It's startling to see how far ITVS has come under Jim's leadership. When Jim joined ITVS, public television station leadership was still deeply skeptical about a CPB-funded service to provide independent programming. ITVS has probably produced more important social issue documentaries than any television organization since WNET in the 1960s. ITVS has brought voices, topics and controversial themes to public broadcasting that would never have happened otherwise. This is part of what the original visionaries were talking about when they drafted the Carnegie Commission report and called for risk-taking, experimentation, the marketplace of ideas.
History is rewritten to reflect the needs of each era.
My bet is that it will be seen as a significant accomplishment for a community of artists and for a public endeavor. What will be more difficult to measure is that through much of it is Jim's hand. At ITVS, he never held a camera or set a light, but he made the system work. He believed fiercely that independent producers could change television into a force for good, and he defended the enterprise unswervingly. Gratitude is sometimes diluted with resentment.