PBS CHIEF CALLS CABLE ‘A MONOPOLY’

Public television has joined the groundswell of complaint against the cable-TV industry, with Public Broadcasting Service President Bruce Christensen decrying cable operators who have dropped PBS stations from their systems.

Christensen, kicking off the PBS portion of ongoing press presentations at the Century Plaza Hotel, Sunday called the cable industry “a monopoly” that can “decide when and where large portions of the American people will be able to receive public-television services.”

At issue is the demise of federal “must-carry” statutes that required cable systems to carry local broadcast signals. In the absence of those requirements, 130 public-television stations have been dropped by cable systems, according to Peter Fannon, president of the National Assn. of Public Television Stations, the noncommercial stations’ Washington-based lobbying body.

Related relaxation of cable rules also is making it possible for Southern California cable systems to move Los Angeles PBS station KCET out of the No. 6 position on the cable box, where it typically can be found. Instead, KCET President William Kobin said, the station could be moved to position 28, its actual channel.

The move would undo the benefit of the UHF-band station being readily accessible on the cable box, right next to the three major networks, he said.

PBS’ sharp-tongued complaints against cable and the Federal Communications Commission echoed remarks made last week just steps away at the Century Plaza during a gathering of the Assn. of Independent Television Stations. Independent broadcasters likewise believe that cable’s monopolistic practices threaten their livelihood.

The cable-caused woes come at a time when Christensen could offer some rare good news on the funding front: the establishment of a $20-million challenge fund by public television and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The fund will help produce “major American programs” for PBS, he said.

Christensen said that he is hopeful that PBS will be able to increase its spending on programs for its national broadcast schedule from $200 million to $300 million this year.

Christensen blamed the FCC for the must-carry problems. The commission “abdicated its public-service responsibility in not moving forward on strong must-carry rules for public television,” he said.

Fannon said that the FCC is about to reconsider the rulings.

On the programming front, new PBS specials and series announced included several new offerings for children, a powerful six-part series on the civil-rights movement, the return of the original episodes of “Upstairs, Downstairs” and the documentary “Shoah,” Claude Lanzmann’s painstaking series of interviews with survivors of and participants in the Nazi extermination of Jews during World War II.

PBS programming vice president Suzanne Weil said that protests were expected leading up to “Shoah’s” four-part airing in the spring, most likely from Polish-American organizations concerned with Lanzmann’s occasional look at Poles who aided the Nazi effort. Weil said that one formal complaint already had been received, but she declined to name its source.

“Shoah,” however, has had successful airings throughout Europe, including Poland and Germany, she noted. The 9 1/2-hour film also was presented theatrically last year in this country.

PBS and sponsoring WNET-TV in New York are still raising approximately $100,000 needed for the “Shoah” presentation.

“It was clear to me that it was important that it be seen on television, on a mass medium,” Weil said of the decision to obtain rights to the film.

The nation’s TV critics, into their second week of presentations by the three major networks, Home Box Office and PBS, on Sunday also heard a manic Robin Williams hold forth during a question-and-answer session about his role in “Great Performances’ ” presentation of Saul Bellow’s “Seize the Day,” in which he stars.

In a rare serious moment, Williams said that, “Yeah, I feel I was stretched” by his portrayal of Tommy in the Bellow work, a character so depressing that “he makes Willy Loman look like Andrew Carnegie.”

Williams characterized “Seize the Day” as “a kind of Jewish Greek drama”--and then went on to bounce off questions with impersonations of Jimmy Stewart (who was too ill to attend in person to talk about a “Great Performances” tribute to him March 13, hosted by Johnny Carson), off-color humor (much of it having to do with the issue of frontal nudity, which is being edited out of another “Great Performances” offering, John Fowles’ “Ebony Tower,” starring Lord Laurence Olivier) and political jibes (“. . . We’re only going to make a little incision, Mr. Casey. . . .”).