User talk:Peter S McGhee

I have suggested revisions/corrections for both the Overview and the section on the origins/history of the project. Would like to start with the overview to see if this method of working with you is acceptable, including photos of relevant source material.

Overview as currently written:

Vietnam: A Television History (1983) is a 13-part American documentary and television mini-series about the Vietnam War (1955-1975) from the perspective of the United States. It was produced for public television by WGBH-TV in Boston and was originally broadcast on PBS between October 4 and December 20, 1983. As part of the series American Experience, 11 of the 13 original episodes were rebroadcast from May 26 to July 28, 1997. (Episodes 2 and 13 were dropped).

Vietnam: A Television History was the most successful documentary produced by PBS up to the time of initial broadcast. Nearly 9% of American households tuned in to watch the initial episode, and an average of 9.7 million viewers watched each of the 13 episodes. A rebroadcast in the summer of 1984 garnered roughly a 4% share in the five largest U.S. television markets.[1]

Suggested revisions for this section (see revised version below) are mostly smoothing out the writing and reducing redundancies. For example, deleting the adjective “American” in the first line because the fact that it’s American becomes obvious a bit later in that sentence. We also want to delete “from the perspective of the United States” because the series was precisely not that. It had British and French co-production partners and engaged with the then-isolated Communist government of North Vietnam, sending one of the first Western film teams into Hanoi in 1981, and filming interviews with 100 Vietnamese witnesses at locations from Hanoi to Danang to Ho Chi Minh City and the Delta. The North Vietnamese perspective is evident throughout the series.

Would also would like to eliminate the parenthetical information about which episodes were dropped in the American Experience re-air because the changes involved a more complex re-edit, and we don’t think the information is essential.

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Here is the suggested revised overview copy:

Vietnam: A Television History (1983) is a 13-part documentary series produced for public television by WGBH-TV in Boston and originally broadcast on PBS between October 4 and December 20, 1983. It was the most successful documentary series produced by PBS up to the time of initial broadcast, with nearly 9% of American households tuned in to watch the initial episode, and an average of 9.7 million viewers watching each of the 13 episodes.

The PBS history series American Experience aired a ten-episode version of the series from May 26th to July 28th, 1997.

Here are sources for the only significant factual revision - that the series presents multiple perspectives, both in the co-producing partners and in its 100 interviews with North Vietnamese witnesses:

Source for co-production partners: Time Magazine, “A TV Monument to the ‘TV War’” by William A. Henry III, October 3, 1983 Source for the multiple perspectives, filming in Vietnam, 100 interviews giving North Vietnamese perspective: Newsweek magazine, “America’s First Television War,” by William Broyles, Jr October 10, 1983 (see reference to North Vietnamese soldiers interviewed), and The New York Times, October 2, 1983, “TV Returns to Vietnam to Dissect the War,” by Fox Butterfield

(Photos of these articles below. I haven’t figured out a way to highlight relevant passages, and the articles are long. Sorry.)