Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 - Educational Television

Educational Television

Along with the progress made by the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, other areas such as Educational Television (ETV) made headway as well. The FCC had reserved almost 250 channel frequencies for educational stations in 1953, although seven years later only 44 such stations were in operation. However, by 1969 the number of stations had climbed to 175. Each week the National Education Television and Radio Center (renamed in 1963 to National Educational Television) aired a few hours of relatively inexpensive programs to educational stations across the country. These programs were produced by a plethora of stations across the nation, such as WGBH in Boston, WTTW in Chicago, and KQED in San Francisco. Unfortunately, with the growth of commercial radio and television, the more poorly funded educational programming was being largely ignored. The higher budgets of the commercial media were making it difficult for the educational programs to compete due to their smaller budgets. The networks airing educational programming began to favor the commercial entertainment programs because they lured more people, and thus more advertising dollars. Locally run, nonprofit television and radio tried to "fill in the gaps", but due to the technology gap created by budget constraints it was increasingly difficult to produce the high-tech programming that consumers were used to. In 1965, the increasing distance between commercial and educational programming led to the Carnegie Corporation of New York ordering its Commission on Education Television to conduct a study of ETV and, from that study, derive changes and recommendations for future action regarding ETV. The report created from the study was published about two years later and became a "catalyst and model" for the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967.

With the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, smaller television and radio broadcasters were able to be heard by a wider range of audiences, and new and developing broadcasters were encouraged to display their knowledge to the country. Before 1967, commercial radio and television was widely used by major networks in order to attract advertisers. Smaller networks were unable to make much impact due to their lack of budget. The Act provided a window for broadcasters to get their message across and in some cases straight to the point. Even people who could not afford premium channels were always provided with PBS as an additional network to the Big Three.

Many adults and children today would have grown up without some of the more well-known PBS shows, such as Sesame Street and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood without this act. Many other shows are informative to everyday needs or concerns. Local events and special offers were a bonus but were generally targeted at larger audiences so they were not always beneficial for the station.