Operation Frontal Lobes

For the past four months, NBC has been engaged in an earnest conspiracy directed at U.S. televiewers. Its commendable purpose, as explained by NBC's dedicated Vice President Davidson Taylor: to smuggle cultural and educational tidbits into the network's TV schedule. Says Taylor: "We all have on our consciences the power of the medium at our disposal. The ideas don't come from a few people off in a corner--they start at the top with General Sarnoff and go down to every single TV producer."

Getting culture into the Milton Berle show might have daunted even hardier men than NBC's executives. It was accomplished by having Milton go offstage while Vice President Alben Barkley came on, to talk about Abraham Lincoln. Howdy Doody was swung into line with a children's newsreel, and The Aldrich Family contributed its mite by devoting one show to a discussion of the basic types of English sentence structure.

Beginning this week, every NBC-TV producer will be asked to turn in a monthly report listing what he has done to contribute to the "enlightenment" of the TV audience. If he has done nothing, he must say why. Taylor, believing that enlightenment can become a part of the regular stream of commercial programs, says: "We're beginning to get the right atmosphere. The boys are trying to think of things to do."

Part of the plan has been dubbed "operation Frontal Lobes," and includes programs on the history of the U.S. Navy, the trial and death of Socrates, the communal experiment of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, the physical nature of man, and special documentaries devoted to such subjects as the black market in the adoption of babies. Not all these projects may reach the TV screen, because, admits Taylor, "in this area there is a fairly high mortality among ideas."

Some commercial shows have, so far, baffled the network's biggest brains. How, they wonder, can culture be slipped even edgewise into such programs as Groucho Marx's You Bet Your Life and the Red Skelton Show?

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