Fighting for the Endangered Documentary : Television: NBC’s top anchorman lends his name and his support to the traditional format tonight with the first of six editions of ‘The Brokaw Report.’

The hourlong documentary has become a scarce commodity on network television. News must pay its own way in today’s broadcast environment, and the latest craze in news is coming up with prime-time news magazines. It takes the imprimatur of a network anchor to get a traditional documentary.

NBC’s Tom Brokaw does his part to keep this endangered species alive tonight with the first of six documentaries scheduled for this year under the umbrella title “The Brokaw Report.” The premiere, which airs at 8 p.m. on Channels 4, 36 and 39, focuses on pressures on the American family. Others will examine health care, race relations, the environment, education and Congress.

The American family, Brokaw said in an interview, is an institution in crisis, with children suffering the most--from abuses in support payments by divorced fathers to spending too little time with their working parents.

“As I travel around the country talking to people about what’s wrong with the country, sooner or later they start talking with real passion about what’s happening to the family,” the NBC anchor said. “We’re living off the ‘Ozzie and Harriet’ images of the past, and I think both political parties are behind the curve because they don’t understand that things have changed.”

The documentary looks at several representative families to illustrate the statistics about the growing number of children being raised by single mothers, many of them in poverty. It also looks at the debate over government policies affecting families and at a grass-roots movement among children’s-rights activists. (Families also will be the subject of a Bill Moyers special Wednesday on PBS.)

Why is NBC committing to a series of serious prime-time documentaries at this time?

“I think they felt they owed me after the death of ‘Expose,’ ” Brokaw said wryly, referring to the short-lived prime-time magazine show he hosted last year.

When that show was canceled last October, the presidential campaign was looming on the horizon, Brokaw recalled, and NBC News President Michael Gartner “said we ought to be doing some of the big issues. He suggested that we think about subjects that were important during the election but also would transcend the election year.”

Brokaw was enthusiastic. Despite the increased ratings for news magazines like CBS’ “48 Hours” and ABC’s “PrimeTime Live,” he believes that some subjects do not lend themselves to that format.

“A subject like the family is not a single story--you’ve got to keep coming back to it, and this is not the end of our attention to the topic,” he said. “I think documentaries are an important statement about what a news organization is, and you can do them so that they’re not a big loss financially.”

Brokaw admitted, however, to being frustrated with the scheduling of his first effort.

“TV is a matter of fixed habits, and documentaries have always been all over the landscape,” he said. “Friday night at 8 p.m. was not my idea; that’s where the entertainment and scheduling people put us. I’d like to be on at 10 p.m.--that’s when the grown-ups are watching.”

Brokaw’s main job, of course, is anchoring “NBC Nightly News.” The NBC newscast took a hit in the ratings during the Winter Olympics last month, when the audience for “CBS Evening News” jumped 10%. Reflecting that increase, the three-network ratings for the season through March 1 placed “ABC World News Tonight,” the long-running top-ranked newscast, in first place with a 10.9 rating and 20% of the audience, followed by the “CBS Evening News” with a 9.5 rating and 18 share, and “NBC Nightly News” with a 9.3 rating and an 18 share. (A ratings point represents 921,000 households.)

“The Olympics were good for CBS, but I don’t think that will last,” Brokaw said. “We’ll probably benefit from increased ratings when NBC has the Summer Olympics from Barcelona this summer. More and more, we are hostage to these outside factors. Peter (Jennings) does a first-rate job, but the fact is, the lead-in from Oprah Winfrey (which precedes the ABC stations’ newscasts in many cities) and the ABC station lineup helps give them not just a rising tide but a tidal wave of support.”

There was concern a year ago that one of the Big Three networks would get out of the news-gathering business. Today, notwithstanding the difficulty of getting hourlong documentaries on the air, Brokaw sees cause for optimism in the ratings for news programming in general.

“The objective evidence is going the other way: The networks are adding more news programs,” he said. “These are difficult times economically, and I think people are eager for real answers. That doesn’t mean we have to be the Council on Foreign Relations on our newscasts, but I do think we’ve got to be one of the places people turn to for serious information.”