1. Willard D. Rowland, Jr., and Michael Tracey, "The Breakdown of Public Service Broadcasting," Intermedia 16, nos. 4-6 (autumn 1988).

2. "Such considerable identity between private and public interests" and "through the workings of enlightened, public-spirited, private broadcasting leadership" are quoted from Willard D. Rowland, "Public Service Broadcasting in the United States," in Avery, Public Service Broadcasting , p. 160.

3. Powell, Channels of Learning , and Blakely, To Serve the Public Interest , both provide a detailed account of this period of educational television's birth and development.

4. The quotations on the aims of the Foundation are from Ford Foundation, Ford Foundation Activities in Noncommercial Broadcasting, 1951-1976 , p. 2.

5. The aims of the Fund for Adult Education are cited in Blakely, To Serve the Public Interest , p. 84.

6. "More than any other person" quoted in Blakely, People's Instrument , in his dedication of his book to C. Scott Fletcher.

7. Omnibus references are cited in Ford Foundation, Ford Foundation Activities , p. 3, and in Blakely, To Serve the Public Interest , p. 84.

8. The constituent organizations of the Joint Committee on Educational Television (later the Joint Council on Educational Television) were the American Council on Education, the Association for Education by Radio, the Association of Land-Grant Colleges and Universities, the National Council of Chief State-School Officers, the National Association of Educational Broadcasters, the National Association of State Universities, and the National Education Association.

9. References to Hennock as the "mother protector" of educational television are from Richard B. Hull, "A Note on the History Behind ETV," in Educational Television: The Next Ten Years (Stanford, Calif.: The Institute for Communications Research, 1962), p. 340. Also quoted in Blakely, To Serve the Public Interest , p. 12.

10. The FCC specifications for educational television are found in the Sixth Report and Order , 17 Fed. Reg 3905, 3908; 41 FCC 148, 158, Apr. 14, 1952. See Frank J. Kahn, ed., Documents of American Broadcasting (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1984), p. 182.

11. Hennock argued that "educational TV stations, when established, will do more than furnish a uniquely valuable teaching aid for in-school and home use. They will supply a beneficial complement to commercial telecasting. Providing for greater diversity in TV programming, they will be particularly attractive to the many specialized and minority interests in the community, cultural as well as educational, which tend to be bypassed by commercial broadcasters thinking in terms of mass audiences. They will permit the entire viewing public an unaccustomed freedom of choice in programming. Educationally licensed and operated stations will, in addition, result in a substantial and beneficial diversification in the ownership and control of broadcast facilities. This would be closely in line with established Commission policy, which has sought to achieve such diversification through the exercise of its licensing authority. Finally, educational stations will provide the highest standards of public service. Introducing noncommercial objectives and activities, they will be a leavening agent raising the aim and operations of our entire broadcasting system" (see Powell, Channels of Learning , p. 24). A more detailed account of Commissioner Hennock's role in the fight for educational reservations can be found in both Blakely, To Serve the Public Interest , pp. 12-17, and Powell, Channels of Learning , pp. 21-27.

12. The parallel story of how commercial radio broadcasters successfully blocked the efforts of educators to establish educational radio stations in the twenties and thirties is told in a series of articles—see Eugene E. Leach, "Snookered 50 Years Ago," Current 2, no. 1 (Jan. 14, 1983) and McChesney, Telecommunications, Mass Media, and Democracy .

13. Anne W. Branscomb, "A Crisis of Identity: Reflections on the Future of Public Broadcasting," in Cater and Nyhan, Future of Public Broadcasting .

14. An extensive treatment of the BBC's public-service philosophy as it was articulated by its first director-general is provided in Briggs, History of Broadcasting .

15. Fletcher's design for independent stations is quoted from Blakely, To Serve the Public Interest , p. 86.

16. Fletcher refers to the story of educational television as the "urgency-haunted struggle" in his introduction to Powell, Channels of Learning , p. v.