A DRAMATIC TURNAROUND FOR WNET-TV

WNET, nearly crippled by economic woes three years ago, now is producing programs for public television worth more than $30 million--”a dramatic increase in original programming,” according to station officials.

“We have turned around,” said Hugh Price, WNET’s senior vice president in charge of production, noting that the station entered the new fiscal year this week with “an unprecedented” amount of original programming in production, both on its own and in partnership with other U.S. and foreign companies.

WNET long has been the major supplier of prime-time programs for the country’s 300 public television stations, such as “Great Performances,” “The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour,” “Adam Smith’s Money World,” “Heritage: Civilization and the Jews” and “The Brain.”

It was the commitment to such expensive, ambitious programming that led to a financial squeeze at the station three years ago, resulting in staff cut-backs, a near paralysis in new production plans and a threat to the station’s fiscal future.

“We were flat on our backs--editorially and emotionally exhausted,” Price recalled in an interview. “But we continued to research and develop new ideas for programming and for funding, and it is that work which has now borne fruit.”

That was not the only good news that WNET had as it began the new fiscal year July 1. The station also reported that it ended the 1986-87 fiscal year with $1.6 million in “positive working capital,” the first time in six years it had finished in the black.

The station’s board of trustees adopted a budget of $85.1 million for the new fiscal year--$6.3 million less than the revenues for the previous year. Station president William F. Baker said that the budget includes “a modest reduction of personnel in the administrative and technical-support areas of the company.” No cutbacks will be made in the production areas, he said.

Price cited the increased support from other public television stations and the successful penetration of foreign markets as the reasons for the revitalization of production plans at the station over the last two years or so.

WNET now is in co-production with more public-television stations around the country than ever before--the station historically has gone it alone--including KCET Channel 28 in Los Angeles and KQED in San Francisco, he said. And there are production partnerships with 20 foreign television companies, including ones in the United Kingdom, Japan, France, Italy, Korea, Austria and Switzerland.

In addition to seven or more original programs for the “Great Performances” series, the programs that WNET has in the works include “History of Western Art,” a nine-part series; “The Struggles for Poland,” a nine-part history series; “The Mind,” a nine-part sequel to “The Brain,” and, in conjunction with KCET, “An Ocean Apart,” a six-part series about U.S.-British relations, and “Television,” an eight-part series adapted from a British series about the history of the medium.