Here Is Television

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. The author of this book has helped to shape the beginnings of television, the newest of the instruments available to those in the future who seek to inform the minds of men, or to win their sym pathy and understanding. It takes imagination and daring to leave the security of a known medium, to explore, through trial and error, with tools which are often anachronisms as soon as used, a new medium which has a limited audience, no traditions, no certainties of technique. It was in part this same imagination which led the author to teach what was perhaps the first Univer sity class in Television Programming. Offered by the Washington Square Writing Center of New York University in the fall of 1940, this course has been conducted each semester since that time, with the exception of a brief period during the war, and this volume is an expansion of these lectures, discussions, and demonstrations. It is of special interest that this book grows out of teaching and will be widely purchased and used as a textbook. With tele vision admittedly in its infancy as an industry and as an art form, why, it may be asked, should we presume to teach the techniques of television programming? The answer is that we have a tradition of demanding that our best doctors, artists, and scientists shall teach us who seek to fol low in their steps. Happily, most creative people are genuinely interested in helping us to share whatever secrets of technique or knowledge they possess. Moreover, the wisest of them realize that teaching benefits both him who learns and him who teaches. The task of communicating what one knows or has done is in itself clarifying. We do not have knowledge in its fullest realization until we have attempted to express it, to communicate it to others. Thus it is fortunate that when we as students seek to benefit from what pioneers in any field have learned, knowledge itself is perfected in the very process of teaching.