Overview of KCEd Initiative
I very much appreciate your being here. What I would like to do is to give you just a little bit of an overview about our KCEd project. But first, I should tell you that we have put together a wonderful team of underwriters who have gotten behind this convening, and I want to tell you who they are. It wouldn't be Public Television, if I didn't begin by thanking our underwriters. Your Prop Ten Commission, First 5 LA, and First 5 California have immediately gotten behind KCEd. The Orfala Family Foundations, the Fletcher Jones Foundation, IndyMac Bank, and John O. and June M. Fry, have underwritten this convening and our research and development efforts for the KCED Initiative. And I certainly want to commend the California Department of Education. They have really been supportive of the Ready To Learn Program, which was seminal in our thinking about KCEd. We at KCET have been a part of that program since it started in 1994.

I obviously want to thank Jim Rosser, for hosting this wonderful convening and this is the first event at the Golden Eagle. This event is going to put the Golden Eagle on the map. But that really is only the tip of the iceberg with Jim in terms of Jim's support for KCET and KCEd. Jim has always had a passion for public television and this station. As he mentioned, he's in the middle of his second term, but you need to know that one term is nine years. So, Jim, I think, is going to have many, many, many terms, and he and I are going to kind of grow old together. Some, though, would think this was cruel and unusual punishment, but fortunately he doesn't. When we first began to shape the idea of KCEd, Jim was a peer group leader, among our Board of, at that time, about 55 members. He championed it, and that was important, because KCEd is the most ambitious foray that KCET has ever made in education, in its 40-year history.

Jim, I want to emphasize this point, made an extraordinarily important grant in-kind, when he came to me and said, “I've got a Professor on the faculty, who would be an invaluable leader on this Project. She would be great to work with you and the staff, to get KCEd off the ground. I'll make her available to you -- Ann Barbour.” It's impossible for me to express our gratitude to Ann, who has really just grabbed hold of this thing. She knew going in that the chances were that she was not going to end up being the anchorperson on “Life and Times.” But she embraced the effort strongly, anyway.

I also want to thank each and every one of you, for being here, for your contributions of time and efforts, so far, and certainly for the contribution, the considerable contribution that you're going to make tomorrow.

KCET has had a long and-and impressive history, of serving our nation's children. We've been a producer and a distributor of PBS programs. We've been active participants, as I've mentioned, in the Ready To Learn Program to promote media literacy. We've done over 500 workshops and trained 6,000 trainers that have reached over 75,000 children, 87 percent of which are minorities.

The KCEd initiative goes to the next level: to educate, motivate, and hopefully, to inspire caregivers and parents, to use all the available tools to stimulate learning, to promote literacy, and in general, to take care of our youngest citizens. The stakes are absolutely enormous, and I certainly don't have to tell this group that. I think that the inspiration for KCEd, at least for me, came many years ago, when I was attending a convening of media-types, at the Aspen Institute. There were all kinds of public figures there: from John Sununu to Jesse Jackson, Brent Scowcroft and Admiral Crowe and many others. But to me, the person who had the greatest impact was a psychologist, who showed us a split-screen videotape of two one year old children, from nearly identical backgrounds. The only difference was that one child's mother had been a cocaine addict, and the other had not. You could see, even at the first year, the incredible, dramatic impact that the cocaine addition of the mother had on that child. I became convinced, at that time, although it's taken me a bit long to act on it, that every child needed every bit of help that he or she could get -- from their parents -- but also, in today's society, from those who care for them when their parents are working. Our society needs us to do this. The cost of not doing it is enormous, when measured over the lifetime of these children.

How many of you remember the old Fram oil filter commercial? You remember that old commercial, come on, I know you do, where the dirty, tough, cynical, and hardened mechanic is leaning under the hood of a car. He raises his body up. He's grimy, he's holding up this dirty oil filter, and he's of course recommending that you regularly change your oil filter. But he utters this great tagline. He says, “It's simple, you can pay me now, or you can pay me later.” The implication clearly was that it would cost much more later. The cost of doing this job during the first five years is considerable. The cost of not doing it is unacceptably high.

Public Television, unlike the commercial television stations, has consistently made an investment in our children. The Federal Communications Commission today only requires commercial television stations to air three hours a week of educational programs for children. KCET airs over 50 hours a week. As most of you know, there has been a growing consolidation in the media into a few giant conglomerates, which are often referred to as silos, appropriately, too. This has been the result of progressive de-regulation, of the federally licensed broadcast stations, over the past 20 years. On June 2nd, of this year, the FCC passed its latest ruling, allowing for the most consolidation yet. Now, one station, one company, one of these silos, in Los Angeles, can own three television stations, eight radio station, a newspaper, and cable systems. The question really is, is this a problem? In fairness, I do want to say that there has been bi-partisan criticism, in Congress, of this latest decision. The FCC Commissioners have already been summoned to Congress, and the decision is being scrutinized. But nonetheless, the ruling has been passed. So, again, is this a problem?

I'd like to read a paragraph to you from an op-ed piece in The New York Times, written by Ted Turner -- one of the great entrepreneurs in this country, and who, until very recently, has been associated with one of the silos that is benefiting from the FCC decision. He said, “Large media corporations are far more profit focused than risk-averse. They sometimes confuse short-term profits and long-term value. They kill local programming, because it's expensive, and they push national programming, because it's cheap, even if it runs counter to local interests and community values. For a corporation to launch a new idea, you have to get the backing of executives, who are obsessed with quarterly earnings and afraid of being fired for an idea that fails. They often prefer to sit on the sidelines, waiting to buy the businesses or imitate the models of the risk takers who succeed. That's an understandable approach for a corporation, but for a society, it's like over fishing the oceans. When the smaller businesses are gone, where will the new ideas come from? Nor does this trend bode well for new ideas in our democracy.”

The reason I think that Turner's points are important is that it's becoming clear to me that only Public Television, today, would undertake a mission like KCEd. Only Public Television has devoted its resources to investing in our children's education and welfare. Only Public Television is not judged by the tyranny of audience ratings, and the need to make its money by delivering eyeballs to advertisers. Ours is a much higher mission.

Our challenge here is to reach the caregivers, and they certainly are a diverse lot: parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, household workers, neighbors, and of course, the professionals. Not all of them, however, consider themselves caregivers, and that's why, I think, KCEd will be so helpful. Television can reach all of the informal caregivers. They watch us now. If we design the KCEd programming well, we can motivate, and educate our caregivers. In typical Public Television jargon, KCET has made a very significant pledge of our resources -- to help our caregivers, as we have helped children for 40 years.

We are very appreciative that you are here and ready to contribute your expertise, to help us do the best possible job that we can do.

Al Jerome
June 12, 2003
KCEd Expert's Convening