After a disappointing 1967-68 season, the staff of the Public Broadcasting Laboratory was naturally let down. Then last month PBL, the Ford Foundation's $12.5 million experiment in public-interest television, began its second year on an encouragingly upbeat note (TIME, Dec. 6). Birth and Death, PBL's cinéma vérité documentary on natural childbirth and death by cancer, won critical acclaim, and the staff was jubilant. Said Executive Director Av (Avram) Westin: "This year we go for broke."
Last week Westin went, all right, but not for broke. Come March, he announced, he will leave...