PBS Scraps ‘Showcase Week’ Strategy : Television: A network executive blames affiliates’ ‘lukewarm acceptance’ of the season-kickoff promotion.

PBS is abandoning its 2-year-old “Showcase Week” season-kickoff strategy, a plan that had been designed by programming chief Jennifer Lawson to garner press attention for the network and create an atmosphere of an event around the fall’s new programming.

John Grant, PBS senior vice president for national programming, said in an interview at a gathering of television critics here Wednesday that the strategy worked well at the national level, but was rejected by local stations.

“It was very successful at doing what it was supposed to do, which was to act as a national strategy for press and promotion,” Grant said. “The national press responded to it very well. But it never received more than lukewarm acceptance from the stations.”

The stations didn’t like the promotion because it prevented them from showcasing their own programs and did not coincide with every station’s particular mission in its community, he said.

Now, Grant said, PBS will go “back to the old way,” introducing new and returning programs over the course of several weeks in late September and throughout October, as PBS did prior to Lawson’s attempt to give the new season a “hook” for viewers and promotions.

Lawson, executive vice president for national programming and promotional services, told critics here that PBS would still promote its new season. She rejected the idea, put forward by a number of critics, that the network had no blockbuster series--like “The Civil War” in 1990 or “Columbus and the Age of Discovery” in 1991--that would lend themselves to major promotional activities.

“Our programs are big, but they’re not being promoted in the same way,” Lawson said. She would not say, however, how the promotions would be conducted.

Among the series premiering this fall are “Ghostwriter,” an educational program in which a ghost helps children solve mysteries through writing, and “Space Age,” a six-part series about space exploration.

A program aimed at encouraging young people to vote, “Why Bother Voting?,” will air Sept. 9. Hosted by “Cosby” veteran Lisa Bonet and produced by WETA-TV in Washington, the program employs rap music, comedy and “MTV-like fast pacing” to reach out to viewers ages 16 to 24 about the importance of voting.

“We felt it would be disingenuous to wrap it in the flag and appeal to their patriotism,” said Ricki Greene, the show’s executive producer. “Instead, we’re appealing to their self-interest. We’re saying, ‘You’re going to be around a lot longer than the politicians who are making the decisions that are going to affect your lives. You’re going to have to live with their decisions.’ ”

In other developments, PBS announced that it plans to fund a research project to find children who aren’t counted by the Nielsen ratings service for the commercial networks--such as children in day care and children in schools.

In addition, the public network has provided research funds to WGBH-TV in Boston to begin work on two new series in conjunction with the BBC. One, whose working title is “The People’s Century,” will be a 26-part series about the global changes that have taken place during the 20th Century. The other, whose working title is “The Rock ‘n’ Roll Project,” is a 10-part series that traces the roots and influence of rock music.