Word: pbs
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...about the 1976 Viking landing on Mars and the possibilities of extraterrestrial life. "In those days Sagan did the work and we did the writing," says Golden. "Now, of course, he writes and talks for himself." Sagan's growing celebrityhood, the latest manifestation of which is Cosmos, his PBS-TV science series, has made him a bit less accessible to Golden for last-minute consultations. But he is certainly no less articulate and remains a valuable source. Golden has also been a helpful source for Sagan, who once called to learn about Soviet plans to launch space probes...
...Cornell-based scientist is displaying his didactic gifts in his largest classroom yet. The first two of Cosmos' 13 weekly episodes may have attracted more viewers (perhaps as many as 10 million each) than any regular series in PBS history. With a budget of $8.5 million, Cosmos was three years in the making, involved a production staff of 150 people and was filmed at 40 locations in twelve countries. It features special effects rivaling those in Star Wars: computer animation, scale models and painted backdrops as dazzling as anything ever attempted on television...
...regular contributor to The New Yorker; Robert Jastrow, 55, head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies; and Princeton's Gerard O'Neill, 53, the leading apostle of space colonization. There is also the British physician Jonathan Miller, whose medical series The Body in Question is running on PBS and is the basis of a current book. Most prolific of all is Isaac Asimov, 60 (with 218 books to his credit at last count), a chemistry Ph.D. and onetime medical-school instructor...
Television's interest grew too. In the early 1970s, PBS began importing BBC science specials, like Nigel Calder's programs on astronomy, physics, the new biology. In 1974, one of the PBS stations, WGBH in Boston, took the plunge with its own Nova series. Now, counting Nova, Sagan's Cosmos, and Miller's Body, PBS is running seven separate science series...
...again all but ignored. Sagan decided something had to be done. Joining up with an equally dismayed colleague at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, B. Gentry Lee, Sagan sought sponsors for a TV film on space exploration. What they ended up with was an agreement with KCET, the Los Angeles PBS station, for an even bigger project: a full science series somewhat like Jacob Bronowski's acclaimed The Ascent of Man, with Sagan as guide and principal author. Ascent's British producer, Adrian Malone, was even recruited to ride herd on the enterprise...