[504] 'MTSU On The Record' Examines Early Television Censorship

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: June 9, 2010
EDITORIAL CONTACT: Gina Logue, 615-898-5081, or WMOT-FM, 615-898-2800

‘MTSU ON THE RECORD’ EXAMINES EARLY TELEVISION CENSORSHIP
Professor’s New Book Explains NBC’s First Content Czar and His Decisions

(MURFREESBORO) – When television was new, how did network executives determine what content was inappropriate or offensive? A man named Stockton Helffrich set the standards for the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), and Dr. Bob Pondillo, associate professor of electronic media communication at MTSU, tells his story on the next edition of “MTSU on the Record” with host Gina Logue at 8 a.m. this Sunday, June 13, on WMOT-FM (89.5 and wmot.org).
Pondillo’s new book, America’s First Network TV Censor: The Work of NBC’s Stockton Helffrich (Southern Illinois University Press), chronicles Helffrich’s career and puts it in cultural perspective, examining it in the context of an America that was stifled by Cold War paranoia, racial and sexual oppression and sexual tension.
From 1946 to 1960, Helffrich, the middle-class son of a Yonkers stockbroker, established the tone for advertising, entertainment and even news programming on the Peacock Network, dictating terms of communication about race, sex, violence, hygiene products and even more hot button issues.
To listen to last week’s program on “Knowledge, Evidence and Justification, go to http://www.mtsu.edu/news/podcast/index.shtml. For more information about “MTSU on the Record,” contact Logue at 615-898-5081 or WMOT-FM at 615-898-2800.


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With three Nobel Prize winners among its alumni and former faculty, Middle Tennessee State University confers master’s degrees in 10 areas, the Specialist in Education degree, the Doctor of Arts degree and the Doctor of Philosophy degree. MTSU is ranked among the top 100 public universities in the nation in the Forbes “America’s Best Colleges” 2009 survey.