KCET PLANS NATIONAL PBS PROJECTS

When KCET paid off its bank debt last June, the public-TV station officially closed the book on the economic crisis that had crippled it in 1982, and from which it had been recovering ever since.

Six months later, it is clear that Channel 28 has moved beyond the mending process into areas of new growth.

Even before the recent announcement that the station would be launching an ambitious weekly series and a nightly news feature about local issues in January, the evidence of this expansion was on the national PBS schedule in the form of two documentaries that aired last fall.

Under previous management, KCET produced an occasional “Cousteau” or “Cosmos” series for PBS, but it primarily was known, because of its location in Hollywood, for producing drama--”Hollywood Television Theater,” “Visions,” “Meeting of the Minds.”

And in rebuilding the national programming department that was virtually wiped out in the cutbacks of nearly five years ago, the new management continued to give drama top priority, with such productions as “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” “Wings” and “Paper Angels.”

But it was public-affairs programming that got KCET on the PBS schedule in September and October: “Fighting Terrorism: A National Security View,” a look at how the government might handle an international terrorist incident, and “Hungary: Pushing the Limits,” a report on that nation 30 years after the Hungarian revolution.

The development of these documentaries was part of a planned broadening of KCET’s interests, said Phylis Geller, vice president of national productions.

“Our mandate is to provide the PBS national schedule with solid, high-visibility, excellent-quality programming. We see no need to narrow ourselves by categories,” she explained in an interview.

To oversee this new area of activity, Geller hired Blaine Baggett 14 months ago as executive producer of public affairs. He had produced such documentaries as “From Blitzkrieg to the Bomb” and the critically acclaimed PBS series “Spaceflight,” about the history of the U. S. space program, and had previously worked at PBS.

“He clearly had the background and the talent to hit the track running,” Geller said recently, and that’s just what he did.

Besides “Fighting Terrorism,” which he co-produced, and “Hungary,” of which he was executive producer, Baggett has commitments to co-produce with Boston station WGBH a documentary for the “Nova” series about spy technology and to co-produce with the BBC an eight-part series called “Discoveries Underwater,” about underwater archeology.

“It seems clear we’re beginning to emerge as an important resource for national public-affairs programming for PBS,” says Baggett, a 35-year-old native of Mississippi.

His assessment is echoed by Suzanne Weil, vice president of programming at PBS. “From PBS’ point of view, it’s one of the most welcome things that’s happened in the last 10 years,” she said of the emergence of Baggett’s department at KCET. “There are very few public-affairs producers in the system. A lot of stations do occasional documentaries, but most of ours come out of Boston. Seattle does some, but there’s been a big hole on the West Coast.”

Baggett said that while KCET is not gearing itself to fill any particular niche, the focus now is on international affairs and science.

On the drawing boards and making the rounds in search of production money, he reported, are proposals for a four-part series about the Philippines to be produced by some of the principals i1853255532television’s “Vietnam” series; an eight-part series on the latest developments and discoveries in the field of astronomy; an eight-part series about relations between the United States and England in the 20th Century to be co-produced with the BBC; a series on how the media shape public views about the nation’s purported enemies, based on the book “Faces of the Enemy” by Sam Keen; a documentary about present-day Iran, and a series on the politics of food.

“The fact there are so many things going on there is quite remarkable,” observed Barry Chase, vice president for news and public affairs programming at PBS. “We’ve known Blaine (Baggett) a long time and we know how talented he is, but we also know how difficult it is to get the machinery up and running.”

Baggett has a special interest in the proposed astronomy series, and not merely because of his previous involvement with “Spaceflight.” He is among those whom NASA is considering to become the first journalist to fly in a Space Shuttle when the program resumes.

The project he most wants to do, however, is “Secret Intelligence,” a four-part series that would provide what he describes as “a comprehensive look at intelligence activities in America in the 20th Century.” Individual programs would look at the purposes of spying and how it is done, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the counterintelligence efforts mounted by other countries, among them the Soviet Union and Israel.

“We’re not going to go into every spy case,” he said. “What we want to do is make people understand this murky world--what the organizations are and how they work.”

Although the unfolding Iran arms deal would suggest that the idea for the series was hatched recently, Baggett actually conceived it well before coming to KCET and already has conducted about 20 interviews under a $100,000 development grant from PBS.

Still, he said, the sales presentation film he made to drum up additional financial support from other public-TV stations last month “is definitely out of date. We had said there that the Yurchenko case had been the biggest challenge to date for (William) Casey and the CIA, but that’s starting to pale rapidly. It just shows again why the series should be done.”

He isn’t the only one who thought so. At the recent PBS Program Fair, at which stations look at proposals for future series to fund, WETA-TV in Washington also suggested a series on U.S. intelligence.

Stations are making up their minds now about which, if either, to support. Their final decisions aren’t due until February, but Baggett said a preliminary tally taken to indicate preferences showed strong support for the KCET version.

Even if the series doesn’t get made, however, it will have played a significant role in Baggett’s life. It was part of the currency that led him to trade his independent-production stripes for the post at KCET.

Baggett explained that at the time Geller and KCET President William Kobin approached him about moving to KCET, he had been shopping the “Secret Intelligence” proposal around without success. He asked what they thought of it and was told it was exactly the kind of project they wanted Channel 28 to do.

“Having that kind of reaction from senior management to something that would tackle hard issues, that might be controversial, makes this the kind of place where I want to be,” he said.