Program utilization was a special aspect of education and research. The department was initiated and financed in part through an FAE grant which began in February 1961. At that time the department was apparently responsible to the VP for Network Affairs. From 1961 to 1965 Henry C. Alter was Director of Program Utilization; in 1965 the name was changed and Alter became Director of Educational Services, indicating a wider scope and focus to his position. The Department of Educational Services was abolished in July 1970.

From the department's first annual report, dated September 1961, comes the following: “The rationale for a Department of Program Utilization was stated in the proposal to the Fund for Adult Education in October 1960, as follows:

The department has conducted its activities in three major areas: 1. Acquainting adult educators with opportunities inherent in cooperation with educational television. 2. Arranging activities in direct support of NET programs. 3. Working with publishers and others to create materials needed for multi-media programming. It worked with all types of educational institutions and (national-local) organizations promoting use of NET programs by groups on a planned basis thus adding to the size of the NET audience and increasing the impact of its programming.

Three broad types of material comprise these files; 1. Correspondence with outside ETV and Adult Education organizations, including information syllabi on ETV courses; 2. The usual internal NET office records, viz. annual reports, staff papers, and reports, memos to and from staff and other departments, statistics, lists, etc; and 3. Utilization materials, plans for utilization, and requests for those materials from viewers, stations, universities and other organizations. Category three accounts for seven of the ten boxes.

Some materials were formed into utilization packets relating to specific programs and series, but the packets are not always complete in the archive. An especially complete file is The Age of Kings, called “best NET series ever.” (Wood, 496) Also noteworthy due to extensive information on them in other files are The Environmental Revolution, Population, and History of the Negro People.

Arrangement is an alphabetical subject file with viewer and institutional response letters separate and last under “Programs;” all chronological within folders.

The person most in evidence in the files besides Alter is Donley Fedderson, Director of Television Programming.