I don’t think that we exactly need a Los Alamos Laboratory to study the effects of television, but we need, if it is an urgent social problem, then some central planning and central organization, and some pressure; some priority has to be put on it.
[second point] Now, the question is, why has the foundation work not taken on this continuity and planning which might be necessary in this field? And that has to do with a definite policy foundations have in this matter, and which might be of interest for you to discuss.
The foundations feel two things: One, that they should never give permanent directions to academic work. They spend funds for a few years to stimulate a new field, but they then throw it back to the universities and professors to go on with it or not.
There is definite and probably very reasonable discontinuity in foundation work which makes it difficult to accumulate knowledge.
Unfortunately, the foundation field, as you probably know—there has been considerable discussion whether foundations should do work in controversial fields and the foundation has become more cautious recently, which I, as a professor, consider a very regrettable development. While, when radio came up, the Rockefeller Foundation was still quite willing to finance large-scale study of what radio does to this country, now that television is here, no foundation has dared to do—to invest considerable funds in necessary investigation.