Telecasting an “Effective Weapon for Peace”

Abstract

This article investigates the history of the International Television Federation, or Intertel. A collaboration between telecasters from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia, Intertel throughout the 1960s produced and distributed public affairs documentaries for an international audience. Intertel’s members positioned public affairs programming in the 1960s as an “effective weapon for peace.” By making the nations of the world legible to one another, Intertel programs sought to deploy the international circulation of television texts as a means to diminish tensions in a world defined by uneven economic growth, Cold War ideological battles, and the specter of nuclear warfare. Drawing on archival materials, press reports, and the programs themselves, this essay offers an institutional history of the program’s development, expansion, and demise, as well as an analysis of its politics and ideological premises.