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Proponents of prime-time teaching say familiar television examples make schoolwork less imposing and more interesting. "Reading becomes exciting," asserts Melinda Douglas, assistant to the general manager at KNXT-TV, CBS'S Los Angeles affiliate, "because students can imagine those words being spoken by an actor or actress on television." Opponents point out that the minimal degree of reading skill and concentration required by TV teaching is not adequate training for serious study of literature or history, or for the effort necessary to master subjects that cannot be easily popularized, like math and chemistry. They also fear that television teaching may stimulate excessive viewing among a generation that watches too much TV as it is. The prospect of ten-year-old tube junkies using TV Guide as a syllabus is unsettling to parents who believe that serious learning comes from books. Teachers who have used one form or another of prime-time education, however, regard TV not as a "vast wasteland," in the memorable epithet of former Federal Communications Commissioner Newton Minow, but as a vast resource waiting to be tapped. One TV watcher who agrees is Minow himself, who now sits on the PTST board. Says he: "The most important educational institution in the country is not Harvard or Yale or Caltech—it's television." For better or for worse, it is difficult not to agree with him.