Documenting the Heartland: Assessing the Value of Locally Produced Public Broadcasting Programming of the 1970s

The Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 created the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) in part because local stations and the federal government objected to the centralization of production by the New York-based National Educational Television (NET) that had resulted in programming often deemed controversial. The Nixon administration’s anathema to perceived liberal bias at NET led to attempts to stifle CPB'S funding of public affairs programming altogether or force CPB to send federal funds directly to local production entities. NET’s central place in the system was taken over by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), created to coordinate interconnection of the system and not to function as a national production center. While histories of public broadcasting have tended to discount the significance of 1970s local public television programming – deemed “tame, safe, even boring rather than visionary and challenging” by one critic – the American Archive of Public Broadcasting’s recent initiative to digitize and make accessible historical broadcasts now offers scholars the opportunity to examine 1970s local programs more closely. Some heartland filmmakers, inspired by well-known cinéma vérité-influenced documentarists and national magazine-style public affairs programs, produced critical examinations of local social and political institutions, often focusing on persons and communities in trouble. This paper presents a case study analyzing Iowa Educational Broadcasting Network 1970s documentaries that examine local institutions – prisons, homes for unwed mothers, treatment centers for troubled children, facilities for mentally handicapped adults, urban transportation systems, rural veterinarians, dying small farming towns, the Iowa caucuses – and reflect attitudes that may interest political, social, and cultural historians.