DAVID SARNOFF'S VISION OF TELEVISION--A LEGACY, A CHALLENGE

"What would General David Sarnoff, the Father of Television, think of his medium if he were alive to see it today?"

David Levy asked me that question, but I'm not sure that I really know the answer. I should, I guess, because he was my father, too. In fact, both NBC and I were conceived by the same man at about the same time.

It has been twenty-five years since my father passed away, and a great many changes have taken place in Television during that quarter of a century--in programming, distribution, and technology. He probably would have some difficulty recognizing the medium with all the mutations it has gone through in that time. I have no doubt that he would be appalled and disappointed to some degree with some of the programming; however, I am equally certain that he would be very proud and gratified to see that his legacy has, at least, in some measure fulfilled the promise that he had envisioned for it.

My father saw Television as much more than merely a means of providing entertainment. He saw it as a vehicle for spreading culture, enlightenment, education, and information. At the New York World's Fair in 1939, he launched Television as a new industry by stating:

"Now we add sight to sound. It is with a feeling of humbleness that I come to this moment of announcing the birth in this country of a new art so important in its implications that it is bound to affect all society. It is an art which shines like a torch in the troubled world. It is a creative force which we must learn to utilize for the benefit of all mankind. This miracle of engineering skill which one day will bring the world to the home also brings a new American industry to serve man's material welfare. Television will become an important factor in American economic life."

The printed word offers to those who can read a ready means of obtaining information through the sense of sight. Radio, through the sense of hearing, offers the advantage of immediacy and the opportunity for the stimulation of one's imagination. Television combines, sight, sound, immediacy, and color.

No other means of communication can equal Television's impact on the human mind or its ability to vault the barrier of illiteracy that still imprisons vast segments of the world's population. It cannot be stopped by guards at the borders. It can cross mountains and oceans and carry its messages of truth, of light, and of hope to the smallest hamlet in the darkest spot on the globe.

While the scientists and the military have harnessed nuclear energy, we have at our command a force of infinitely greater magnitude--the power to influence people's minds. Properly used, Television is our mightiest weapon in our constant endeavor to spread knowledge and understanding, to combat cultural and political isolation, and to promote the cause of freedom everywhere.

We live in a world in which open and closed societies exist side by side in varying degrees of mistrust. They differ, among other things, on what is accessible to the eyes, ears, and minds of their people. It is this difference that characterizes our nation as one whose people are free, and it is this characteristic of our society that we must preserve, that we must nourish, and that we must show in its best light to those who cannot yet enjoy it for themselves.

The American public has had an unmatched opportunity to become exposed to the character and thinking of the leading personalities of our time and to the events that are shaping our future. We are involved directly in the process of democracy; and, to an unprecedented degree, we have at our command the means to shape intelligent decisions and attitudes among the mass of conflicting social and political forces that makes ours a dynamic, democratic society.

It is this aspect of his legacy of which I believe David Sarnoff would be most proud. He has also left us with a tremendous challenge, however, for to use the awesome power of Television for its maximum benefit imposes upon us a very weighty responsibility. I think that the man who brought Toscanini to the American public would question whether we are fully living up to that responsibility today.

Neither my father nor I would ever suggest anything that would weaken our First Amendment, but it certainly is incumbent upon those of us who work in Television to use good judgment and a measure of restraint. Today we have a rapidly-growing menu of viewing opportunities. Cable television offers specific programming for relatively small, specialized audiences. Whatever one might think of some of that programming, the service does make it available for those who want to see it.

The Networks, on the other hand, still cater to the largest possible mass audience. They, therefore, should accept the responsibility of maintaining quality, of not lowering their standards, of being wary of the depiction of gratuitous violence and the excessive use of obscene language, of not sensationalizing the news, and of not pandering to the basest instincts of their audiences by exploiting personal tragedies.

The major mergers of the past decade, creating mega-monster corporations that have absorbed the Networks, have resulted in greatly distancing those who are ultimately accountable for the operations of those corporations from the direct management of the Networks. The bottom line is now more important than the product offered. This is a natural condition of our form of free economy, but it is something of a departure from the operations of the Networks of the earlier years of Television.

My father was obviously always concerned about the bottom line as well, but he was equally concerned about the image portrayed by the industry that he had created. As our world grows smaller, and as technological advances make Television even more accessible to nearly everyone, we must not lose sight of David Sarnoff's vision that, "It is a creative force which we must learn to utilize for the benefit of all mankind."

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