"'Tongues Untied' was motivated by a singular imperative: to shatter America's brutalizing silence around matters of sexual and racial difference. Yet despite a concerted smear and censorship campaign, perhaps even because of it, this work achieved its aim."

The Independent Television Service and CPB signed a long-delayed contract that will pass $23 million of federal money to the St. Paul-based organization through December 1992. ITVS, mandated by Congress in 1988, will give grants to and promote independent PTV productions. John Schott, executive director of the group based in St. Paul, Minn., said the contract guarantees ITVS “its proper autonomy” and provides for CPB’s oversight responsibilities. ITVS plans to announce its first production grants in August. Schott has said the first shows will not be ready for air until next spring, summer or later.

At least 17 major stations have opted not to air “Tongues Untied.”

The Independent Television Service and CPB signed a long-delayed contract that will pass $23 million of federal money to the St. Paul-based organization through December 1992.

Walter H. Annenberg has returned to CPB with $60 million—and a revised educational purpose — a year and a half after pulling the same amount out of the Annenberg/CPB Project. CPB announced June 19 [1991] that the Annenberg Foundation, chaired by the billionaire retired publisher and philanthropist, has joined CPB in a project to help elementary- and secondary-level students learn math and science. May go nonbroadcast The project is likely to put more of its money into nonbroadcast technologies than the older college-level venture has. “If you take a careful look at that press release, he is not giving his money to public broadcasting,” says an adviser to the Annenberg Foundation.

[The Boston Consulting Group study for CPB] ... gave public broadcasters an unfamiliar profit/loss sketch of their major functions. Local program production, which the report calls PTV's largest single activity, takes 35 percent of its spending but brings in 16 percent of its revenue and accounts for 7 percent of its air time

A bold strategic study for public TV, commissioned by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, recommends that stations spend less on local program production and more on achieving high quality in national and instructional programs.If PTV fails to “invest fully in national programming,” it will see a “downward spiral” in program quality, audience and revenues, according to the report by Boston Consulting Group, a business strategy firm. The study, whose earlier drafts have been discussed for months in high-level meetings, was presented publicly for the first time at public TV’s Pacific Mountain Network and Central Educational Network annual meetings earlier this month.

Following up on 1988 legislation that they had lobbied for, independent producers and their advocates incorporated ITVS in 1969 [see Articles of Incorporation] and it began operations in 1991. ARTICLE I BOARD OF DIRECTORS 1. Function and Definitions. The affairs of the corporation shall be managed by the Board of Directors. The use of the word “director” or “directors” herein refers to a member or members of the Board of Directors, and the use of the phrase “full Board” herein refers to the total number of directors which the corporation would have if there were no vacancies on the Board of Directors.

After 17 years in blissful obscurity, the Loud family is about to be put back into the public television fish bowl. WNET-TV in New York will rebroadcast on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day An American Family, the 1973 cinema verite production that followed the lives of Bill and Pat Loud of Santa Barbara, Calif., and their five children: Michele, Delilah, Grant, Kevin and Lance. “I’m amused,” said Lance Loud, who now lives in Los Angeles. “It’s no big deal. We have nothing to sell or promote because of it,” he said, adding that he has not seen the 12-hour documentary since its original broadcast on public television.

The Independent TV Service, the organization established by Congress to distribute $6 million in production grants to independent television producers, has selected John Schott executive director. Schott who will leave his job as executive producer of Alive from Off-Center, produced by KTCA-TV in St. Paul-Minneapolis, Minn. Schott, who will be the first director of the fund that opened for business last October, said his duties will include overseeing the organization’s day-to-day operations, helping develop program direction and realizing “the mandate and philosophy” of the ITVS. The ITVS has a “specific mandate to produce TV programs independent of corporate desirability, independent of an insistence to be broad-based, large number-oriented,” Schott said.

The Independent Television Service, the organization established by Congress to distribute $6 million in production grants to independent television producers, has selected John Schott as executive director. Schott who will leave his job as executive producer of Alive from Off-Center, produced by KTCA-TV in St. Paul-Minneapolis, Minn. Schott, who will be the first director of the fund that opened for business last October, said his duties will include overseeing the organization’s day-to-day operations, helping develop program direction and realizing “the mandate and philosophy” of the ITVS. The ITVS has a “specific mandate to produce TV programs independent of corporate desirability, independent of an insistence to be broad-based, large number-oriented,” Schott said.

The Markle Foundation, then a major backer of public TV, proposed in 1990 that PBS develop the Voters’ Channel, a project planned to make more useful information available to voters. Here are excerpts from the 132-page feasibility study prepared for Markle by the independent production company Alvin H. Perlmutter Inc. Markle offered $5 million to help PBS undertake the project in time for the 1992 election, but the foundation and PBS could not reach agreement on plans. The project was dropped in June 1991. [Current coverage.] Preface | Summary of Recommendations | Introduction | Is It Feasible? Preface American government has become weaker in the age of television.

Lawrence Daressa, Laurence Hall and Lawrence Sapadin are the collective mind and spirit behind the Independent Television Service, designed this year to provide independent producers with new opportunities to air public TV documentaries. The three Larrys attribute their success in developing the ITVS — endowed by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting with $6 million ordered by Congress — to being prepared when congressional hearings about the state of public broadcasting came to a head in 1987. “Instead of simply complaining and decrying the degeneration of public television from its original public service orientation, we actually had a solution and an answer,” Daressa, 43, explained from his office in San Francisco, where he serves as co-director of California Newsreel.

The new Independent Television Service and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting have settled their differences over CPB’s financial support of the organization. Independent producers and CPB engaged in a running dispute over what the Public Telecommunications Act of 1988 requires CPB to pay for the operation of ITVS. The corporation’s “voluntary commitment to provide these funds to the service under its annual budget process reflects CPB’s commitment to the success of this service,” CPB President Donald Ledwig wrote Nov. 1 [1989] to Rep. Henry A. Waxman, D-Calif. The letter was made available by Waxman’s office. Waxman, a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees CPB, prodded the corporation to settle its differences with independent producers (Current, June 7, 1989).

Independent producers and officials of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting have established the new independent television service with another quarrel. The two parties have negotiated — often heatedly — for nearly a year over establishing the service, which will distribute to independent producers $6 million of CPB funds ordered by Congress last year in federal legislation. At the long-awaited first meeting of the ITVS board of directors Oct. 17 [1989] in Washington, board members listened politely to CPB President Donald Ledwig pledge support to the new service but sharply criticized him in interviews following the session. The corporation will provide “overhead expenses” for the ITVS, Ledwig said.