‘WEEK IN REVIEW’ READY FOR ITS 20TH BIRTHDAY

Every Sunday, when major-issue talk shows air from Washington, one hears the crisp articulations of CBS’ Lesley Stahl, the dulcet tones of ABC’s Sam Donaldson, the basso profundities of NBC’s Marvin Kalb.

Such broadcasting skills are not part of PBS’ “Washington Week in Review,” however. It uses only print reporters as panelists. No television folk need apply.

It’s just as well. They’d be trampled by certain scribes who may yawn while marching in Washington’s daily parade of power but campaign for a “Week” invitation with all the ardor of a moth that just met its first light bulb.

It’s not that the program scorns members of the electronic Fourth Estate, says Paul Duke, moderator of “Week” since 1974. The use of print reporters simply “has been a tradition that took hold when the show began.”

Tonight, this half-hour program, produced by WETA-TV in Washington and aired live each Friday night, will celebrate its 20th anniversary--a milestone, it says, never before reached by any national public-TV series.

Now, as in 1967, the intent is to offer analysis of the week’s major stories by reporters, not commentary by columnists, according to executive producer Ricki Green. “We want to be objective,” she says.

This is somewhat different from, say, the syndicated “The McLaughlin Group,” where journalists are encouraged to have a good bellow.

“Washington Week in Review” is carried by 285 PBS stations, either live or on a tape-delay basis. In Southern California, it airs Fridays at 7 p.m. on Channel 24, at 7:30 p.m. on Channel 50 and at 8 p.m. on Channels 28 and 15.

The program originally was moderated by Max Kampelman, now President Reagan’s chief arms control negotiator in Geneva, and featured a regular crew of reporters. One of the original panelists--Charles Corddry of the Baltimore Sun--still appears on the show.

In 1976, Duke says, the program adopted a rotational system, drawing four to five panelists a week from a pool of eight to 10 top Washington reporters from major publications, with guest experts summoned as the need arises.

The semiregulars now include Georgie Anne Geyer of the Universal Press Syndicate, Haynes Johnson of the Washington Post, Hedrick Smith of the New York Times and Jack Nelson of the Los Angeles Times.

There’s also a Virginia delegate, described by Green as a favorite of viewers--Charles McDowell of the Richmond Times Dispatch. His manner is old-shoe, his knowledge of government widely respected and he is not known as the sort of Washington correspondent who begins each day with a harrumph.

McDowell, a medium-sized, bespectacled man born in Kentucky and raised in Lexington, Va., was picked for “Week” nine years ago.

“I think they were looking for a Designated Provincial,” he explains.

Although as wise in the ways of Washington as his colleagues from the larger publications, he serves as the program’s Everyman, Green says. When the news analysis gets somewhat rarefied and awash with inside information, he poses questions that a civilian might ask.

He laughs when asked if there are occasions when the talk gets so cosmic that he fears he’s trapped in a seminar entitled “Whither Batavia?”

“I have found myself many times struggling just to keep up,” McDowell concedes, adding later: “So I concentrate on trying to keep up. That’s deadly serious.”

He thinks “Week” works because all the panelists are print folks: “What protects you and makes you able to be fairly natural is that you aren’t a television person. You don’t have a (broadcast) standard to meet.

“What you say to yourself is, ‘I’m just a newspaper reporter.’ ”

McDowell is no stranger to television, though, having cut his teeth in the early ‘70s with two acclaimed PBS programs on the Watergate hearings and, later, on public-TV’s “The Lawmakers,” a series about Congress.

But he’s never wanted to cross the bridge permanently and start life anew in TV. That’s kind of academic for him, anyway, he says, “because no one’s ever proposed it.”

He didn’t campaign to get on “Washington Week in Review.” But there are those who do, says producer Green, tactfully declining to identify such wooers or even to say if some currently are on the roster of active players.

“There are people who definitely have courted us, who call up and take us all out to lunch,” she says. “Some will have other people call us, and others just regularly send articles of stories that they’re working on.”

It is not that print reporters hope that frequent “Week” appearances will lead to better-paying jobs as network correspondents or even to requests for their autographs at airports, Green says.

Instead, it’s usually that “Week” appearances--and those on similar broadcasts--enhance one’s appearance as a person of import and consequence in Washington.

Not only do these visitations improve their standing among colleagues, she says, their calls to politicians--for whom the program is required viewing--tend to be answered more briskly simply because of that TV recognition.

Those who have achieved semiregular status on “Washington Week in Review,” whether by wooing or invitation, aren’t always in seventh heaven, though. What the tube giveth, the tube can taketh away.

They sometimes endure an agony common to their colleagues at the television networks: no air time.

“They all tend to have periods where they get sulky or hurt if they haven’t been asked on after a while,” Green reports.