TV Center To Move Its Headquarters

TV Center To Move Its Headquarters

Main Office Will Be In New York City; Unit To Be Kept Here

The Educational Television and Radio Center will move its main headquarters to New York City in March, but present offices here will be maintained, president John F. White announced today.

The center is network headquarters for the country’s educational TV stations.

Offices which will be moved to New York are those of the president, the program department, development and public relations. Headquarters will be in the Coliseum Building near mid town Manhattan, White said.

Remaining in Ann Arbor will be the departments of business and legal affairs, distribution and research, under the general direction of vice-president and treasurer Kenneth L. Yourd.

Full Use Assured

Projected consolidation of all TV distribution activities here will assure full use of the center’s two year-old building at 2320 Washtenaw Ave., White said.

The center’s library of about 20,000 films will be moved here from the University of Illinois, where the audio-visual office is now serving as distributor of center programs to affiliated stations and provides storage space for films not in use.

The building here also will be used as a centrally located meeting place for leaders in the educational TV field.

Noting that the reorganization “has been under consideration for some time,” White said “The decision to move our headquarters to New York City is in recognition of the fact that the young educational TV movement must be based in the heart of national cultural and mass communications activity.

Near Lincoln Center

“Creation of the Lincoln Center for the Cultural arts makes this move even more significant,” he added. He pointed out that the Coliseum is located near the Lincoln Center, now under construction.

As headquarters for the education network, the center provides stations with about 15 programs a week. They are produced under contract by production units across the country.

The center was established here in 1953 by The Fund for Adult Education. Since then it has developed 4,000 programs and its network has grown from 2 to 36 stations. It is currently operating on a $6,000,000 grant from The Ford Foundation.

Consolidation of distribution activities will bring the staff here to about 20 persons, and staff for the New York office eventually will include about 25 persons.