KOCE: It’s Time to Turn It Off

* Putting aside costs to upgrade KOCE-TV technical-broadcast abilities, there are good reasons the station should be sold (Aug. 19).

KOCE has rarely produced educational television as good as a “Nova” episode. With very few exceptions, KOCE’s courses have been an embarrassment--often dated, visually inept and scripted with a patronizing, dead tone.

True, even a live campus can have weak courses, but no one thinks to finance them for all the living rooms in Southern California.

Secondly, from a community service perspective, KOCE has had award-winning Orange County news programs, but virtually everything else is a repetition of KCET, which over the years has been bolder in its programming.

For instance, KOCE was reluctant to present the late Dennis Potter’s masterpieces, whereas KCET did. Maybe a university with a strong film department such as USC would offer more creative programming so viewers would have a viable cultural alternative to KCET.

VCRs and the Internet have changed distance learning so that it is no longer television broadcast-dependent.

Students can easily obtain videos of lectures, and the Internet can combine visual presentations with direct student-to-student or student-instructor interactions.

The money freed from the Coast Community College District budget from selling and not maintaining KOCE could be used at Orange Coast, Golden West and Coastline colleges for well-publicized visiting scholar and artist programs, increasing faculty, obtaining top-notch visual productions from anywhere, and strengthening Internet courses lest they become the educational embarrassment of the 21st century.

GARY HOFFMAN

Professor of English

Orange Coast College