ON JANUARY 26, 1967, the New York Times devoted a good part of a column on page one (and almost an entire inside page) to the report of the Carnegie Commission on Educational Television. The usually sober James Reston was rhapsodic: “The Carnegie Commission’s report on the future of public television,” he wrote, “is one of the quiet events that, in the perspective of a generation or even more, may be recognized as one of the transforming occasions in American life.” And he concluded: “What happens to this report will determine what comes over the TV into most of the homes of the nation in the coming years.”