The Appalachia Educational Laboratory (AEL) developed an instrument for rating the technical quality of television programs. The project was undertaken in conjunction with AEL's Home Oriented Preschool Education (HOPE) program, but sought to produce a generalizable instrument. The final instrument contained a category for judging overall program quality and categories for rating the following 16 specific characteristics of a program: color, lighting, cameras, sets, make-up and costumes, special effects, film segments, edits, transitions, continuity, sound, music, talent, puppets, animation, and graphics. Groups of experienced personnel from commercial and from educational television used the instrument to rate two AEL pilot programs. Correlational analyses of the resulting data showed high positive relationships between the ratings assigned by the two groups, both for the individual categories and for overall program quality. It was concluded that the instrument was reliable, and it was recommended that institutions creating such programs should use such an instrument to rate technical quality as a regular part of the developmental cycle. (PB)