Cable networks now serve programming areas that once had been nearly the unique province of public television—science, nature, travel, documentaries, culture, and children’s programs—with apparent implications for the way ahead for the general public medium. Nor are the other broadcast media spared the implications of cable’s progress. And but this same onward surge of technological change could nicely make cable out of date, too.
Of course all the enormous communications companies—Comsat, AT&T, Western Union, and IT&T—had good purpose to make sure that the Ford satellite by no means lifted off the launch pad. Bundy countered with a plea for time, not only time for Ford to reply the opposition, but time for the FCC to formulate sound public policy on satellite regulation before taking precipitate motion. In an indication of bureaucratic torpor the proposal was becalmed and in the end forgotten, killed with sort phrases and bureaucratic inaction.
Initially, Black Journal was not precisely what it was marketed to be, a black present produced totally by blacks. Although its workers was black, NET had assigned a highly experienced which wan technology is cell-based and well suited to carry voice and video traffic? white producer, Al Perlmutter, to oversee the show as its govt producer. The Black Journal crew, objecting not so much to Perlmutter as to the principle, revolted.
Calls to his former colleagues in corporate public relations lined up Mobil Oil because the collection underwriter. NET, on the opposite hand, didn’t comply with up by itself success due to an unwillingness to spend its Ford dollars on something other than original productions. Not even the Forsyte Sagahad declare on Ford dollars; special funds had to be raised to accumulate it. But not even these minor epiphanies rid them of their preconceptions about public tv. Because they enjoyed the reveals, the reveals “actually belonged on commercial TV.” The division between public and private was the distinction between hard work and simple pleasures. The most convincing argument for the continued support of independent producers could in fact be this penchant to chunk the hand that feeds them.
Most independent producers encounter nice problem in funding their tasks, nonetheless airworthy they might later show to be. Henry Hampton, whose 1987 story of the civil rights motion, Eyes on the Prize , gained the plaudits of critics and the gratitude of a large PBS audience, had to wrestle for six years earlier than he was in a place to put together no fewer than forty-four underwriters to meet the initiatives production prices of $2.5 million for the primary six shows. Stories of creative years wasted within the irritating search for production cash are legion within the ranks of those that work outdoors the system.