Imagine an episode of your favorite television drama where you can:

· Voice your approval or disapproval of what the characters are doing.
· Interview the characters to learn more about their motivation.
· Question a panel of experts about the moral implications confronting the characters.

Now you’ve got the blueprint for Endgame: Ethics and Values in America, a multi-media special on controversial moral issues.

Endgame: Ethics and Values in America premieres live on PBS Wednesday, September 18, 2002 at 8 pm ET (check local listings). This groundbreaking special enables viewers to enter the lives of fictional characters forced to make critical decisions with profound moral, ethical or social implications. Endgame: Ethics and Values in America fuses dramatic film, interactivity on the Web, sync-to-broadcast technology, and the energy of live television with a studio audience. Viewers are encouraged to confront those gray areas of human experience where serious moral and ethical choices are made.

Endgame: Ethics and Values in America is created by Emmy Award-winning producer Scott Goldstein and hosted by Peabody and Emmy Award-winning journalist Carol Marin. The panel includes nationally known ethicist Michael Josephson and David Kaczynski, brother of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski. David Kaczynski will address the moral conflict between adherence to the law and loyalty to a loved one.

With daily revelations of fraud in corporate boardrooms, scandals in American churches, and plagiarism in our nation’s schools, the program’s focus on ethics and values is timely and important, providing a forum for individuals to explore the boundaries of personal responsibility and accountability.

The idea for Endgame: Ethics and Values in America came out of a conversation between program producer and creator Scott Goldstein and Rudy Giuliani (then a federal prosecutor), about crime and how the process of crime and pursuit seemed endless. 

“I realized then that I wanted to do a show that would deal with the world in terms of what’s right and wrong,” explains Goldstein.  “The motto of this show is to check your politics at the door—Endgame looks at America not in terms of politics, race or generations, but rather in terms of right and wrong and how we get to right and wrong decisions.” 

THE FORMAT 
A fifteen-minute original film poses an ethical dilemma, raising two central questions:

• Is it ever right to disregard the law to serve the greater good?
• Is it ever right to “snitch” on, or turn in, a friend?

At key points in the drama, viewers are invited to vote at www.pbs.org/endgame on the decisions made by the film’s characters, and are asked “What would you do?”

Results are televised live throughout the program, triggering discussion among the panelists, live audience, and home viewers via the Internet.

Host Carol Marin will pose questions relating to the main characters in the film and the characters will respond in previously taped answers. Viewers will also be able to access the pre-taped interviews with the characters after the show at www.pbs.org/endgame .

Stations unable to carry the live program will broadcast from tape. Viewers in those markets will still be able to cast their votes on the characters’ actions and indicate what they would do, with the updated polling data appearing live on Endgame’s Web site. Viewers in markets broadcasting the taped program will not be able to participate in the live studio discussion.

THE WEB SITE
The companion Web site to Endgame: Ethics and Values in America is available at  www.pbs.org/endgame . Prior to the broadcast, visitors will be able to learn more about how they can participate, access background information on the program’s host, panelists, and creators, watch a preview, take a poll, and check out the latest examples of ethics issues in the news.

Once the broadcast begins, the Endgame Web site will host the interactive portion of the program, inviting viewers to vote on the characters’ actions in the drama, indicate what they themselves would do, view live polling results, and contribute to the live, on-air discussion.

After the show, additional site features include a version of the film for viewers who missed the broadcast, discussion boards, aggregate poll results from the broadcast, video of the drama’s primary characters responding to questions about their decisions and actions in the film, experts’ opinions on the subject of ethics and values, and links to related sites and resources. 

THE TECHNOLOGY
In an industry first, Endgame: Ethics and Values in America uses cutting-edge interactive television technology to give television viewers a voice in the live on-air discussion. Utilizing technology from interactive television provider GoldPocket Interactive, host Carol Marin and the show’s producers will be able to immediately propose poll questions that are based on the live discussion, instantly tabulate simultaneous responses from thousands of viewers, and automatically post the results to the entire television viewing audience through on-air overlays.  Marin will also incorporate the results into the live on-air discussion, allowing the American public—for the first time ever—to drive the direction of a live television program.

One of the most innovative applications of real-time convergence, the interactive portions of Endgame: Ethics and Values in America is powered by GoldPocket’s EventMatrix™ technology.  The world’s only real-time, two-way interactive network, the EventMatrix leverages a proprietary real-time processing engine to give Endgame viewers a voice in the ethical discussion.  
 

Endgame: Ethics and Values in America is a co-production of Vulcan Productions (co-producer with WGBH of last year’s critically acclaimed and award-winning Evolution project) and Scott Goldstein Productions. Goldstein (Today Show, L.A. Law, Doogie Howser, M.D.) is the program’s creator/writer. The film is written by Scott Goldstein and Craig Hoffman (The Wonder Years, Murphy Brown, and Dream On). 

Endgame: Ethics and Values in America is funded in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and public television viewers.

Press materials and photography are also available on the PBS Pressroom at www.pbs.org/pressroom.

Vulcan Productions is the independent film production company behind such critically acclaimed projects as Men With Guns (a Sony Pictures Classics release) by John Sayles, Julie Taymor’s Titus (a Fox Searchlight release starring Jessica Lange and Anthony Hopkins), and the forthcoming Coastlines by Victor Nunez. Founded by investor and philanthropist Paul G. Allen in 1997, and under the direction of President Jody Patton, Vulcan Productions originates, develops and finances motion pictures and documentaries of substance and enduring significance. Vulcan and WGBH co-produced the award-winning PBS documentaries Evolution and NOVA’s Cracking the Code of Life.  Vulcan also produced Michael Apted’s complementary films Inspirations and Me & Isaac Newton. For more information visit www.vulcan.com.

Scott Goldstein Productions focuses on creating new forms of entertainment and education by fusing journalism and drama.  Started by Scott Goldstein, the company produced a two-hour television special in collaboration with the Museum of Television and Radio, Science Fiction: A Journey Into the Unknown for Fox.  Mr. Goldstein began his career in local television news, eventually serving as the producer for the Today Show.  He served as producer of L.A. Law for NBC, then produced and directed multiple episodes of Doogie Howser, M.D.  Goldstein created most of the core multimedia exhibits for the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles.  For more information visit www.goldsteinproductions.com. 

With over 75% market share, Los Angeles-based GoldPocket Interactive (www.goldpocket.com) is the leading provider of two-way interactive programming for set-top boxes, PCs, and wireless devices.  The privately held company’s technologies and tools automate iTV content production and distribution to reduce costs and create greater value for television producers, networks, advertisers, and cable and satellite operators.  GoldPocket has produced more than 3,000 hours of iTV programming for major broadcast and cable networks including CBS, Fox, Sony, The WB, Game Show Network, TBS Superstation, FremantleMedia, Comedy Central, Discovery Networks, Cinemax, and Bravo.  

Tree Media Group is a woman-owned California corporation formed in 1998. Tree Media Group is a digital development and production company that works with various organizations and media companies to transform content across all media. Their technology and global connections foster social and cultural exchanges that range from international political dialogues to digital filmscapes. Tree Media Group is headquartered in Santa Monica, California. They handle every aspect of the development process from design and information architecture, to programming, systems integration and project management.

PBS, headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia, is a private, nonprofit media enterprise owned and operated by the nation’s 349 public television stations. Serving nearly 90 million people each week, PBS enriches the lives of all Americans through quality programs and education services on noncommercial television, the Internet and other media. More information about PBS is available at www.pbs.org, the leading dot-org Web site on the Internet.

CPB, a private, nonprofit corporation created by Congress in 1967, develops educational public radio, television and online services for the American people. The Corporation is the industry’s largest single source of funds for national public television and radio program development and production. CPB, a grant making organization, funds more than 1,000 public radio and television stations. Visit www.cpb.org for more information.
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