@christa it all goes back to President Johnson's 1967 Task Force on Communication Policy, which ultimately birthed the White House Office of Telecommunications Policy. 1968 was ALSO the birth of public broadcasting in the US, I believe ALSO linked to the task force but I'm not 100% sure
@christa it was part of his Great Society initiative more broadly, which was comprised of a whole bunch of "task forces" on crime, poverty, etc