TV REVIEWS : Benti Stands Tall on ‘By Year 2000’

Just the image of Joseph Benti anchoring a news program elicits good feelings, but to watch Benti host a series on social issues and the future is almost too good to be true. As the replacement co-host (with Val Zavala) for Eric Burns on the new season of KCET’s “By the Year 2000,” Benti is his sartorial best, his elegant manner completely intact from his heyday on the old KNXT.

“By the Year 2000” (airing Fridays at 9 p.m. on Channel 28, usually repeating on Saturdays at 5 p.m. and the following Monday at 7:30 p.m.) is potentially important enough that it requires someone of Benti’s caliber. American television reporting suffers from the same short-term approach as American business and politics, and nothing requires a longer view than this series’ angle--investigations into the social uses and abuses of technology. KCET has clearly improved on last season’s format, which had Zavala doing a report from the field, followed by Burns carrying on with in-studio guests.

But he was a lightweight in a heavyweight field. Zavala was, and remains, a class act, and an ideal partner for Benti. In the season’s first two shows--”Working for Big Brother” last week and tonight’s “The Gene Prophets”--she is still doing the field reports, while Benti fluidly sets up a debate/interview Ted Koppel-style with issue opponents.

In tonight’s program, genetic technology critic Jeremy Rifkin faces off against Rob Bier of the American Council of Life Insurance, and Cal Tech geneticist Leroy Hood. Benti, though, challenges all of them to back up their arguments: Rifkin’s, that insurance companies will use genetic information gained from new research to discriminate against policy holders; Bier’s, that the insurance industry will use the information responsibly and not abuse a person’s privacy; Hood’s, that pending legislation to protect such privacy should not be linked to ongoing genetic research projects.

A thorny subject, but Benti helps prune it away for the lay viewer with his tough but fair approach. And “By the Year 2000” promises to remain interesting. Next week: Berlin’s transportation system, and what Los Angeles can learn from it.