The purpose of this website is to document educational/instructional television (commonly abbreviated as ITV) shows which were intended to be viewed in classrooms. Television historians have had a tendency to overlook these types of shows in favor of the more popular commercial shows, which often had greater cultural impact. While many other television shows may be described as being "educational" or "instructional," the specific type of television programming documented by this website was originally broadcast by public television stations during the hours when schools were in session, mostly during the 1970s and 1980s. Episodes of these television series from that time typically had a standard length of 15 minutes, which was long enough for the episodes to accomplish their goals without taking up too much classroom time (and the standard length allowed the public television stations to fit them neatly into a broadcast schedule in which four episodes of various ITV shows were broadcast per hour).
When these educational/instructional programs were first created, they had to be viewed in the classroom as they were being broadcast. During the 1970s, VCR technology was in its infancy; so, most teachers generally had no way of recording these television shows for presentation in the classroom at a later time. Once VCR technology became more readily available during the 1980s, public television stations eventually adopted the practice of broadcasting these shows during the overnight hours to allow teachers to use a VCR timer to record them. These overnight broadcasts were common during the 1990s. As the Internet developed during the 1990s, it was eventually possible for public television stations to make these educational/instructional programs available on their websites for on-demand streaming, once the Internet bandwidth made this possible starting during the late 1990s. After the year 2000, some public television networks started producing educational/instructional television shows which were made exclusively for streaming from the public television networks' websites; and, the lengths of the episodes of these newer shows sometimes varied from episode to episode (since fitting them into a broadcast schedule was no longer a relevant consideration).
Why are old educational/instructional television programs of interest? Their original purpose was to serve as an educational tool for the classroom. However, many people first watched these programs during childhood; and years or decades later, those same people felt a sense of nostalgia whenever they saw these programs again. It may seem strange that people would have felt so fondly of these old instructional television shows, which were often produced on very limited budgets. However, the familiar images and theme songs of these old television shows caused some people to experience a flood of fond memories from childhood when watching these shows once again. However, the purpose of these old educational/instructional television shows was not nostalgia; and when the shows had served their original intended purpose of serving as educational tools, they were eventually removed from circulation and became generally inaccessible to the general public. In fact, searches for many of these old shows on Internet search engines often result in no search results.
This page provides links. These include:
A look back at...
The purpose of this web project is to serve as a retrospective on the era of ITV programs. Part of this web project's purpose is to document instructional television programs which were often overlooked by television historians. The other part of its purpose is to provide information to any individuals who might feel a sense of nostalgia when looking back at those old television programs.
This web project is not affiliated with the broadcasters and production companies, which created the instructional television programs. It does not provide copies of the television programs for teachers and does not provide associated teaching materials to accompany those programs. Teachers would have to contact the broadcasters and production companies regarding the availability of either of those items (assuming that they are available at all). People have to remember that many of those old instructional television shows were created decades ago and that recordings of the oldest of these shows might no longer exist.