Global TV for a small planet.

• Position: 'Agenda for a Small Planet'

Global TV for a small planet

With the UN acting as catalyst and co-ordinator, 15 television networks from all regions of the world are co-producing 15 half-hour TV programmes highlighting experiments in living that offer positive models for the twenty-first century.

The series--Blueprint for the Future--is the brainchild of Jean Tetrault, an articulate, Paris-based independent producer. With seed-money from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and th UN Department of Public Information (DPI), which also gives him technical support, Mr. Tetrault, who is from Quebec, Canada, has produced three similar series since 1980.

Agenda for a Small Planet, as the entire project is known, so far has brought together 55 television networks to produce an equal number of programmes on subjects ranging from Javanese culture to the impact of nuclear fear on children. Mr. Tetrault estimates his audience at more than 200 million people.

The first series focused on relations between poor and rich countries. The second--The Message from the South--a more ambitious venture in 1984, paired networks from seven industrialized countries with seven filmakers from developing countris. Disarmament, the third series aired in 1985, pulled together 24 networks from all regions in a celeberation of peace, Mr. Tetrault said.

Networks and filmmakers from places as geographically and culturally distant from each other as Finland and Malasia, Australia and Bangladesh, Japan and Ecuador, The Netherlands and Romania. Czechoslovakia and Nigeria, and China and Senegal have worked together in this global television effort.

A small miracle

Mr. Tetrault says that it takes a lot of work to pull off this small human and technological miracle.

For Blueprint for the Future, now in the pre-production stage, he has given each participating network a well-researched, 137-page proposal covering 15 possible programmes--Anatomy of a Financial Nightmare, for example, would target global...