Emmy Goes Back to Academy : Television: Producer Barbara Valentine returns her award after finding that its air date made it ineligible for 1990 honors.

A TV producer who won a Los Angeles area Emmy award last weekend notified the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Thursday that she is returning it because she discovered that the winning program hadn’t aired during the eligibility period.

Barbara Valentine had received the Emmy as executive producer of the best information segment for a story in “A New Beginning,” a series produced by Burbank-based Santa Fe Communications and formerly broadcast on KDOC Channel 56 in Anaheim. She told the TV academy in a letter that while the segment had mistakenly been entered in the 1990 competition because it originally had been scheduled to air on KDOC on Oct. 10, 1990, in fact, it was not shown until 1991.

“It took a lot of guts to walk in there and say I was wrong,” Valentine told The Times. “It was something I worked for all my life, and that was tough.”

The academy’s awards committee has scheduled a meeting today to discuss the matter, said committee co-chair Tom Thompson. He said the committee also will investigate questions that have been raised about whether that program and another that earned Santa Fe Communications a second Emmy should have been considered local programming at all, since the company purchased the air time from KDOC and also syndicates its religious/inspirational programs nationally.

Santa Fe Communications, which receives funding from Milwaukee-based De Rance Inc., a private Catholic foundation, and from viewers, won a “special class” Emmy last weekend for the program “John Michael Talbot--Quiet Reflections.” Valentine was the executive producer.

Under Academy guidelines for the local Emmys, “Entries must have been produced for or solely financed and controlled by a Los Angeles area television station or (cable TV) system.” An additional rule states, “A program that is syndicated or networked after it fulfills the requirement of Los Angeles eligibility does not lose that eligibility as a consequence of being syndicated or networked.”

Santa Fe Communications confirmed that it had been purchasing air time on KDOC since 1986, although last March it moved “A New Beginning” to KHSC Channel 46 because the time was cheaper, Valentine said. And it acknowledged that many of its series, including “A New Beginning,” also are carried on the New York-based Vision Interfaith Satellite Network (VISN), an interdenominational religious cable network, on which they also purchase air time.

“The bottom line on this programming is that it’s not conventional (local) programming,” said John Leverence, awards director at the TV academy.

But Ray Seager, general manager of Santa Fe Communications, said that Santa Fe was operating within the Emmy guidelines. “We (had) an agreement with KDOC,” he said. “After we produce for KDOC in the L.A. market, we have the right to give those shows to a network such as VISN.”

Seager also maintained that KDOC subsidized Santa Fe’s programming by giving them a substantially lower rate than normal for air time.

Leverence said that when the Santa Fe programs initially were entered for Emmy consideration, “we were uncertain as to whether (they) had been produced for syndication or KDOC.” In response to the Academy’s questions, KDOC General Manager Calvin Brack sent the organization a letter “stating specifically that (the shows) were produced for KDOC in Los Angeles,” Leverence said. “That is what we went on in terms of verification.”

In an interview with The Times this week, however, Brack said, “I don’t know whether (the shows) are produced for KDOC or not; you’d have to ask (the producers).”

Leverence emphasized that “eligibility remains approved until it is disproved.” While a non-1990 air date makes “A New Beginning” automatically ineligible for a 1990 award, everything else, Leverence said, is “merely allegation. I have no smoking gun in my hand, and I will continue to defend (the producers) until I get a smoking gun.”

“This is one of those gray areas, and we’re running into more and more of those areas as television changes,” Thompson said.