Innovative Program AchievesInteractive Format (NAPSA)—In 1984, public television station Thirteen/WNET New York made broadcasting history with the presentation of Heritage: Civilization and the Jews on PBS. Hosted by statesman Abba Eban, the ambitious nine-hour series was epic in scope, tracing the complete history of the Jewish people through the course of Western civilization. It was, somesaid, a risky ven- ture. But that’s exactly the kind of risk public broadcasting is willing to take. No commercial network would have undertaken such a project. Yet Heritage, with its broad focus and balanced perspective, went on to become a benchmark for what historical documentaries can accomplish—and of public television’s mission to provide topnotch educational programming. Now, almost 20 years later, Heritage is back and public television is taking another risk, this time blazing a trail into the inter- active digital age. Placing the original series at the center of a computer environment, Thirteen has made the innovative interactive product available to the general public: as the Heritage DVD-ROM. A springboard for exploration, this cutting-edge tool not only contains the entire nine-part series but dramatically expands on it. With the click of a mouse, history comesalive through sound, video, graphics, animation, and text. Users can peruse sacred texts and ancient documents, view artifacts and treasures, listen to poetry in forgotten languages and music on archival recordings, and tour lost cities on interactive A groundbreaking public television series covering 6,000 years of civilization is now available in an interactive format. maps. There’s even an encyclopedia of Jewish history. The Heritage DVD-ROM is simple to navigate, putting nearly 6,000 years of civilization within easy reach of students, teachers, and anyone whosepassion for history surpasses the limits of a documentaryfilm. For a preview, visit Thirteen’s interactive Heritage Web site at www.thirteen.org. The Heritage DVD-ROM comes packaged along with an updated version of the original Heritage: Civilization and the Jews series on a three-disc DVD set. The award-winning series is also being released for the first time on VHS, wherever home videos are sold. To mark the return of the landmark series, PBS is encoring Her- itage: Civilization and the Jews in its entirety—the first nationwide broadcast of the nine-hour program since 1986. History really does repeatitself.
