TV and the Undergraduate

The current fare offered the American televiewer testifies to the low opinion the ad man holds of the nation's mind. But this view is not held by educators, who unanimously feel that television offers an educational medium with seemingly limitless potentialities. No sponsors will buy "educational" TV; the networks must give it away, and in giving they lose valuable profits. Since commercial stations are unwilling to take the risks, the solution is non-commercial television with the avowed purpose of airing only material with the highest quality.

Saturday's announcement that work has started on the transmitting tower of WGBH-TV marks the beginning of educational TV for Boston. To be run by the Lowell Institute, the new station will be financed entirely by foundation grants and funds from the ten institutions that comprise the Institute's Co-operative Broadcasting Council. Among these ten at least two, Harvard and Boston University, can supply students to help run the station.

Boston University offers courses in television production at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. Harvard may give such training only extra-curricularly, but there are still many undergraduates with the maturity and ability needed in television production. Undergraduate participation will ensure the fulfillment of the two fold aim of an educational station: to provide a high standard of production excellence and to inject into the medium a continuous stream of young people who see the potentialities of television as an art form and a medium of intellectual communication.

Running a television station is far more complex than operating a radio station or producing films. For this reason, an undergraduate television organization would now be impractical. Few undergraduates possess the experience or the ability to handle TV's expensive and intricate problems without guidance. But there is virtually nothing, from pushing props to writing scripts, that they cannot do if supervised by competent professionals.

If an undergraduate television organization is now impossible, some means must be found to funnel available abilities to the station. At present there are three undergraduate organizations whose memberships contain most of the skills necessary for TV production: WHRB, the Dramatic Club, and Ivy films. But there are many other students in the College and at Radcliffe who, though not interested in any of these groups, would deserve a chance to get a start in television. And there must be a place for them in WGBH-TV.

What is needed is a clearing house, not a closed organization. Such a clearing house could be had in a committee formed by the presidents of each of these three groups together with several faculty members and the director of the station. This committee could decide in what specific ways undergraduate participation is practical and then accept applications from interested students, To help develop abilities, a program similar to that of the newly formed Actor's Laboratory might be established. Eventually, there may be enough people with experience to warrant a single undergraduate television organization, Until this time comes, and it will be soon, a system such as that suggested above will serve as an efficient means of giving the undergraduate the largest possible chance of breaking into a highly competitive field.