KCET’s Kobin Outlines Unique Mission for Public TV

Sometime in the future, worries William H. Kobin, president of public-television station KCET, an official god of television will sit down to sift through all the network, cable, independent and syndicated programming through history to compile a list of the most important and most innovative television shows.

And he fears that if public television doesn’t make some changes, its new programs might not make the list.

With the encroaching competition of cable programming and more sophisticated network shows, Kobin believes that public television must work harder to maintain its unique place in the world of television.

“I think the overall quality of our schedule and our production is the best it’s ever been,” Kobin said last week at Channel 28’s Hollywood offices. “My concern is that not enough of it is unique. One of our primary reasons for being is to create new formats, to try to use television to be innovative and original and different from programming available elsewhere. And I don’t think we try to do that as much as we should, maybe even as much as we once did.

“Although ethically we have an obligation to be unique and different and pioneering, practically we have to. It’s not today I’m concerned about. It’s tomorrow.”

Kobin noted that, financially and qualitatively, public television is doing better than ever. And the announcement of the station’s new budget Thursday backs him up: The KCET budget for the fiscal year that began July 1 anticipates gross revenues from continuing operations of $32.9 million, the largest revenue in the station’s history.

There was more good news for KCET in the budget announcement, made at a meeting of the station’s board of directors: Projected revenues from continuing operations in fiscal 1988, which ended June 30, are expected to be about $30 million--a significant growth from fiscal 1987, when the figure was $25.7 million.

The station also enjoyed a growth of 9% in viewership and about 6% in subscribers during the past year.

The continued growth of the station makes possible such productions as “A Raisin in the Sun,” which is currently filming on KCET soundstages for presentation on “American Playhouse,” and last season’s “L.A. History Project” and “Trying Times,” one of public broadcasting’s few comedy efforts.

Despite the financial health of KCET and public broadcasting in general, Kobin thinks PBS needs to re-examine its corporate structure, its values and its complacency in order to remain competitive.

“I’m not leveling a charge at PBS, or an accusation at PBS,” he said. “I am leveling this at all of us--at myself, at us as a system: that we have not been as imaginative, as innovative and, more than that, as willing to take chances, to take risks, as I think we have to be.”

Kobin said that, before cable television became popular, public television’s traditional menu of documentaries, nature programs, theatrical dramas and children’s programs was a clear alternative to commercial television. Now, with competition from cable services such as Arts & Entertainment, The Discovery Channel, Nickelodeon and CNN, Kobin believes PBS must take more radical departures from the status quo.

“I’m not talking about the television equivalent of navel contemplation,” Kobin said. “I mean, I’m not just stuck on highbrow programming--I’m talking about developing formats and programs that are useful, that respectable numbers of people would want to see.”

Kobin’s list of projects that qualify as innovative is wide-ranging: Along with PBS shows such as “Sesame Street,” “The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour,” “Trying Times,” “Masterpiece Theatre” and “Square One TV,” Kobin cites former network series such as “Laugh-In,” “All in the Family” and “60 Minutes” along with newcomers “The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd,” “thirtysomething,” “HeartBeat,” “China Beach” Fox Broadcasting’s “Tracey Ullman” and Showtime’s “It’s Garry Shandling’s Show.”

Given the financial structure of the public broadcasting system, innovation is not always easy, Kobin acknowledged. Although reticent, for diplomatic reasons, to attack any specific target within the system, Kobin said that the snarl of red tape surrounding the acquisition of funding for new projects makes the process too slow for PBS to maintain its competitive edge--particularly when cable can move faster.

“Cable is competing with us not only for audiences, it’s competing with us for product, for programming,” Kobin said. “We have some projects we wanted to do but will be done elsewhere because we can’t come up with the money or we can’t come up with it fast enough because we never have it--we always have to go out and raise it.

“I think we’re an over-democratized system, where everything has to go through a committee or a panel or a vote. This is a business where you have to be able to take chances, to make fast decisions--which is not done by committee, but by individuals. We don’t really have a place in public television where one individual has the money and the latitude to make some original, courageous decisions.

“If you sat down in a room with 10 film makers and asked them what they would describe as innovative, new film making, they would not (come up with) ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit,’ ” he said, describing the current movie hit which combines live action with animation. “And that’s a breakthrough--that represents a significant departure in film making. That’s what I’m talking about.”

Kobin declined to say whether he thinks a bill now pending in the Senate that would curtail the power of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting would eliminate some of that red tape. The Senate Commerce Committee recently gave unanimous approval to legislation that would remove 80% of the money in the corporation’s $37-million television program fund, instead requiring the corporation to distribute the funds directly to public TV stations to produce or purchase national programs.

Regardless of his opinion on that bill, Kobin believes that corporation should make the creation of truly original new programming its top priority, setting aside a fund of from $3 million to $5 million annually, even if it results in only a few shows which truly break the mold.

The answer to finding funding for such programming, Kobin adds, does not lie in going into co-ventures with cable channels.

“(In co-ventures), this word unique-- which I keep using and I think is so essential--tends to disappear,” he said. “Usually with a co-venture, the obligation is to have it play first on cable, with a long delay before it comes to PBS.”

Instead of joining cable, Kobin said part of the answer to keeping a local PBS station unique in its area is to make sure it deals with community problems and issues. An example of such a service, he said, is KCET’s Outreach project, which works with community groups to help people in the area get information and help.

In one case, following an installment of its “California Stories” series on an individual’s legal right not to be kept alive by artificial support systems in the case of terminal illness, KCET offered information to viewers on how to exercise that right. The station received 13,000 requests.

“There’s no way a national (cable) service can do what a local station can do,” Kobin said.

And, he added, while the number of quality options in commercial TV has increased in recent years, PBS still maintains a unique mission.

“I think, in principle, there is tremendous difference,” he said.

“It is accurate to say that the primary objective of most network television is to attract the largest number of eyeballs to the screen. That doesn’t mean that all public television is good and all commercial television is bad . . . but I think the people in public television really see themselves doing a very, very different job from commercial television.

“I think what commercial television occasionally tries to do, we do all the time.”