171. Memorandum From the Assistant Director, East Asia and Pacific, United States Information Agency (Oleksiw) to the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs (Bundy)1
SUBJECT
- Educational Television for Viet-Nam2
You asked me to keep you informed of planning for educational television in Viet-Nam. In addition to the information contained in the three memoranda3 attached herewith, you should be aware that:
1) Mr. Marks has determined that Premier Sato offered the President only television receivers: no “stations,” transmitters, studios, technicians, or advisors were mentioned by Sato.
The transmitters presently in operation or scheduled for operation within Viet-Nam are sufficient to support whatever educational television projects we could reasonably envisage.
[Page 530]The present studios probably can suffice, depending on how efficiently we can schedule them and the degree of austerity the GVN is willing to assign to the projects (obviously, an ambitious television producer working toward highest U.S. operational standards could recommend new, separate, complex, and expensive studios: I believe we should try to get along without them).
Some additional technical assistance will be necessary to establish production standards, and we are in contact with such persons already (at least one of them, Loren Stone from the University of Washington, has been working with us on television in Viet-Nam for some time now and is well known and respected by GVN officials now engaged in television projects). Too, we will need some first-class educational specialists who can devise reasonable methods for integrating television instruction into the present and developing educational plant of the country (Mr. Marks is very familiar with what is required and will make some recommendations soon). In any case, both the limited technical assistance and the educational advisors to consult on the proper introduction of television into the school system of Viet-Nam should be funded by AID. I hope that when Mr. Marks meets with the Japanese official who will be responsible for implementing the Sato plan he will be able to induce them to offer additional assistance in the way of technical training in Japan for maintenance personnel and perhaps some technicians or advisors to work in Viet-Nam (Sony is training 25 or so non-Japanese Asians in Tokyo at this time).
2) Although the President has designated Mr. Marks to be the Washington official responsible for fostering educational television development in Viet-Nam,4 Mr. Marks will act in this instance outside his role as Director of USIA (for obvious reasons: the effort should not be construed as a propaganda mechanism).
The Director has instructed me to call on the Minister of Education with Ambassador Bunker or Locke during my upcoming visit to Viet-Nam to try to induce a genuine interest by the GVN in using television for education.
We should hope for a realistic, modest plan by the GVN to use television as a supplementary tool in certain areas where the quality [Page 531] of education, now affected by a teacher shortage, can be improved. On the basis of what I know now, it would appear that educational television could be begun most meaningfully in the Saigon and Hue areas.
3) Following is the status of television in Viet-Nam at this time (this information is useful if educational television follows the development of non-educational television, as we foresee that it will):
Ground stations are now in operation in Saigon and Hue, the latter from temporary facilities.
An airborne station operates over Cantho, but it will be replaced by a ground station in early 1968.
Studios are completed or nearing completion in Saigon and Cantho.
Additional permanent ground stations are scheduled for completion in the following cities by the indicated dates: Hue and Qui Nhon in late 1968; Danang and Nha Trang in early 1969.
At least 125,500 receivers are in the country at this time (we supplied 2,500 for group viewing, 48,000 were purchased on the open market, and another 75,000 were purchased by U.S. military personnel).
The GVN has licensed a Vietnamese TV assembly plant which plans to start turning out Japanese sets for civilian commercial distribution (we don’t know how high the rate of production will be); another Vietnamese has a franchise to assemble RCA sets, but he does not appear to have made much real headway towards getting into operation.
We supervise a DOD-funded contract with NBC International for the operation, programming and training of GVN television personnel who ultimately will be responsible for this network.
- Source: Johnson Library, Marks Papers, Box 30, Educational TV—Vietnam. Confidential. A copy was sent to Marks.↩
- An unknown hand underlined the subject line.↩
- Memo from Mr. Marks to the President, Nov. 21; Memo from Mr. Rostow to Messrs. Rusk, Gaud and Marks, Nov. 21; Memo from Mr. Marks to Messrs. Rusk, Gaud and Rostow, Nov. 22. [Footnote is in the original. None of the memoranda is attached but see footnote 4 below.]↩
- In a November 21 memorandum from Rostow to Rusk, Gaud, and Marks, Rostow noted that during a November 15 meeting in Washington the President and the Japanese Prime Minister agreed that the two countries would work together to improve education in South Vietnam through “the use of television and modern teaching techniques.” They further agreed to form a joint committee, which would also include South Vietnam, to work out the details of the program. The President also suggested that Marks was “the appropriate U.S. chief representative” on that joint committee. (Johnson Library, Marks Papers, Box 30, Educational TV—Vietnam) For Johnson’s meeting with Sato, see Foreign Relations, 1964–1968, vol. XXIX, Part 2, Japan, Document 106.↩
- Printed from a copy that bears this typed signature.↩