Three directors guided the Medical Educational Resources Program (MERP) in its early years. Seymour Friedberg, MD, served as the first director from 1966 to 1971; Elmer Friman served from 1971 to 1978; and Beverly Hill served as the third director from 1981 to 2001. The context that allowed MERP to operate, expand its statewide outreach and achieve its early successes is outlined below.
Instructional Television Fixed Service (ITFS)
The Indiana University School of Medicine created MERP in 1967 as part of the Indiana Plan to improve the availability and quality of educational opportunities for medical students and practicing physicians statewide. MERP’s dual mission was to produce and distribute curriculum support materials and continuing medical education (CME). Technology quickly became central to fulfilling both missions.
Film and television production each contributed to MERP’s goals, with broadcast television becoming dominant once MERP was fully staffed and equipped. Distributing videotaped materials to lecture halls and classrooms across multiple buildings on the medical campus required installing — often by hand — miles of video and audio cables through the tunnel system. Delivering CME to off-campus physicians across the state presented an even greater challenge.
Indiana’s state universities helped meet this challenge by pioneering a statewide telecommunications network of leased telephone lines: the Indiana Higher Education Telecommunications System (IHETS). In addition to distributing courses to university campuses, IU School of Medicine owned and operated an Instructional Television Fixed Service (ITFS) station that made CME programming available to all Indianapolis hospitals. ITFS was not a genre of instructional television — it was the technology that delivered televised instruction. Indiana University’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) licensed ITFS station, WAT 21, was installed and operated by the IU School of Medicine in Indianapolis. Its purpose was to make CME programming accessible to physicians at hospitals within a 25-mile radius of the transmitter, located on the roof of University Hospital. Each hospital used a downconverter to transform the microwave signal for viewing on a standard television monitor.
By the mid-1970s, three additional ITFS stations began operating in Dyer, Evansville and New Albany, extending the reach of televised CME to 12 more hospitals — six in Lake County in the north and six along the Ohio River in the south.
WAT 21’s programming would have remained limited to Indianapolis hospitals without IHETS, which the Indiana General Assembly also established in 1967.
The FCC originally authorized ITFS in 1963 as a one-way, analog, line-of-sight technology. Installations typically include multiple transmitters multiplexed through a single antenna with directional receive antennas at partner sites. Receivers downconverted the microwave channels for distribution over closed-circuit systems to classrooms.
ITFS comprises 31 educational television channels in the 2500–2690 megahertz range, reserved by the FCC for instructional use. The FCC defines ITFS as “a fixed station operated by an educational organization and used primarily for the transmission of visual and aural instructional, cultural, and other types of educational material to one or more fixed receiving locations.” William J. Kessler emphasized the distinction: “ITFS is … a multi-channel, multiple-address, point-to-point system providing transmission — not broadcasting — to any reasonable number of fixed locations … cooperating in a bona fide educational effort.”
Indiana Higher Education Telecommunications System (IHETS)
In 1967, the Indiana General Assembly passed H1819, creating and funding IHETS to make higher education more accessible throughout the state. The legislation authorized state universities to create a statewide closed-circuit telecommunications system, including television, to serve the main and selected regional campuses of Purdue University, Indiana University, Indiana State University and Ball State University.
IHETS was headquartered in Indianapolis and transmitted televised courses via leased telephone lines. Many of its key staff previously worked at Purdue. One example of IU–Purdue collaboration involved IU School of Medicine transmitting Purdue engineering courses to Indianapolis industries via WAT 21, while IHETS transmissions enabled CME programs from IU School of Medicine to reach hospitals in Lafayette.
IHETS also carried satellite-originated intrastate teleconferences to areas without satellite reception capabilities.
MERP became a key component of IHETS, demonstrating ITFS’s application in medical education. Since 1967, MERP had provided videotaped programming to multiple institutions. Beginning in late 1969, MERP expanded its capabilities to relay videotaped programming to more distant institutions that previously relied on mailed tapes. Working through IHETS, MERP anticipated developing an Indiana Medical Television Network to further extend CME programming statewide.
WAT 21
The following excerpt from an April 20, 1978, memo by Sharon Greene, WAT 21 station manager, explains how the WAT 21 network operated for new hospital partners in New Albany, Jeffersonville and Evansville:
“MERP’s WAT 21 is an Instructional Television Fixed Service (ITFS) station serving a 25-mile radius of University Hospital in Indianapolis (microwave signal). The WAT 21 signal gets from Indianapolis to Evansville (the Indiana State regional campus) and New Albany (IU Southeast) via telephone lines leased by the state’s universities shared network. The Indiana Higher Education Telecommunications System (IHETS) ITFS stations at each of these locations retransmit the WAT 21 signal (via microwave), and it is picked up at each hospital by means of a receive dish.
Remote on/off equipment is being installed so that the two southern Indiana ITFS stations can be switched on and off from Indianapolis. Once this installation is complete, WAT 21’s daily medical telecasts will be available to you. Mid-May (possibly sooner) has been given as the probable completion date.”
This background information was made possible through the expertise and guidance of Sharon Chenoweth Greene, who provided essential historical knowledge and carefully crafted language to ensure accuracy. We are grateful for her contributions.
Sharon served as TV Production Assistant (1968 -1974) and WAT 21 Station Manager (1974 - 1980) for the Medical Television Facility within the Medical Educational Resources Program.
