was a gleam in researchers’ eyes in 1967. Millions every day are now streaming online video – what used to be called television. Others, including a disproportionately higher percentage of minority Americans, access the Internet using smartphones, according to a new USC survey – the very viewers who in 1967 would have been called “the underserved.” How public service media – not just web sites of PBS, NPR and other broadcasters – can be created and supported is an open question.
Then there is the mission of experimentation. Over the air, the mission of experimentation has largely atrophied. The PBS prime time schedule is filled with programs that are decades old, so there is little room for innovation or for new programs of any kind. But online there is space for experimentation, in video and in multiple forms of interactive information and education.
If only due to these and other technological changes, the definition of public broadcasting and public service media should be reviewed. The opportunity is immense. Somewhere between the runaway success of “Sesame Street” and the bold experimentation at “PBL,” or in the visits to the “Science Reporter” labs and the visits to Julia Childs’ kitchen we may find a clue to a future vibrancy and relevance for public television and all of public media.