Milken Plans Cable TV Education Network : Securities: The former junk bond king also says his foundations will fund a study of universities’ role in the inner city.

In his first major public appearance since his release from prison nearly three months ago, former junk bond king Michael Milken announced Thursday that his family foundations will launch a cable television education network with the help of singer Michael Jackson and several corporate partners.

In addition, the foundations will fund a commission to study how universities can help the deteriorating inner cities where so many of them are located, Milken told an openly affectionate audience of about 800 educators and business executives attending a Los Angeles education conference sponsored by the foundations. The centerpiece of the three-day conference is the awarding of $25,000 prizes to 120 elementary and secondary educators from 20 states.

But neither effort is part of Milken’s three-year community service program--a court-mandated term that remains secret and may or may not be relaxed in view of Milken’s recent diagnosis of prostate cancer.

Milken has declined to talk about the 1,800-hour-a-year program, which is being reviewed by Judge Kimba Wood, who sentenced the former Drexel Burnham Lambert executive.

Milken, looking healthy and relaxed in a crisp blue shirt and suit, worked the crowd like a popular college professor armed with slides, sci-fi movie clips and a series of anecdotes designed to explain his view of the worlds of education and business. Milken sprinkled the nearly two-hour speech with lighthearted references to his legal troubles.

“I was a little detained for the past couple of years,” Milken quipped during the talk, which was punctuated by two standing ovations from an audience that included such diverse types as Jackson, TV sexologist Dr. Ruth Westheimer, former football star Rosey Grier, Mirage Resorts Chairman Steve Wynn and Los Angeles Urban League President John W. Mack.

But Milken turned serious when discussing the problems facing educators and business in the United States. “The challenge to the United States in the near future will be from within, not from without,” Milken said. The nation shouldn’t worry about attack from foreign armies as much as internal problems, because “our military attack is occurring in the inner cities every day.”

Calling on universities and corporations to develop partnerships with depressed inner-city communities, Milken said the Milken Institute for Job and Capital Formation will create a national commission to conduct a two-year study of possible solutions to urban problems through such alliances.

“The leading centers of learning are located in the same places that are the least desirable places to live,” including USC and Yale, Milken said. “There’s quite a challenge in front of some of these schools in letting the neighborhood know that (the university) is part of the neighborhood.”

Education will also be the heart of the foundation’s planned Education Entertainment Network, Milken said. The foundation hopes to start the cable TV network during the next three or four years and is looking for partners from the areas of communications, technology, entertainment and education, he said.

Michael Jackson has already signed up, Milken said in an interview after the speech, and the network will eventually support a paid staff. Milken did not say how much it will cost to launch the network.

He insisted that such visible work on the part of education is not an attempt to repair his image as financier-turned-felon.

“I don’t think that’s it at all,” Milken said. “You don’t get into something for publicity. You do something because you love it. This is something I have a passion for.”