Wanted: One Masterful Host : ...

If executive producer Rebecca Eaton were to place a classified ad for a successor to Alistair Cooke as host of “Masterpiece Theatre,” she might seek someone with those qualities.

But Eaton isn’t running ads or holding auditions to replace the 84-year-old Cooke, who is retiring following Sunday’s broadcast of “The Secret Agent” (9 p.m., Channels 28, 15, 8 p.m. Channel 24). Cooke has hosted the Mobil Corp.-funded Public Broadcasting Service series since its inception in 1971.

Instead, Eaton is looking at tapes and reading books and speeches of more than 150 candidates, including academics, actors, broadcasters, directors, historians, journalists, producers and writers--some of whom may not know that they are being considered--in what she calls a “multi-country search.”

“Alistair definitely created a niche. When he started (on) ‘Masterpiece Theatre’ it was a felicitous conjunction of his talents and a type of television,” Eaton said. “Many things have changed since then in the kind of programs that are being made and the way people watch television and what people expect. That gives us an opportunity to open things up very wide and look around.”

Although Eaton has had more than five months to find a replacement--Cooke told Eaton of his retirement plans in June--the position remains open, in part out of respect to Cooke. “It’s a careful search,” said Eaton, who has no plans to “replicate” or “duplicate” Cooke. “He has defined the role, so we want to take great care to maintain our standards, but move on. We felt we wanted to do this with some deliberate speed. Our priority has not been how quickly we can do it, but how well we can do it.”

After Sunday’s broadcast, “Masterpiece Theatre” will be preempted for three weeks by various pledge-period special programming. When it returns Dec. 27, Stephen Fry, who portrayed Jeeves in “Jeeves and Wooster,” a 1990 “Masterpiece Theatre” entry, will introduce the new series of P.G. Wodehouse stories that begins that night.

Arguably PBS’ most prominent personality, Cooke first came to the attention of U.S. television audiences from 1952 to 1961 as the host of the cultural series “Omnibus.” He won the first of his three Emmy Awards as the narrator and writer of “America,” a 13-episode documentary series on the nation’s history that NBC ran in prime time during the 1972-73 season. Cooke also won an Emmy in 1975 for hosting “Masterpiece Theatre.”

In 1985, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences bestowed its Governors Award on Cooke for having brought his audience “a better understanding of the classics.”

Cooke, who declined a request for an interview, will make his final PBS appearance Friday on a two-hour tribute, “The Alistair Cooke Farewell Salute” (airing at 9:10 p.m. on KCET). He plans to concentrate on his 46-year-old weekly BBC radio program, “Letter From America,” and to write a book.

For those who may miss Sunday’s adieu , here are Cooke’s final words on “Masterpiece Theatre”:

“I was hired for two years and they turned into 21, but also 40 years ago exactly this month I first became a regular television performer as, what one of my old directors called, ‘our writer-narrator-host.’ Forty years is enough. I don’t have many more miles to go, but I do have promises to keep before I sleep and one or two ambitions, among them an insane desire to shave a stroke or two off my golf handicap.

“So then I can say with King Lear: ‘. . . it is our vast intent to shake all tears and business from our age, conferring them on younger strengths while we unburdened crawl toward the practice tee.’

“And so, I just want to say to all those men and women and tots who down the decades, either in the mail or in the flesh, have told us what they liked and why. A very grateful thank you, so good night and goodby.”