Latinos Take Exception to KCET Hiring

Perhaps nowhere is the view of KCET’s performance more divergent, the debate more strident, than in the Latino community over issues of hiring and programming.

Last year the National Hispanic Media Coalition filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission asking for denial of KCET’s license-renewal application. The coalition claimed that there is an insufficient number of Latino employes, particularly in professional positions, at the station. But in recent weeks the FCC denied the petition and, 12 days ago, renewed KCET’s license through November, 1993.

Under the FCC’s “50% of parity” guidelines, representation in a station’s work force should measure up to at least half of the demographics of a particular ethnic group in the station’s metropolitan statistical area. A spokesman said these are “internal processing guidelines” only.

While lawyers for KCET and the coalition battled over which statistic to count--whether the 24.4% figure in Los Angeles County from the 1980 Census or the 1987 Bureau of Labor Statistics figure of 29% for the larger market area--KCET says it is making substantial improvement.

In July, 1988, with 259 employees, KCET said Latinos represented 12% of the total work force and 9% of the managerial, professional and technical positions. Last month, with 281 employees, KCET counted 18% in the general work force and 13% in the top three categories--although only one among senior management: Ed Moreno, vice president for community services.

“We have made a tremendous effort in terms of our attempt to find people, to find qualified people for jobs for which we do have very high standards,” said KCET president William H. Kobin, “and very great efforts in terms of the subject matter of our programming.”

Station-originated programming is as much an issue as employment. Twenty years ago, and into the 1970s, critics note, there were a number of programs geared towards Los Angeles’ Latino community. Among them: “Cancion de la Raza,” (Song of the People), in 1968, a 65-part serial drama that told of conditions in the Mexican-American community from police brutality to the grape boycott; “Ahora” (Now), in 1969, the 175-episode nightly half-hour series, a mix of history, community dialogue, documentaries, politics, even puppets, which was broadcast from East Los Angeles; “La Cultura,” in the early ‘70s, on which Los Lobos played for the first time on TV, and in 1979, “Presente!” a KCET-Latino Consortium series on the concerns and achievements of Latinos.

Independent film maker Jesus Trevino, who got his early TV training at the “Ahora” studio and went on to co-produce “Seguin,” KCET’s first offering under “American Playhouse” in 1982, said that in those days management “reached out to communities (and) was willing to take a risk on programming. Without strong employment of Hispanics in key positions, it’s difficult to program in the best way for the community.”

Among the two dozen or so programs KCET is now showing as part of Hispanic Heritage Month are Trevino’s “Yo Soy Chicano” from 1972 and the 1985 follow-up, “Yo Soy.” While it’s “fine for us to see retrospectives,” Trevino says, “why are we not seeing films done last month?”

“I don’t think asking for a six-part series or a regular weekly series is that much,” says Mark Carreno, former chairman of the Latino Consortium, a quasi-independent group that is housed at KCET. “They’re going to be run out of business because cable is targeting (specific audiences). Not out of unselfish reasons, but they’re doing it. Galavision, Univision, Telemundo--they’re aggressively marketing to Latinos.”

Meanwhile, KCET has issued a 23-page list of programs that it aired in 1988 dealing with Latino issues, had Latino participants or were major productions, including “SIDA Is AIDS,” a documentary made by KCET’s educational division on the spread of the disease among Latinos.

In any case, Kobin, who back in 1968 at National Educational Television created “Black Journal,” now argues against targeted programming.

“I really do believe that in the long run we can do a more effective job,” he said, “by trying to weave blacks and browns and Asians into a (programming fabric) than by trying to isolate. I like Jesse Jackson’s ‘rainbow coalition’ term.”

As for the suggestion from one Latino activist that KCET might better be called “BBC West”--actually, British programming currently averages 11% of the schedule, KCET notes--Kobin pounds the table. “There are a lot of people in various minority communities who think it isn’t, who communicate with us. . . . There is no single black community. There is no single Hispanic community. There is no single Asian community. . . . The community are a helluva lot of different voices. And some are louder than others.”