Is the L.A. Festival Getting the Word Out? : Television: Festival organizers aren’t going to local stations to promote the 16-day gala, say TV executives.

Local commercial TV managers said this week that officials of the Los Angeles Festival have made virtually no effort to promote the upcoming 16-day gala on their stations.

And one station executive claimed that festival officials ignored his offer a year ago to become an official sponsor of the arts festival.

The managers’ comments were made in response to festival officials’ claims that area TV stations have been reluctant to air advance programming about the $4.7-million countywide event that begins Sept. 1. With less than one month before it is due to open, public awareness of the festival is quite low.

Steve Bell, general manager of KTLA Channel 5, said he would have run interviews and other advance programming but was never contacted by festival officials.

“They just seem to be rather inept in terms of promotion and getting the message across,” Bell said. “No one from the festival has approached anybody here, and since it’s opening in less than a month, it’s kind of scary.”

The programming directors at KTTV Channel 11 and KCAL Channel 9 also said that their departments have not been approached. Neither KTTV’s Don Tillman nor KCAL’s Matt Cooperstein were familiar enough with the festival to say whether they would have run advance progamming if contacted.

Rudy Garza, festival marketing director, said last week that he had encountered “a lot of reluctance” from TV stations, although “efforts have certainly been made toward them.” Garza also said that he had not yet contacted the region’s top stations--Channels 2, 4 and 7--but would make “big pushes” toward them as the festival approaches.

But one station manager recently approached had very little good to say about the festival’s publicity plans.

KCOP vice president and station manager Rick Feldman said he offered to make Channel 13 the festival’s official television station more than a year ago. But his offers were ignored.

“I met with (festival director) Peter Sellars and told him what I wanted to do and . . . at no point did anyone see fit to take me up on my challenge,” Feldman said. “I had wanted to do stuff six months (ago), but they were not organized enough to do anything about it.

“As far as I’m concerned, we made the offer, we gave them the ball and they could have run with it, but they dropped it.”

Sellars acknowledged that he held a meeting with Feldman and that he made an offer to help. But Sellars missed out on the Channel 13 connection.

“Let’s face it, there are about eight zillion things that were never followed up on for this festival,” Sellars said. “Everything just takes time, and some things we just didn’t have the time to focus on.”

But Sellars said he isn’t worried about the upcoming festival that is scheduled to present nearly 1,400 artists in 230 countywide performances.

The 1990 L.A. Festival, an outgrowth of the successful 1984 Olympic Arts Festival and the 1987 L.A. Festival, has been in the planning stages for nearly two years. A recent informal survey conducted by The Times found that only one of four persons interviewed at various locations throughout the county had ever heard of the L.A. Festival.

“The festival is going to function by word of mouth this time, and that’s just fine,” Sellars said. “I’m not running a sweepstakes here, this is not marketing for Vons. I don’t want everyone there. I want people who really care about art and that’s enough. That’s plenty. “

Sellars noted he is doing 20 hours of programming on public broadcasting station KCET Channel 28 starting Sept. 1 and that his staff has talked to Feldman this week about KCOP coverage.

But Feldman said it may be too late to put together the kind of coverage he originally had proposed, such as airing previews of the Pacific-themed events and maps of Festival venues.

“Now that they’re desperate, the phone has started ringing,” Feldman said. “They didn’t understand a year ago how difficult it would be to sell this thing . . . and now I think this thing’s in danger of falling on its face because of that.”