History of Educational and Public Broadcasting in the United States

Slotten, Hugh R, Dunedin

Investigators

Abstract

This three-year award supports research and writing of a book and related articles analyzing alternative systems of broadcasting in the United States that developed in opposition to the dominant commercial model based on advertising and private industry support. Historians of technology have emphasized that the commercialization of broadcasting in the United States was not "inevitable" but depended on contingent circumstances, yet nearly all major studies of the broadcast industry and broadcast technology in the United States have analyzed the dominant commercial systems, obscuring the historical importance of alternative systems of broadcasting. Dr. Slotten intends to examine the historical development of the most important form of noncommercial broadcasting in the United States, those with a primary public service commitment to education. This educational tradition dates from the 1920s, when large-scale broadcasting first developed. The federal government decided that because the radio spectrum was a public resource, broadcasters should demonstrate that they served the public interest in order to retain a license. Partly because some of the first radio stations in the United States were developed by land-grant universities, a commitment to education became a central means of defining the public interest standard. But the idea that a "great technology" should be used for "great purposes"--including educating, informing, and uplifting citizens-has been an essential historical theme that has existed alongside and in opposition to dominant commercial developments throughout the entire history of broadcasting in the United States. Promoters of the educational role of broadcasting emphasized the ability of radio and television to reach a mass audience and the potential to provide even the weakest or poorest schools with the best teachers and a high-quality education. Dr. Slotten draws upon extensive archival research to analyze both educational broadcasting and the early development of "public broadcasting," a term developed by U.S. policymakers during the late 1960s who established the Corporation for Public Broadcasting as a way to support noncommercial forms of broadcasting. These policymakers sought to replace the traditional term "educational" in order to broaden political support, drawing upon arguments concerning cultural uplift and citizenship training through public affairs programming. But by examining the history of educational and "public" broadcasting from approximately 1920 to the early 1970s, the project analyzes the different-and often contested--meanings of education, especially in relation to programming aimed at entertaining, uplifting, and informing different groups in different regions of the country, both urban and rural. The resulting publications are intended to provide an historical perspective for debates about "high-tech" innovations and education. Contemporary visions of the internet as a commercial product serving a mass culture or as a public service/educational resource suggest that this is a central theme in the history of communications technology in the United States.