PONDERING Z CHANNEL’S FUTURE

For the fourth time this decade, Jerry Harvey is wondering what the future holds for Z Channel--the cable programming service he helped make popular.

The consortium that bought Group W--which owns the Z Channel--a year ago, announced Thursday that the service was up for sale. Group W Cable executive Joel Cohen said Monday that “a lot of people came out of the woodwork” since then. There are at least six serious parties, Cohen said, including more than one theater chain and some independent movie producers. The new owner will be Z’s fifth.

“I am optimistic,” Harvey reported from his office in Santa Monica, where Z began under the auspices of the Theta-Hughes cable franchise in 1974. “I would like to see the service expand,” he added, referring to prospects for Z being cable-fed to systems beyond those in Southern California, the only place it is available.

And he “absolutely” wants to see the service maintain the pioneering programming efforts many industry observers credit Harvey with bringing to Z since he signed on in 1980.

“The Z Channel fosters visual literacy,” contends Emily Laskin, director of national education programs at the American Film Institute. “It should be offered to everyone in the country.” Laskin has put together an AFI salute to Z Channel that will take place on Jan. 31, the same night that Harvey has programmed the debut of the painstakingly reconstructed version of the film “Isadora.”

The cable screening is a typical Harvey coup. “Isadora,” starring Vanessa Redgrave and Jason Robards, had a one-week run in theaters in 1968 to qualify for Academy Award consideration. It was then pulled from distribution, cut from 2 hours and 58 minutes to 2 hours and 12 minutes, and reissued as “Loves of Isadora.”

“We put it back together,” said Harvey, who earlier had programmed art films at the Beverly Canon Theater and had put in a stint at the Select pay service. Along with Ned Nalle of Universal Pictures, the original distributor, Harvey has reconstructed the film in its original form.

Harvey went on a similar sentimental journey in 1982, when he twisted MGM executives’ arms and managed the first uncut cable version of “Heaven’s Gate.” The financially bloated Michael Cimino Western had played in its original 3-hour, 40-minute form for only a week in 1980.

Programming events like that make Laskin and other film buffs gush: “The AFI really supports the same mandates behind why the Z Channel does what it does. They show films in their entirety. They show films that didn’t get wide distribution. They show films that didn’t get any distribution.

“We wanted to show our support for their support of the film maker,” she said, explaining AFI’s decision to fete Z Channel.

Other industry observers note that the Movie Channel copied Z’s weekly programming approach, by which a hand-picked lineup of movies is shown for one week only. Normal pay-cable programming has the same bunch of films scattered over a full month’s schedule.

But those same observers suggest that, despite the kudos heaped on Z, its brightest hope may be to remain a well-respected regional service.

The state of the cable business is such that system operators in Topeka or Houston or New York may not be willing to pay for a service in addition to Showtime or Home Box Office or the Movie Channel or Cinemax.

“Right now there are probably more pay services than are going to be marketable,” said an executive with one of the Los Angeles-area cable systems that carries Z Channel. “Even though Z Channel is one of the most excellent channels available, convincing a cable operator to take it is impossible,” said the executive, who requested anonymity.

The kind of investment it would take to market Z Channel on an expanded national basis is exactly what Group W’s new owners wanted to avoid. They are all major cable system operators, heavily into hardware not software.

Even Harvey admits that Z Channel is not for cable subscribers everywhere. “I think it could certainly play in major cities,” he said. “Anywhere where people love movies, where there are revival houses.”

Whichever way Z Channel goes, Harvey will continue to think of it as a place where he can indulge his own taste in film--and find plenty of like-minded subscribers.

“I like to look at it as the Museum of Modern Art with a sense of humor.”