The Junior Achievement Television Company is putting the final touches on the Tenth Anniversary Season premiere of Beyond Our Control. The award-winning "TV Show About TV" will kick-off its 1977 season Saturday (January 29) at 6:00 PM EST on WNDU-TV, Channel 16.
The program will continue its successful "channel switching" format this year; the production technique is designed to simulate an idle-hours session spent before the television set, switching at random from channel to channel. The "programs" on Beyond Our Control are frequently joined in progress, abandoned, and then returned to during the course of the program.
The program's producers have elected to reduce the number of program interruptions for commercials this year; three interruptions were standard last year and this year, only two will be scheduled in each show.
The producers also plan to celebrate their Tenth Anniversary with occasional excursions into the videotape archives. Long-time viewers of the programs may catch brief snatches of material dating back to 1968 during the channel-switching segments. Meanwhile, new production is proceeding at a frantic pace. Summer film projects, including a drive-in theater movie parody and an extensive multi-chapter Tarzan serial, are now in the final editing stages, and studio production has been underway since November.
The company is awaiting a last-minute decision on the contents of the premiere, but already tentatively scheduled are a mouthwash commercial as it might be directed by Ingmar Bergman; a special presentation of "Hamlet" for the hearing impaired; an Arab terrorist take-over of a Public Library; and a commercial for Marshall Brodine's newest magic kit.
Thirty-four Michiana area high school students--comprising the largest company in BOC's history--write, stage, film, produce, perform and direct the program. The JA company was founded in 1960 by Wm. Thomas Hamilton, Executive Vice- President of the WNDU Stations, and turned to the production of Beyond Our Control in 1967. Since that time, it has become the nation's most widely-publicized local television show, and has won a number of national awards, including four Freedoms Foundation Awards for economic education, the National Association of Television Program Executives award for best local variety show, and the Chicago International Film Festival's "Gold Hugo" award for best television program.
Kate Doherty, Phil Frank, Phil Patnaude, Dave Simkins and Marc Wellin are directing the program this year, and Ellen Akins is the show's Production Manager.
