An examination of the history of television would not be complete without examining the role the Public Broadcasting Station (PBS) had in the development of society for all members of American society. This project examines the creation of educational television on PBS starting in 1968 through 2005. It will examine the various eras of educational television and how the variety of shows, placed within their proper historical context, reflected the policy goals of politicians, cultural moods of society and the dedication to the instruction of children both at home and in the classroom.

Background

Educational television (ETV) also made important advances in the 1960s. While the FCC had reserved nearly 250 channel frequencies for educational stations in 1953, there were only 44 such stations in operation seven years later. By 1969, however, that number had climbed to 175. Each week, the National Educational Television and Radio Center (after 1963, National Educational Television [NET]) delivered a few hours of comparatively inexpensive programming on film and videotape to educational stations across the country.

 

This work was strengthened by Newton Minow, whom the President Kennedy appointed as the chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FFC), the regulatory agency of the U.S. government that oversees broadcasting. In a speech, he articulated the thoughts of many intellectuals about television. He praised the Golden Age anthology dramas (most of which had already left the air), the documentary series, and the presidential debates. He went so far as to claim that “when television is good…nothing is better.” He continued, however, to point out that when it is bad, “nothing is worse.” He then invited the station owners and employees to watch their own stations from sign-on to sign-off, and he assured them that what they would see would be a “a vast wasteland” of “game shows, violence, audience participation shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, Western bad men, Western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons,” all punctuated by an endless stream of commercials.

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This material was produced by a consortium of ETV stations, including WGBH in Boston, WTTW in Chicago, and KQED in San Francisco. In 1965 the Carnegie Foundation established its Commission on Education Television to conduct a study of ETV and make recommendations for future action. The report from the commission was published about two years later, and it became the catalyst and model for the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. The Public Broadcasting Act called for the creation of a Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). This body was prohibited from owning stations or producing programs and was to function as a mechanism through which federal funds were distributed to educational stations and program producers.

 

In 1969 the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) was formed to facilitate the interconnection of public TV stations and the efficient distribution of programming. Many of the most popular shows during the early years of PBS were British imports, including The Forsyte Saga (PBS, 1969–70), a 26-part adaptation of the John Galsworthy novels about a wealthy English family in the years 1879 through 1926, and Masterpiece Theatre (PBS, from 1971), an anthology of British programming from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and other producers. Perhaps the most significant and influential contribution to come from educational television in the 1960s, however, was the children’s program Sesame Street (PBS, from 1969).