It will launch a major study of television's use in the Nation's classrooms and their potential use throughout the world. The Corporation will assist stations and producers who aim for the best in broadcasting good music, in broadcasting exciting plays, and in broadcasting reports on the whole fascinating range of human activity. It will try to prove that what educates can also be exciting. It will get part of its support from our Government. But it will be carefully guarded from Government or from party control.
Television is still a young invention.
I hope that those who lead the Corporation will direct that power toward the great and not the trivial purposes. At its best, public television would help make our Nation a replica of the old Greek marketplace, where public affairs took place in view of all the citizens. I intend to search this Nation to find men that I can nominate, men and women of outstanding ability, to this board of directors. As a beginning, this morning I have called on Dr. Milton Eisenhower from the Johns Hopkins University and Dr. James Killian of MIT to serve as members of this board. Dr. Eisenhower, as you will remember, was chairman of the first citizens committee which sought allocation of airwaves for educational purposes.