EDUCATIONAL TV

Impact of Science on Educational TV

Impact of Science on Educational TV

Introduction

Television is the major source of information for popular audiences about scientific research in the Western world. Scientific knowledge is not only mediated, but also constructed on television. Many scientists and science educators recognize this and use television to improve the image of their disciplines, as well as to communicate scientific ideas to larger publics.

Science content on television is mediated by various genres. The “usual suspects” are documentaries, magazines, and educational TV, but science can also pop up in dramas, news, reality and game shows, experiment shows, and (naturally) in science fiction.

Discussion

Educational television, such as Bill Nye the Science Guy and the earlier pioneer Watch Mr. Wizard, may convey science using many formats but always has a strong pedagogical commitment and a younger audience in mind. A different approach that tries to package science with entertainment or game show formats is presented in the successful German TV show Clever, a rare example of a prime-time science show and one that has been aired around the globe, for example in Thailand, Italy, and Norway (Miller, 1998).

Analyses of science content on television today may pose a challenge, as the number of channels leaped since the 1970s “golden age,” when most of the science magazines and documentaries appeared. Until the 1980s, television was dominated by the terrestrial channels that aimed at serving a wide variety of tastes. During the 1980s, however, the idea of one-channel-fits-all was replaced by a variety of niche cable channels, each targeted toward a specific audience segment.

Today, a richer-than-ever assortment of science-related content is easily accessible on the science and nature channels, such as Discovery, National Geographic, NASA TV, and general public service broadcasters. However, these usually serve primarily the already science-attentive public. It is the shows that ...