Robert Saudek got $2,000,000 and a simple assignment: to produce a show that will help raise the cultural level of U.S. television. The money came last summer from the Ford Foundation, after 41-year-old Bob Saudek had been picked as director of the foundation's TV Workshop because of his impressive record as a three-time Peabody Award winner while he was ABC's vice president in charge of public affairs.
At first Saudek planned to do a series of 30-minute shows dramatizing books, e.g., Rachel Carson's The Sea Around Us.
But because he was afraid "we would...
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