Ford Foundations Research Paper

There is no question about the important role the foundations played in the development of educational broadcasting in the U.S. For instances, Rockefeller Foundation gave their resources to build educational radio broadcasting system in 1930’s and some project after Word War Ⅱ. Carnegie Corporation created the Carnegie Commission on Educational Television to research the role noncommercial television would play in the U.S in the late 1960’s. Some other notable foundation like Markle Foundation founded Sesame Street. Among these notable foundations, the Ford Foundation directly involved with building the system from 1951 to 1974 and contributed large sums of money on the system known as public broadcasting in the U.S. today. There are many studies on this subject that makes us think that everything has already studied. The role of foundations in the development of broadcasting has been evaluated in different academic fields such as media studies and historical studies. Marlyn A. Lashner studies the role of foundations by focusing on the Ford Foundations in public broadcasting history in “The Role of Foundations in Public Broadcasting Part 1 & 2” published in Journal of Broadcasting in 1976. William J Buxton studied the impacts of philanthropic foundation had on media and culture in the U.S with emphasis on Rockefeller Foundations’

Particularly, this study is going to focus on the foundations’ agendas on putting their resources on educational broadcasting system. To begin with, this study is going to focus on the Ford Foundation’s involvement in 1950’s to 1974 because they were the one that spend money the most among other foundations and they build National Educational Television networks, the foundational organization to become PBS member