Mr. BROWN. Thank you very much, Dr. Hammond. If I may, I would like to go on to the other members of the panel and have them each present their statements before we go into questions. [The biographical sketch of Mr. Rhodes follows:] MICK RHODES 177 Lakeview Ave., Cambridge, Mass. EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND University College of North Wales, Bangor. B.S. Honors Zoology with Applied Zoology, 1960. Awarded Sir William Roberts Scholarship to study for second degree. Then research for Ph.D. working on population studies of blowflies. Thesis completed but never submitted. PROFESSIONAL BACKGROUND 1964-Joined BBC. Talks Producer for Science Unit of Talks and Current Affairs Dept. Radio. Produced "Science Survey", "Who Knows?", and "Science Review", and many individual programs for the Third Programme. 1967-Started a new weekly science magazine for Radio 4 called "New Worlds". 1968-Attached as an Associate Producer to Science and Features Department, Television. Worked on Tomorrow's World. Started with HORIZON, making 50-minute film documentaries. Co-directed "A Disease of Our Time" on heart disease and "A Much Wanted Child". 1971-Appointed as Producer. Films include: "The Wood", "Rail Crash", "Alaskan Pipe Dream", "The Making of A Natural History Film", "How Much Do You Smell?", "Rheumatism", "I'm Dependent, You're Addicted". 1972-Appointed Editor of the BBC's Natural History Unit at Bristol. The Unit has a staff of about 45 people and makes about 100 television programs each year. The Editor has overall editorial responsibility for the programs, but delegates much of it to the Executive Producers. Also responsible for the administration, organization, and development of the Unit. Total program budget exceeds £1 million. 1978-Appointed head of newly formed Science Unit at WGBH-TV, Boston. Responsibilities include developing other science programming alongside NOVA for broadcast over the national Public Broadcast System. AWARDS 1968-Prix Italia for "Mr. Blake". 1973-Prix Italia for "The Making of a Natural History Film". 1973-Emmy for "The Making of a Natural History Film". British Association of Film and Television Arts, Best Factual Program of the Year. STATEMENT OF MICK RHODES, STATION WGBH, BOSTON, MASS. Mr. RHODES. I will be as brief as I can. Much that Allen has said I would have said. So let me pick out the differences between my testimony and his. My experience is rather different in that I can compare, specifically, science television and radio in this country with scientific television and radio in Britain, where the majority of my experience lies. If I may, to save time, I will skip over radio and draw your attention to the quantity of scientific television in Britain and the quantity of scientific television here. I hasten to add that these figures are little more than guesstimates, and please do not put too much faith in them. To try and bring myself to comparable figures, let me concentrate on the quantity of sciencebased television for general audiences transmitted during the evening rather than specifically educational programs at other times of the day, or school programs. First, in the United Kingdom quite a number of science-based programs reach audiences of 20 percent of the population frequently. That is not unusual. And they occasionally reach 15 million, which is 30 percent of the population. Those would be very big figures for a science-based program here. The second thing is that if you add up the three channels available to most British television viewers, you come to a figure of something like 170 hours per year for the two BBC channels-this is for generalaudience science programs-plus another 25 or 30 hours from the commercial channel, giving you approximately 200 hours of evening science programs during the year. Now, making a guess-and I admit it is an enormous guess-at the number of evening science programs available through the television here, I come to something like half that, something like 107 hours; I know these figures are inaccurate, but they are not that inaccurate. There is, I think, a very clear case to be made that there is much less general science television available to the general audience here than in the United Kingdom. Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing, I leave you to decide, but I think it is almost certainly a fact. Now, that is my first point, and I really only want to make two points. My second point is that there seemed to be quite a number of indications that there is a larger appetite for science TV than we are at the moment fulfilling. As a general rule, in surveys done within PBS of those programs of which more are needed, asked for, wanted by the audience, they come up with science and wildlife at the front of a list of programs people want more of. "Nova" is consistently one of the higher, if not highest, regular audience programs within PBS. Now, the audiences are tiny compared with the commercial channels, but it is nevertheless, as far as PBS goes, a very great audience. They are tough to watch sometimes, but, nevertheless, they go up to 5 million people. And the "National Geographics" go out to larger audiences than that. Coming specifically to the area of wildlife programs, last year I did quite a bit of research work on appetites for wildlife information. Between 1970 and 1974, when there as an enormous surge in the number of wildlife programs, there was also a surge in audience: the audience doubled. Since then, it has actually become smaller while all other indicators indicate that interest in wildlife and biology continues to rise. There have been increases in sale of birdseed, binoculars, and all sorts of things. It seems to me that the interest is there. Now, I have one more small piece of information. At a recent PBS meeting of all of the 283 station managers, I was under very heavy pressure to try and run "Nova" 52 weeks a year. I do not know how to run "Nova" 52 weeks a year. We don't have the programs or the funds to start with. However, the station managers would very much like that to happen. So, in summary, general-audience science TV here is probably half that available in Britain. And it seems to me that there is quite considerable evidence that the general public would like it not to be that way. The kind of costs that we are talking about, the funds turned over to us by the National Science Foundation-and they are one of our funders is something like a third of a penny per program per viewer. The total cost per viewer is something like 4 cents. It is not, when you express it in those terms, a great deal of money. I realize that when you put it all together it is a great deal of money, and I realize there are enormous claims on the money that is available. However, I think that kind of investment is important. I think it is very important to the production of programs on science. Thank you. [The prepared statement of Mr. Rhodes follows:] Statement to the Committee on Science and Technology, Sub committee on Science, Research Mick Rhodes My experience covers nearly fifteen years of science broadcasting mostly with the BBC in the United Kingdom but for the last 14 years with WGBH-TV, the PBS station in Boston. My current position Executive Producer of NOVA. is To help you consider the matter before you I believe I can be most aid by comparing what I know of science broadcasting in the United Kingdom with the United States. RADIO Radio in the United Kingdom is far less diversified than in the United States: that is there are far fewer stations available to an individual listener. In general, there are probably only six in any one area: Radio 1, 2, 3, and 4 from the BBC, (give or take a bit these are country-wide) plus a local commercial and a local BBC station. For the locals, I have no information, but nationally each week there will be approximately three hours of science broadcasting split between BBC Radio's 3 and 4. This is excluding any science broadcasting in the news and current affairs programs. This is produced by six full-time science trained producers sufficiently well-funded for three of them to attend the AAAS meeting in San Francisco in Jan. 1980. They returned from the week-long meeting with about 10 hours of programming. I find it impossible to compare this output with U.S. Radio simply because of the complexity of the U.S. radio system. However, I'm not aware of comparable programming although a similar production group exists in Canada and reaches audiences of over one million with individual programs. Quite clearly radio is enormously accessible to the population and cheap to produce. It is, I suspect, an area ripe for at large development. -2 TELEVISION British science television breaks into several components (again ignoring news and current affairs). a. Science programs designed for a general evening viewing audience. Audiences for these programs frequently rise to 10,000,000 or 20% of the total population. Such programs are found on both the commercial channels and the BBC. b. Further Educational programs designed for continuing education of adults but excluding the Open University. And, c. School programs For the year April 1978 to April 1979 the data for the BBC is as follows: In addition to the 4.7% of BBC-TV has to be added the science on Commercial television probably another 25 hours per year for a general audience making in total nearly 400 hours per year, or 8 hours per week available to the science glutton! In the U.S. again, like radio, it is difficult to be complete. To list a sample of programs for 1980: |