The Noncommercial First

In Houston last week, FCCommissioner Frieda Hennock kicked off her shoes for comfort and threw away her prepared speech for greater freedom of expression. Speaking on a subject dear to her heart, she was helping to dedicate station KUHT, the first noncommercial education TV station in the U.S. Commissioner Hennock rejoiced that, after 3 1/2 years of work, "we're showing the scoffers, we're showing the world" that "education must have its own stations. You cannot mix free education with the profit motive."

On the success of station KUHT will largely depend the future of 16 other education TV stations scheduled to go on the air in the next few years. Sponsored by the University of Houston and the Houston Independent School District, station KUHT was built at a cost of $250,000, is planned to operate on a maximum annual budget of $150,000. For reasons both of economy and experience, music students will perform the music, art students will work on the sets, photographic students will operate the cameras. Aiming ultimately at 40 hours of transmission a week, KUHT's programs will range from courses in psychology to "Electricity in the Home." Said Dr. Walter Kemmerer, who brought the educational TV dream to reality (and was recently fired as president of. the University of Houston--TIME, May 4): "We have about 2,000,000 enrolled in colleges of the country. [But] there is a prospective group of 50 million adults who could and would benefit by continued education if it were readily available to them."

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