Domestic Values and National Security: Framing the Battle for Educational Frequencies in 1950-51

Abstract

The 1950-51 battle for educational channels produced 914 oral and written statements, achieved 11.7 percent of the spectrum, and ushered in a television system dedicated to formal, in-school instruction. The campaign for instructional channels for American schoolchildren was a lively and passionate discourse by educators who believed U.S. education would be markedly improved through the use of television technology. Many were convinced that their efforts were nonprofit television's last chance for spectrum space, and they joined in a successful effort to produce the electromagnetic framework that stands today as channels for public television. Even so, the strategic decision by the Joint Committee on Educational Television and National Association of Educational Broadcasters to promote a specialized, in-school use of noncommercial TV was a move that abandoned other constituencies and narrowly defined educational television as instructional. A public service became a teaching tool, and the cost was a public mission, a broad-based audience, and an enduring institutional identity.