A new public affairs television series entitled FOCUS is being produced cooperatively by Resources for the Future, the Brookings Institution, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The first program, Focus on China, was produced by Carnegie and released in May. Brookings first show, Focus on National Health Insurance, was produced for release in June. RFF's initial program, Focus on Energy, will be released in July.
Nine more shows will follow in a year-long experiment to see whether the results of research on public affairs can be effectively and interestingly presented by these organizations to an audience far greater than that reached by books and other publications.
The planning for the series, production arrangements, and distribution are being handled cooperatively, but each organization assumes sole responsibility for the programs it produces.
The target audience for the first showings is the cable TV audience. The top 200 stations—all of whom are active in originating their own programs—were invited to show the series free of charge, and 115 responded to the invitation. The National Cable Television Association has endorsed the series. The cooperating stations have a potential audience of nearly 1.5 million homes. Selected public television broadcasting stations will also be invited to televise the series.
The discussions are also being abridged for radio broadcast.
Distribution of both television and radio programs is being arranged by Public Issues Network, another joint activity of the three organizations.
Participants in the first RFF show were Hans Landsberg, Director of the Energy and Materials Division, Laurence I. Moss, a member of the RFF Board of Directors, and Bruce Netschert, a former RFF staff member now with National Economic Research Associates. The moderator was Mike Waters, who has been the moderator for two highly popular programs on National Public Radio—All Things Considered and Options. Waters will also prepare the abridgements for radio.
The shows are being produced in the Carnegie Endowment's new Conference Center in Washington. The producer of the series is Len Biegel Associates. The coordinating committee for the series was David Biltchik of the Carnegie Endowment, Herbert C. Morton of RFF, and James Farrell of Brooking.
A version of this article appeared in print in the Summer 1976 issue of Resources magazine.
