The New Shows

It's Fun to Know . . . (weekdays 4:30 p.m., CBS-TV) marks one of network TV's more ambitious attempts at educational programing. Aimed at the eight-to-twelve age group. It's Fun uses an adult moderator assisted by four or five children to show its viewers how to tackle such projects as making decorative wastebaskets out of old cardboard cartons, or learning how to dance. The naturalness, common sense and absorption of the TV children frequently rescue the show from the self-conscious and often patronizing delivery of their grown-up costars.

Ed Thorgersen and the News (weekdays 7:35 p.m., Du Mont) brings a veteran newsreel announcer to network TV but can't make him comfortable. Backed by the standard props of a clattering teletype machine, a Korean wall map and the usual succession of still photographs, Thorgersen nervously shuffles through news releases with the distracted air of a man who has not quite finished his homework.

Concert of Europe (Sun. 5 p.m., ABC), tape-recorded in Paris, is being broadcast in the U.S. by ECA to promote both the tourist industry and international good will. Concert features Actor Claude (The Happy Time) Dauphin as M.C., a French orchestra of impressive musicianship and a new conductor each week from one of the 18 Marshall Plan countries. The first: Switzerland's Otto Osterwalder.

Marines Pass in Review (Sat. 5 p.m., ABC). Written, acted and produced by Marines and played to a cheering, whistling Leatherneck audience, the first transcribed show leaned heavily on a Camp Pendleton band that was as handy with a love lyric as a marching song. Sandwiched among the musical numbers were several Marine Corps skits, balanced neatly between toughness and sentimentality. Possibly the biggest surprise for Marine veterans was a middle "commercial" selling the hearty, frolicsome outdoor life of boot training.

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