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CORPORATION FOR PUBLIC BROADCASTING

A National Beginning

In 1966 there were 114 educational-television stations, up from 52 in 1961. But they remained struggling local stations with little money and almost no national, quality programming. In 1967 the tide began to turn with two events. The first was the start of the Public Broadcasting Laboratory (PBL), an experimental news and features broadcast funded by the Ford Foundation and broadcast on educational television for two hours on Sunday evenings. The second was the publication of Public Television: A Program for Action, a report by the Carnegie Commission on the future of educational television.

Commitment of Ford

While the programming produced by the PBL was widely derided as boring and without any real signifigance, the project underscored the commitment of the Ford Foundation to public broad-casting. From 1951 to 1977 the Ford Foundation donated more than $292 million to public radio and television, helping to support stations and to fund programming.

Public Broadcasting Act of 1967

President Lyndon B. Johnson used the Carnegie report as the basis for legislative proposals to create a national system of public broadcasting. The Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 became law in November 1967. The most important part of the legislation created the Corporation for Public Broad-casting (CPB). The purpose of the CPB was to funnel money from the federal government to educational television stations and to underwrite programming. The initial funding by Congress was $5 million.

John W

Macy. John W. Macy was named chief executive of the CPB in 1969. His first programming project was the Children's Television Workshop, which was formed to develop educational shows for children. The first product of the workshop was Sesame Street, which premiered on 10 November 1969 and quickly became a favorite of children and television critics.

Public Broadcasting System. The Public Broadcasting System (PBS) was created by CPB in 1969 to aid in connecting the educational-television stations. Along with the Ford Foundation, PBS helped create a network of program distribution; one of its goals was to help local stations create their own programs which could then be shared with other stations and broadcast nationally. PBS helped to raise the quality of programming seen on public television and to standardize what was shown across the country.

Slow Support

While widespread viewer support and a large audience would be slow in coming for public television, the passage of the Public Broadcasting Act was a watershed in establishing government support for quality television. While it had little direct effect on the overall quality of television, the CPB at least helped guarantee an outlet for programming not regarded as commercially viable.