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In 1977, the Rockefeller Foundation brought together in Bellagio, Italy, a group of concerned public service broadcasters from ten European and North American countries. Not satisfied with the images carried across national borders by the popular entertainment programs, the group sought a new channel on international communication, one that would foster the exchange of programs and ideas. They sought a means to address their concerns: to vary the images we have of each other—through an exchange of our television programs—and to present to each other a more accurate representation of our respective cultures. The objective was a deeper understanding created through the celebration of our differences and a closer working relationship built upon our commonalities.

The result of the Bellagio meeting was the formation of INPUT, the International Public Television Screening Conference. Since that time, annual INPUT Screening conferences have been held in the following locations:

Milan, Italy 1978
Milan, Italy 1979
Washington, DC, USA 1980
Venice, Italy 1981
Toronto, Canada 1982
Liege, Belgium 1983
Charleston, SC, USA 1984
Marseille, France 1985
Montreal, Canada 1986
Granada, Spain 1987
Philadelphia, PA, USA 1988
Stockholm, Sweden 1989
Edmonton, Canada 1990
Dublin, Ireland 1991
Baltimore, MD, USA 1992
Bristol, England, UK 1993
Montreal, Canada 1994
San Sebastian, Spain 1995
Guadalajara, Mexico 1996
Nantes, France 1997
Stuttgart, Germany 1998
Ft. Worth, Texas 1999
Halifax, Nova Scotia 2000
Cape Town, South Africa 2001
Rotterdam, The Netherlands 2002
Aarhus, Denmark 2003
Barcelona, Spain 2004

During these twenty-seven years, delegates from many public television organizations as well as independent film and television professionals from all corners of the world have attended INPUT.

Countries represented in past years include the following:

Argentina	Armenia	Australia
Austria	Belgium	Benin
Bosnia/Herzegovina	Brazil	Bulgaria
Burkina	Faso	Cameroon
Canada	Central African Republic	Chile
China	Colombia	Czech Republic
Denmark	Dominican Republic	Eastonia
Finland	France	Georgia
Germany	Ghana	Greece
Hungary	Iceland	India
Indonesia	Ireland	Japan
Kazakhstan	Kirghizia	Latvia
Lithuania	Luxembourg	Malaysia
Mexico	Moldavia	Mongolia
Nepal	Netherlands	Northern Ireland
Norway	Pakistan	Palestine
Panama	Poland	Russian Federation
Senegal	Slovakia	Slovenia
South Africa	South Korea	Spain
SriLanka	Sweden	Switzerland
Taiwan	Tanzania	Togo
Trinidad/Tobago	Ukraine	United Kingdom
USA	Venezuela	Yugoslavia
Zimbabwe

INPUT's purpose is to seek and open international channels of communication so that public service television professionals throughout the world can understand each other's work and develop relationships to improve their art, craft, and purpose. INPUT is a unique opportunity for working professionals to look beyond national borders and local horizons to find new perspectives, techniques, and ideas. It is not a market, a festival, or an awards competition. It is, rather, an immersion in ideas of professional excellence directed towards the ideals of understanding the impact of television programs on the people of all places.

The INPUT conference, held once a year alternately in Europe and North America, is now an established institution within public service broadcasting. The INPUT conferences since 1984 have opened the door for many American delegates with varying backgrounds and experiences to new production techniques, new points of view, new ideas for programming, and new perceptions of how other nations view America.

INPUT '05, the twenty-eighth annual screening conference hosted by the Independent Television Service (ITVS), will be held May 1 - 6, 2004 in San Francisco, California (USA). This year's conference will call together 1000 or more participants from thirty to forty countries for a frank exchange of views on the programs they are currently making and distributing.

The participants in INPUT '05 will spend a week screening over ninety hours of the most interesting and innovative television programs produced around the world. This will generate a lively interchange of discussion and criticism, proposals and counter proposals, positives and negatives in international programming trends.

INPUT has no paid staff. It is organized and conducted entirely through the voluntary efforts of its International Board of Directors and its many friends and supporters.

Historically the costs of INPUT have been borne primarily by the public broadcasting organizations of Europe, Canada, and—to some extent—the United States through subsidizing the travel costs for their producers and programmers to attend the Conference, absorbing the costs of subtitling the programs in English (the official language of INPUT), granting time and expenses to their executives who organize the conferences, assisting in program collection and selection, and hosting the various conferences to date.

Since 1984, the South Carolina Educational Television Commissison (ETV) has served as the U.S. INPUT Secretariat.

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For more information about INPUT, contact:
Terry Pound
Voice: (803) 737-3434
Fax: (803) 737-3505
E-mail:pound@scetv.org

or

Amy Shumaker
Voice: (803) 737-3433
Fax: (803) 737-3274
E-mail:shumaker@scetv.org