Library, U Team Up In TV Effort

Library, U team up in TV effort

FRIDAY MAY 2 1980

The Ann Arbor Public Library, in a joint effort with the University of Michigan, will begin a daily schedule of educational television programming on May 5 over Ann Arbor Cablevision Channel 8.

The two organizations also are studying the possibility of making video educational and informational programs available to the general public through libraries.

While broadcasting reaches a wide audience, it has no mechanism by which the viewer can stop the program or rerun it to take advantage of its instructional content. While selling the productions can be one answer, the cost tends to be prohibitive, say University officials.

“We’ve been looking for a way for people to take our programs home with them to study at their leisure as they would any text, and the public library just seems to be the logical distribution point” says James Beck, marketing director of Michigan Media, the University of Michigan media resources center.

“WITH THIS NEW concept, a viewer can watch Guy Palazzola, the artist, teaching water color technique on the cable channel, and then go to the library and take the program home to study,” said James Beck, marketing director of Michigan Media, the U-M media resources center.

“When this happens, the University will be a lot closer to fulfilling its goal of making broadest possible use of its video educational library, which now has 1,300 programs on tape,” he said.

The library will cablecast Monday through Friday at 11 a.m., 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. for a half hour. The same program will be carried in each time slot during the day, with a different program every day.

Monday will be horticulture day; Tuesday: art; Wednesday; music day; Thursday: literature day; and Friday: public affairs day. The opening line-up is: May 5, “House Botanist”; May 6, “Artist at Work”; May 7, “In Performance”; May 8, “Poets Talking”; May 9, “China After Mao.”