RUSSIANS GRUMBLE ABOUT THEIR TV SHOWS, TOO

They’re short on sitcoms and their news is very straight forward--but they do cover major chess tournaments live .

But then, that might be expected of the Soviet Union’s state-run television broadcasts. What did surprise William Kobin, president and chief executive officer of KCET and part of a public television delegation to the Soviet Union, is that the public there complains about TV, just as Americans do.

“The government gets letters, they get complaints,” Kobin said on his return to Los Angeles Friday. On the one hand, Soviet viewers say their TV “is not serious enough”; on the other, they write that “there’s not enough light entertainment.”

Kobin and his fellow travelers, however, were pleased with both the Soviet television shown them by the representatives of Gostelradio, the state-run radio and TV network, and with the trip itself, which was planned to instigate bilateral trade of programs. Though the Soviets are not interested in selling or buying programs, Kobin said, they are very interested in “exchanging program for program.”

“We’re going to be sending them more programs (to consider) and they’re going to be sending us more programs,” he said. After viewing excerpts from PBS’ “Cosmos,” “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and some jazz and dance shows, among others, the Soviets held onto cassettes of three shows for viewing in their entirety: “Here Come the Puppets” from WQED in Pittsburgh, about an international puppet festival; a WNET/New York program on Picasso, and “New World Vision,” an arts program also from WNET.

The Americans viewed a show about the Bolshoi Ballet and an impressionistic fictional film about a group of clowns who sink into oblivion and work their way back. Kobin’s fellow delegates included the Public Broadcasting Service’s chairman, Alfred R. Stern, its programming chief, Suzanne Weil, and representatives of public-television stations in Boston, Nebraska, Pittsburgh, New York and Maryland.

Overall, Kobin characterized Soviet TV as “media with a mission. It has more of an educational nature than U.S. programming.

“But their range and diversity is less. I really favor the diversity of the U.S. system.”