New Web site offers opportunity to support PBS program about adoption

New Web site offers opportunity to support PBS program about adoption

http://www.adoptionfilm.org

BOSTON, MA, AUGUST 4, 2005

Individuals eager to see an honest, balanced portrayal of adoption on
television now have the opportunity to be a part of the process to
make it happen, with the launch of AdoptionFilm, org, a Web site
intended to attract individual support for a proposed documentary.
Adoption: An American Revolution (working title), is a special project
for national public television broadcast that will include a two-hour
film, an extensive Web site and an ambitious outreach campaign to
schools and communities. The film will use interviews with adoptive
and birth parents and extended families, with adopted children and
adults, and adoption professionals and experts to explore the major
impact that adoption is having on private and public life in America.

Program producer WGBH has already secured partial funding for the
project from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and the
Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), but that grant came with a
deadline: final funding needs to be in place by the end of 2005. So
WGBH is turning directly to viewers for the support needed to produce
the project, recognizing that the real story of how adoption is
changing America has the potential to appeal to the millions of
Americans who are directly affected. One-third of people in the US now
have someone in their family who was adopted, and many more have
friends and neighbors who were adopted.

The project’s executive producer, Judith Vecchione, calls this “a
revolution in adoption” and points to huge changes in Americans’
attitudes towards adoption -- from a time, not so long ago, when some
parents lied to their own children about being adopted, to today’s
view of adoption as another wonderful way to form a family. “But these
changes are rarely reflected in the media, which still portrays
adoption with negative stereotypes and shows like ‘Who’s Your Daddy?’”
she says. “We want to bring to our viewers the real story of adoption
in the US today.”

Visitors to http://www.adoptionfilm.org can:

Learn more about the fundraising effort and the entire “Adoption: An
American Revolution” project;

Meet some of the “Faces of Adoption” and add your own;

Read the “Filmmakers’ Journal” for a behind-the-scenes look at how
public television programs are developed;

Make a secure donation to support the production of “Adoption: An
American Revolution;”

Follow our progress by signing up for our e-mail newsletter;

Help us “Spread the Word” by sending information on the project to
others you think might be interested, or use our toolkit to establish
a link to AdoptionFilm. org.

"We’re very excited about this new opportunity, “ says WGBH Vice
President and Chief Operating Officer Jon Abbott. “Funding from
viewers has always been critically important to sustaining public
television at both the local and the national level, but we've never
had a mechanism for our broad range of viewers to directly support
production of new programs. Now viewers can add their contributions
in any amount -- to the projects that matter most to them.

WGBH Boston is America's preeminent public broadcasting producer, the
source of fully one-third of PBS's prime-time lineup, along with some
of public television's best-known lifestyle shows and children's
programs and many public radio favorites. Its production menu is
diverse, including Nova, Frontline, American Experience, Antiques
Roadshow, Masterpiece Theatre, Arthur, and Zoom on PBS and The World
and Sound & Spirit on public radio. WGBH has been recognized with
hundreds of honors: Emmys, Peabodys, duPont-Columbia Awards…even two
Oscars.

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Contacts:

Lisa Cerqueira

Senior Publicist

WGBH Boston



(617) 300-5334
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