Television Debated by Panel

Cracking jokes about Army Fisher movies and the Fox television net work, seven panelists discussed the future of television in a televised forum at the Kennedy School of Government last night.

Jennifer Lawson, executive vice president for programming at PBS, told the audience of more than 400 that the nation needs a "new vision for television."

"Television can be used by us as a force for the social good," she said "Television can play a valuable role in democracy by making people more informed."

But other panelists were not as optimistic.

"I don't agree that we have the power to shape television as we wish, because it also shapes us," said Tom Wicker of The New York Times.

Wicker predicted that television, by constantly exposing the nation to its president, will lead to voter boredom and one-term presidencies.

Jeff Sagansky '74, president of CBS Entertainment Division, also said that the power to use television has significant limits because there are so few masters of the medium.

"There is no way that television can ever live up to the expectations that people put into it I don't think it ever will," he said.

Several of the panelists expressed cynicism with regard to the quality of current network programming.

Gary David Goldberg, producer of "Family Ties" and "Brooklyn Bridge," said that networks--"if let alone" -- would televise live executions.

"Except for the Fox network, which would put on naked live executions," he added, to audience laughter.

However, Russell Neuman, director of the Murrow Center at Tufts University, predicted a future for television very different from that of the other speakers.

"My fellow panelists have got it all wrong," he said. "The premise that television is advertising-supported and organized by networks will soon be history."

Television, he said, will become more of a two-way medium with narrower, targeted audiences as technology changes.

Scheduled speakers Mandy Grunwald, media advisor for the Clinton campaign, and former Yale President Benno Schmidt, president and CEO of the Edison Project, did not attend.