television and the public interest

The titular speech given on this day in 1961 by the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair Newton N. Minow (previously) to a convention of the trade and lobby group the National Association of Broadcasters, compared to the Golden Age of TV in the 1950s, contemporary programming of violence, cartoons, Westerns, commercials and game shows was assuredly a “vast wasteland.” Acknowledging that when television is good, nothing—not theatre nor any other forms of media—is can surpass it in terms of quality and potential to engage, Minow went on to advise his audience that “television and all who participate in it are jointly accountable to the American public for respect for the special needs of children, for community responsibility, for the advancement of education and culture, for the acceptability of the programme materials chosen, for decency and decorum in production—and for propriety in advertising. This responsibility cannot be discharged by any given group of programmes, but rather only through the highest standards of respect for the American home and applied to every moment of every programme presented. Programme materials should enlarge the horizons of the viewer, provide him with wholesome entertainment, afford helpful stimulation and remind him of the responsibilities which the citizen has towards his society.” Reforms brought about in reaction to the address led to the creation of US Public Television and National Public Radio.

europawoche

Celebrated today on the anniversary of the 1950 Schuman Declaration which proposed the pooling of French and Wester German coal and steel industries and the first European Community, Europe Day was introduced in 1985 by the EU predecessor organisation the European Communities. The Council of Europe marked its own Europe Day earlier in the week with the anniversary on the fifth marking the council’s founding in 1949, both observances commemorating pan-European identity and integration.

parahawk

Via Cynical-C, we learn of a new (to us) sporting activity that combines gliding with falconry (previously), developed in 2001 with a round-the-world trip starting in Nepal to soar with birds of prey who graciously share the airspace with human interlopers and guide them to thermals and updrafts that keep their flightless companions aloft.

a touch of honey

Lampooned first by Mystery Science Theater 3000 on this day back in 1998, the 1967 British horror vehicle directed by Freddie Francis, The Deadly Bees, is sort of a low-budget homage, snowclone of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds with similar tropes and devices and is based off the above titled detective novel by H. F. Heard. A pop singer (played by Suzanna Leigh) suffering from physical and mental exhaustion after a series of shows is sent off to an island cottage for rest and recuperation and finds herself in the midst of an apicultural arms race with two competing beekeepers claiming to have developed a colony of killer bees that they control variously by pheromones and taped recordings of a moth. Well, I’m off to become Lulu. 

 

hair like mine

This candid, spontaneous photograph—taken on this day in 2009 by White House official photographer Pete Souza has become an iconic image and represents a milestone in the civil rights struggle in the US.
The five-year-old Jacob Philadelphia was visiting President Obama in the Oval Office along with his family—his father having served as a member of the National Security Staff for the past two years and was departing for another assignment—and quietly asked the above question. In response, Obama bowed down and invited Jacob to touch it and see.

8x8

take-away: flatpack pasta designed to morph and fold into containers when cooked  

bogland: photographing the marshes and alluvial plains of Belarus 

baby’s breath: biodegradable face masks blossom into wildflowers  

private issue new age: a soothing 1984 ambient recording that’s a psychoacoustic catalyst designed for release of spiritual and emotional energies 

children’s television workshop: the creators behind Sesame Street’s Teeny Little Super Guy  

forced perspective: giant Bidens and tiny Carters were keeping us awake—an explanation of the confluence of factors via Miss Cellania’s Links 

tableau muet: visualising history and charting epochs with Antoni Jażwiński’s “Polish System” 

baibaojia: make your own thread book for safekeeping of sewing items, notions and other small treasures

a night at the roxbury

Released on this day in 1993 as a single from the artist’s debut The Album, the Eurodance number from Kölner musician and choreographer Haddaway (written and arranged by Dieter Lünstedt and Karin van Haaren whom were waiting for the right singer to take on their project) enjoyed respectable but in comparison with its legacy and iconic status decades later subdued success when it first came out. Though a one-hit wonder, it’s defining of a certain era and transports one there instantly.

and now for a word from our sponsors

Promoting MacLaren’s Imperial Cheese which was advertised nowhere else in US markets, the Kraft Television Theatre had its premiere on NBC stations on this day in 1947, broadcast live weekly from Studio 8-H at 30 Rockefeller Plaza—currently hosting Saturday Night Live, the drama anthology series ran for over a decade and offered hour-long stage plays, both adaptations and unique pieces. Confusingly, ABC launched its own Kraft Television Theatre in October 1953 to promote the new product Cheez Whiz which sponsors later dropped and consolidated under the original time and channel slot. Considered prestige television, it launched the careers of writers and actors including Jack Lemmon, Paul Newman, Leslie Nielsen, Joanne Woodward, Grace Kelly, Cloris Leachman and George C. Scott. The debut episode was Double Door from a play by Elizabeth McFadden about a protective sister entombing another woman in the family crypt to prevent her from marrying her brother. Because of the live nature of the show, very few performances were preserved but here is a short clip from June of 1947.