It's a way of maximizing production crews and getting more mileage out of this expensive footage. All this money and effort is aimed at productions for classrooms sometimes overwhelmed by the nascent technology. Classes like Nancy Perry's in rural Eastern Kentucky won't have an Internet hookup for their computer until next year. Welch at PBS couldn't say whether more students watch the shows via satellite or by broadcast from a local PBS station, because carriage varies so much from field trip to field trip and school districts' needs vary around the country. Some states, like Georgia and Kentucky, have satellite dishes on virtually every school.
Some districts have their own cable channel for broadcasting educational programming.
The school has a satellite dish, but it was mishandled during recent renovation and wasn't working. He had contacted nearby George Mason University about retransmitting the program, which required that the school's engineers snake a cable from one building to another. Now, on the day of broadcast, while excited students pushed their desks aside and arranged their chairs auditorium style around a TV emblazoned with a test pattern, he was trying to figure out how students could phone in questions. He had borrowed a cordless phone from the office, but it could only be used by standing out in the hallway. Any child wanting to call in a question would miss seeing the program.