James Day Papers

From 1953 to 1969, James Day served as the president and general manager of KQED (San Francisco, CA). For fourteen years, he hosted his own weekly program, Kaleidoscope, on which he interviewed many notable people including Eleanor Roosevelt, Robert Kennedy, and Buster Keaton. In 1969, Day became president of National Educational Television (NET). When NET merged with New York's public television channel, WNDT, in 1970 to become WNET/Channel 13, Day became the president of the merged organizations. In 1973, Day resigned as president of WNET due to his dissatisfaction with public television and the growing importance of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). He founded his own production company, Publivision, Inc., which produced and syndicated to public stations all over the world a night interview program, Day At Night. The collection documents Day's career at KQED, NET, WNET, and as an independent consultant in the field of public television. A great deal of the collection consists of Day's research for his 1995 history of public television, The Vanishing Vision: The Inside Story of Public Television