Nicest Kids in Town
Page 8
For this television program, the Fellowship Commission brought together students of different racial, religious, and ethnic backgrounds. To recruit students for the show, the Commission relied on the strength of its relationships with the public, private, and parochial school systems. Each of the three school systems recommended four students for each weekly program, drawing primarily from students in the schools’ Fellowship Clubs. The group of twelve students changed every week, so that over the course of the show’s run, more than three hundred students participated.14
The Fellowship House, an organization distinct from the Fellowship Commission run by Marjorie Penny, cofounder of the Commission, coordinated the high school Fellowship Clubs. The Fellowship House relied on teachers at the high schools to sponsor Fellowship Clubs as extracurricular activities. At the time They Shall Be Heard debuted, eight of the twenty-one public high schools had active Fellowship Clubs. In addition to appearing on the show, young people in the Fellowship Clubs challenged the discriminatory practices of recreational facilities, such as roller-skating rinks.15
FIGURE 9. High School Fellowship Clubs brought together students of different racial, religious, and ethnic backgrounds. The students pictured in this club newsletter are among those who would have participated in They Shall Be Heard. September-October 1952. Temple University Libraries, Urban Archives, Philadelphia, PA.
WATCHING TEENAGERS TALK
Although the producers did not make a kinescope of They Shall Be Heard, letters, memos, and photographs reveal a great deal about the structure of the program. Fagan, who was a former high school social studies teacher, served as the moderator of the discussion and played an important role in choosing the show’s subjects. The topics for the programs ranged from issues related to students’ schools, peer groups, and families to discussions of prejudice against racial, religious, or ethnic groups. Among this diversity of topics, episodes of the show considered “problems of students with foreign-born parents,” “fair educational opportunities,” “the atomic bomb,” “color prejudice,” “social rejection,” and “rejection of students with high or low I.Q.”16 As the moderator, Fagan attempted to stimulate discussion by relating these topics to the lives of the teenage students. For example, in a show that asked “How far can personal liberty be extended?” the discussion focused on “hotrodding.” The teenagers debated whether special roads should be provided for car racing, whether their personal liberties conflicted with the potential emotional and economic costs to their parents should they be injured, and whether hot-rodding could be considered a religiously prohibited form of suicide.17 As this example suggests, the show’s discussions of prejudice and interracial issues sometimes took a backseat to topics that Fagan believed would capture and maintain the interest of the show’s teenage panelists and television audience.18
Along with these unscripted discussions, Fagan also emphasized that the discussions be accessible to participants without any specific background knowledge in the subject. Here, Fagan contrasted They Shall Be Heard to Quiz Kids, a popular radio program in the 1940s and 1950s. Fagan informed a magazine editor that They Shall Be Heard “is not a ‘Quiz Kid’ program designed to present how much these youngsters know about a particular subject or even how bright they are. It is intended primarily to indicate how a group of fairly typical youngsters think about current human relations issues.”19 One student who participated in the program appreciated this approach and wrote to Fagan to encourage him to “continue this pattern of choosing subjects that will reveal the emotions and thoughts of students rather than their aptitudes and specific abilities.”20
While Fagan exercised control over the show’s subjects and provided the participants with discussion tips during the pre-show warm-up, he minimized his role as moderator during the broadcast itself. The Fellowship Commission’s experience with film discussions influenced this decision to downplay the moderator’s speaking role and emphasize the discussion among teenagers. For Fagan, discussion was an effective educational technique for two reasons. First, he thought it made students more amendable to intercultural attitudes. “Film-discussions,” he argued in a 1947 issue of Education magazine, “are vastly superior to speeches or straight teaching because the children find the facts for themselves and probably will accept them more readily and retain them more permanently.” Second, Fagan felt that discussion allowed educators to “spot pupils who are thoroughly democratic and others who are bigoted,” and to address “preventative” or “curative” intercultural work accordingly.21 The role of the moderator of They Shall Be Heard, therefore, was to facilitate exchanges that would reveal the opinions and attitudes of the participants without dominating the discussion. Fagan reiterated both of these points in a letter to a viewer who expressed concern with his muted role as moderator. “You must remember,” he told the viewer,
that these discussions are unrehearsed and, therefore, that youngsters will say things with which many or all of us may disagree but that the whole purpose of the programs is to bring such viewpoints out in the open where their faults could be shown and better ones could be developed. Since an important part of the program is to promote a free exchange of opinions … it is therefore important that these young people should not feel we are dominating their thinking or asking them in advance to agree with our thinking.22
In another letter, Fagan emphasized that “We take every pain to make sure that the moderator does not lecture, does not dominate the discussion with his own facts or views and does not manipulate the discussion.”23 They Shall Be Heard also used film clips and skits to stimulate discussion of racial prejudice. In each program, after Fagan explained the topic of discussion, he introduced either a film segment or a dramatic skit in which the students participated. For the former, the producers relied on the Fellowship Commission’s library of films with intercultural themes. Using films on the undemocratic nature of racial discrimination, such as Brotherhood of Man and Home of the Brave, the producers selected scenes that presented the episode’s subject provocatively.24 In episodes that featured skits, the producers selected four or five students during the warm-up period. Students did not memorize lines, and Max Franzen, the Fellowship Commission’s director of radio and television, admitted that “the skits were anything but professional jobs.”25 Nevertheless, these skits were central to exploring the themes of each show. For example, in an episode on fair educational opportunities, four students discussed their ambitions for college education. The dramatic tension in the brief skit flowed from the disappointment of one student who could not afford to go to college and of another who was turned down because of his race.26 In this and other episodes, after introducing the film or skit, Fagan attempted to stay out of the discussion and encouraged the students to ask questions of each other.
This discussion format, Anna McCarthy notes, was popular among local civic groups that sponsored public service programs. “The act of watching the act of having a discussion,” McCarthy suggests, “was a form of directive training, showing audience members appropriate and inappropriate forms of civic conduct.”27 Similarly, Fagan hoped that the discussions on They Shall Be Heard would influence the attitudes of teenage participants and television viewers and spark similar conversations among teenagers outside of the studio. By letting “average” teens talk through their ideas and concerns, moreover, the show challenged the custom of featuring well-known personalities or experts, which was emerging as the standard practice of television interview and discussion programs in this era. On nationally televised news programs like Edward R. Morrow’s See It Now (1951–58) and variety talk shows such as Arthur Godfrey Time (1952–59) and The Today Show (1951–present), the hosts acted as central figures who interviewed major newsmakers and entertainers.28 On NBC’s Youth Wants to Know (1951–63), a national public affairs program broadcast from Washington, D.C., that most closely resembles They Shall Be Heard, local high school students asked questions of prominent guests (John Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Elea
nor Roosevelt, Jackie Robinson, James Michener, Estes Kefauver, and Joseph McCarthy all appeared on the show during its first five years).29 Unlike Youth Wants to Know, which made the famous guests the focal points of each episode, the producers of They Shall Be Heard distinguished their program from a typical news interview show by not providing detailed information on the students’ backgrounds or qualifications for appearing on the show. This lack of information prompted a letter from the editor of Exhibitor magazine, who complained that the program would have been “far more interesting had each of the participants been identified as to name, [grade], and school. In that way, those listening could have known the background of the students and could have tied it in with the viewpoints which they presented.”30 Fagan replied that the WCAU-TV producers, whom he felt were more “qualified to judge what makes for good television,” made the decision to omit this information, but that he felt that background information would “negate our purpose, which is to free the school from any embarrassment or endorsement of the views expressed and to give the youngsters the feeling that they can give their frank opinions as individuals.”31 This anonymity was in stark contrast to Bandstand’s roll call segment, in which teens introduced themselves by name and school. They Shall Be Heard’s decision to omit this information, when combined with the rotating cast of participants, helped to encourage the audience to see the students as “typical youngsters.” The Exhibitor editor, however, remained unconvinced by Fagan’s views:
I still feel that there could have been more background information as to the youngsters, yourself, and the purpose of the program before it started. While it may be that you wish to avoid the usual and stereotyped that one sees in similar evidence on television these days, I do believe that for the most part television audiences are not accustomed to too great a change, and that they should be weaned gradually from standardized techniques.32
As this letter suggests, They Shall Be Heard was experimenting with a discussion format that was controversial in the early history of television.
THEY SHALL BE HEARD AND BANDSTAND
The production strategies and set design of They Shall Be Heard also emphasized discussion as the most important theme of the show. The show opened with an announcer introducing the program over filmed footage of crowd scenes in different countries. As these international scenes faded out, the camera focused on the group of students seated in a tight semicircle on chairs, stools, and the floor in a living room setting.33 Regarding this arrangement, one student wrote to Fagan to complain that the participants were “packed together” and that those who sat on the stools sometimes felt awkward because they did not know what to do with their hands. Fagan replied that the students were seated closely together so that as different students spoke, the crew could quickly shift the camera and microphones.34
The show’s living room setting and seating arrangements are notable for two reasons. First, many scholars have written about how television producers constructed programs around an imagined nuclear family in a home setting.35 They Shall Be Heard borrowed the image of a living room, but rather than a breadwinning father and homemaking mother, the program filled the space with teenagers. Bandstand, in contrast, combined two popular teenage spaces, the gymnasium and the record shop. And unlike Bandstand host Bob Horn, who stood at a podium and came across as an easygoing school principal and a disc jockey, Fagan, in his role as moderator, sat off camera until the final wrap-up. While this arrangement aligned the viewer with both the camera and the moderator, in focusing almost exclusively on teenagers, They Shall Be Heard reworked a setting that was fast becoming a familiar television design. Second, in terms of seating, the technological limitations of early television (e.g., the large immobile cameras and crane microphones) actually promoted the physical proximity that the producers desired. It helped the Fellowship Commission to literally bring together young people from different racial, religious, and national backgrounds.
Through the production techniques of studio audience participation, seating arrangements, unscripted segments, and close-up shots, Fagan emphasized the spontaneity of live television on They Shall Be Heard. As media scholars like Jane Feuer and Rhona Berenstein have examined, television producers and performers have consistently emphasized the medium’s liveness, immediacy, and intimacy.36 For Fagan and the Fellowship Commission, the spontaneity of live discussion was central to They Shall Be Heard’s pedagogical potential. During the warm-up session, Fagan’s Fellowship Commission colleague Max Franzen explained, “students are acquainted with the procedures of the program and begin to explore some of the points of the particular subject. We try not to exhaust the discussion during the warm-up period but try to discover the points on which the students are conversant and have ideas.” Franzen hoped that this method would produce “spontaneity rather than ‘conditioned’ responses.”37 One teenage participant appreciated this plan, writing “I believe that your plan of not telling the participants exactly what they will discuss, although it adds to their nervousness, assures the onlookers that the views expressed by the speakers are unbiased.”38 In addition, a participant from West Catholic High School offered that he “liked the way in which the show was presented without scripts since it gave the teenagers a chance to state their opinions on topics which directly concern them.”39
FIGURE 10. Teenagers participating in discussion in the living room set on They Shall Be Heard. Maurice Fagan, seated with his back to the camera, tried to downplay his role as moderator. 1952. Temple University Libraries, Urban Archives, Philadelphia, PA.
In this format the discussion sometimes strayed from the topic, a point that drew a letter of complaint from the editor of Exhibitor magazine. In his reply, Fagan justified this discussion technique, arguing “It seems to me that many important ideas were advanced by the youngsters even though the discussion might not have had the well-rounded, pat character of rehearsed programs or programs where the youngsters were primed in advance with the wisdom of others.” “Would you agree,” Fagan asked, “that even if the end result is not a polished intellectual one that the basic purpose of presenting fresh, uncoached viewpoints is in itself a contribution of the first order?” Among the show’s contributions, he argued, was that it enabled the “public [to] see ‘how youngsters think’ rather than just ‘what they think.’ ” 40 For Fagan, the live televised discussions gave teenagers a chance to think through issues and express their ideas, and offered viewers a chance to see the thought processes in action. In both cases, They Shall Be Heard used spontaneity to address viewers as citizens and create the possibility for pedagogy through discussion.
Bandstand also emphasized the spontaneity of live television, but it did so to encourage viewers to develop a participatory consumer relationship with the program. Bandstand addressed viewers as part of a club that came together every afternoon to share in the consumption of music and sponsors’ products. The teens in the studio influenced, and stood in for, the thousands of other teenagers watching the live program at home in the WFIL–adelphia region. In contrast to the discussions They Shall Be Heard encouraged, Bandstand emphasized the opinions of teenagers as a form of market research. Individual teenagers expressed their opinions of a given song or performer during the rate-a-record segment, while the studio audience registered its group opinion through the level of energy in dancing or applause. Appropriate to the show’s focus on music and dancing, the studio was not designed for periods of sustained talking. In this way, Bandstand situated studio audience members as consumers and addressed its television audience in the same way.
The producers of They Shall Be Heard and Bandstand tuned their respective modes of address to adults as well as teenagers. In the case of They Shall Be Heard, the show aired Friday mornings at 10:30 A.M. during its first two months, a time at which most teenagers would be in school. Thanks to the school board’s radio and television department’s participation in the production, the program was listed for in-school viewing. Many schools did not hav
e televisions, however, and individual teachers could decide whether to include the program. One of the participants on the show commented on this problem in a letter to Fagan “I think it would be better if the program could be seen by the girls and boys whom it would concern. That’s all of us. They can’t see it, so there isn’t much sense in giving helpful solutions to problems. I think it would be better if it was held about 4 o’clock in the afternoon.”41 In his reply, Franzen assured the student that people were watching the show:
I don’t think you need to feel discouraged about the program not reaching people who will be helped by the ideas that the students have. We know there are many school classes that have the opportunity to tune in the program every Friday morning since it is listed by the public school system for in-school listening. We are even more thrilled to be able to reach parents, since we believe that the ideals, ideas and thinking of young people have an important effect on them.42
In December 1952, the producers’ optimism about the audience increased when WCAU moved the show to a more coveted time slot, Sunday afternoons at 2:30 P.M., because WCAU thought it was a “strong program for family listening hours.”43 Fagan expressed his enthusiasm for this new time in a letter to a former participant of the show: “We are very pleased to be able to reach a much larger audience, particularly more young people who will be able to see it at that hour.”44 In a letter to WCAU staff, Fagan also noted that in providing an opportunity for “family units” to view the program,
[they] were correcting one of the major weaknesses of many intergroup relations programs. That weakness is that the children are reached separately from their parents instead of simultaneously and thus some children may develop a smug or superior attitude and may even clash with their parents about particular issues. Family listening permits the adults and youngsters to view together and discuss together, to grow together.45