Twentieth-Century Presidents: A Multi-Platform Initiative from The American Experience

FAIN: TI-50101-08

WGBH Educational Foundation (Boston, MA 02135-2016)
Margaret Drain (Project Director: September 2007 to September 2010)

The distribution, onto a broad range of media platforms, of the television biographies of seven twentieth-century presidents-Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George Herbert Walker Bush-who defined the modern American presidency.

This proposal seeks $500,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support an unprecedented effort by AMERICAN EXPERIENCE, the long running American history series on PBS, to extend the reach and impact of its acclaimed series of presidential biographies by expanding onto a broad range of media platforms. This multi-platform initiative includes the national public television broadcast of the biographies of seven twentieth-century presidents who largely defined the modern presidency: Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagen and George Herbert Walker Bush. Building out from these broadcasts, it makes each of the seven programs available for repeated plays on digital channels and for video-on-demand, streams of the biographies on the web, and makes the programs and other presidential-themed materials downloadable as vodcasts and podcasts. Each of the seven programs will also be made available to own on DVD.