KCET to Expand ’87 Programming With Two News Programs

Local programming at KCET Channel 28, nearly dormant in recent months, will blossom in January when the station adds a nightly news feature and a weekly series to its program schedule, executives at the public television station said Wednesday.

Station officials said that Channel 28 will begin airing a five-minute public-affairs program called “7:30” Jan. 5, to air weeknights at 7:30 p.m., with a repeat at about 11 p.m. (the latter time slot will vary, depending on when the program ahead of it concludes).

On Jan. 10, KCET will debut “California Stories,” a weekly, half-hour series that station officials said will cover a broad range of subject matter--from documentaries on controversial issues to profiles of interesting people to entertainment-performance programs. Twenty-four programs, each devoted to a single subject, are planned between January and the end of June.

The two series represent an attempt by KCET to increase the quantity, frequency, topicality and breadth of its local programming, said William Kobin, Channel 28’s president.

He and Stephen Kulczycki, vice president of programming, acknowledged that only a few local programs had been broadcast in the last few months because the station was concentrating its relatively limited resources on the new ventures.

At a news conference to announce the plans, Kobin said he considered the introduction of “7:30,” even though only five minutes long, to be “very significant” because it marks the first time since he took over nearly four years ago that local programming will have a daily presence in Channel 28’s broadcast schedule.

“We have been expanding; our budget is 60% larger than four years ago,” Kobin said. “Our goal is to strengthen our schedule with good programming, and we’d like to make as many of those programs as possible.”

Kobin joined the station in January, 1983, after KCET had gone through a wrenching year of layoffs and programming cutbacks. He and Kulczycki, whom he brought in from KTCA in St. Paul-Minneapolis, quickly decided that the resources did not exist for the station to continue trying to mount even weekly local series.

As the budget has grown, the station has stepped up its local efforts with irregularly scheduled series such as “KCET Journal,” “Videolog,” “Arts Illustrated” and “Turning Points.” Kulczycki said the new series are an evolution of those efforts.

“KCET Journal,” the umbrella title for the station’s occasional hourlong documentaries, will continue at a pace of about four per year, Kulczycki said, but “Arts Illustrated” and “Turning Points” are being folded into “California Stories.”

Scheduled immediately after “The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour,” “7:30” will consist of headlines of the day’s top local news stories, followed by a feature segment of about 3 1/2 minutes that will report on a local issue, trying to flesh it out with more background and perspective than it might have received on a commercial station’s newscast.

“We’re not going to blow anyone out with our ability to go live; we’re not about events coverage,” said Jim Kennedy, a former producer at KCBS-TV Channel 2 who is the executive producer of the two new KCET series. “But we can seek out and help provide some thoughtful, challenging context for many of the events here in Southern California.”

The series will be reported and anchored on an alternating basis by Jane Petroff, formerly a producer and reporter at public TV station WNET in New York, and Victor Abalos, most recently a producer and reporter at public-TV station KUAT in Tucson. Overseeing them as senior producer will be Jeffrey Kaye, a six-year veteran at KCET who reports on Southern California for “The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour.”

Asked whether “7:30” could be the precursor to a daily, half-hour, local program, Kulczycki said, “It’s fair to say that a whole set of opportunities are in front of us if we are successful.”

“I would love to do a daily, half-hour program,” Kobin added, “but the economics of that are just out of the question right now.”

Like “7:30,” “California Stories” will be produced by KCET’s news and current affairs department. “We are looking at this series to be as diverse and as wide-ranging as our entire program schedule,” Kulczycki said--involving “issues and ideas, the human experience and artistic expression.”

Scheduled for Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., the series will begin with a documentary about how technology and toxic waste are endangering Southern California’s coastal waters. That will be followed Jan. 17 by a report on the strained relations between Korean immigrants and blacks in South-Central Los Angeles.

Other “California Stories” in the works include a look at the biochemistry of the human brain, a performance by the improvisational comedy troupe the Groundlings, an historical piece about women playing professional baseball during World War II and programs about mental illness, agriculture and art.

Tom Thompson, director of news and current affairs for KCET, said that only a handful of positions had been added for the new programs, explaining that existing staff had been spread among them. He said he did not expect the quality of the station’s well-regarded “KCET Journal” documentaries to suffer, however.

Executive producer Kennedy joined KCET earlier this year after seven years at KCBS, where he was a producer and writer for the news department’s special projects and investigative unit and, more recently, was executive producer of the documentary and public affairs unit. He has a film degree from UCLA and, prior to joining Channel 2, worked independently as a documentary producer, writer and editor.