Novice Producers Seek Station Break : Television: Pair filmed a homemade pilot for a children’s series. But even with a new federal mandate on children’s shows, selling it is proving to be difficult.

Donna Lewis and Eric Bowers could use a pilot right about now.

The kind who knows how to navigate the choppy waters around Hollywood. The kind who can get around the sharks, the changing currents and the hidden obstructions that can sink a project before it’s launched.

That’s because the pair have written a script, recruited actors and rented cameras to film the pilot episode of their own children’s television series. All they need now are TV stations to broadcast it.

“The odds are against us; we know that,” said the 34-year-old Bowers, who operates a dry cleaning shop in the Crenshaw district.

“We don’t know anyone in the industry. We know getting our foot in the door will be the biggest hurdle,” agreed Lewis, 29, an administrative analyst for UCLA.

Their pilot is for a show geared for children 7 through 12. Lewis and Bowers say they created their “Reaching for Tomorrow” series so their own children would have something to watch. Her daughter is 7. His son is 4.

“We don’t allow our kids to watch prime-time TV because it’s gotten too rough and raunchy,” said Bowers, who lives in Wellington Square, west of Downtown Los Angeles.

“Basically, anything goes,” said Lewis, of Granada Hills.

Impressionable young viewers deserve better than that, decided the novice TV producers, friends since Bowers’ sister married Lewis’ brother 10 years ago.

The series depicts 10 children whose playground exploits put them in contact with adults who have jobs as doctors, firefighters, zookeepers and magicians.

Humor and fantasy are blended in the scripts, giving the shows a touch of adventure as the children get a taste of each occupation.

The pair spent $5,000 to produce their half-hour pilot, which illustrates the work of a medical radiologist. They advertised for young actors in a Hollywood trade publication and auditioned more than 100 before picking 10 for speaking roles.

They won permission from Los Angeles officials to film at Harold Henry Park in the Mid-City area. They persuaded the physician who treats Bowers’ father to let them use his Wilshire Boulevard office as a backdrop.

Then they rented professional videotape equipment and gave family members and friends a crash course in focusing the camera and recording techniques. They taped for four days at the end of July and in early August.

Although a professional videotape editor was hired to assemble the finished show, no one else was paid. For their work, the young actors received copies of the pilot at a wrap party last month that was catered by Bowers’ mother.

“It was a very rewarding experience for the children,” said Kathryn Terwilliger of Woodland Hills, mother of one of the young actors, 11-year-old Courtney Ter-Velde.

Dr. Theodore Hall, who teaches pediatric radiology at UCLA and volunteered to act in the pilot, said he was surprised by the quality of the show.

“The preteen kids, those just entering junior high, are starting to think about what they want to do when they grow up. Maybe they’ll see a career they never dreamed about,” said Hall, of Marina del Rey.

Although the filmmakers face many hurdles in getting their program aired, a new federal law would seem to improve their chances. The Children’s Television Act requires stations seeking to renew their broadcast licenses to show they are meeting the educational and informational needs of children.

Children’s programming was an issue two weeks ago during a Senate confirmation hearing for Reed Hundt, a former Los Angeles lawyer who has been named by President Clinton to head the Federal Communications Commission.

Some stations, such as Los Angeles’ KABC-TV, are airing new network-supplied children’s programs and locally produced shows such as Channel 7’s weekly “Kids’ View,” said Georgia Seid-Enseki, the station’s director of broadcast standards and practices.

Other children’s TV experts warn that novices such as Bowers and Lewis could quickly discover that it’s easier to produce a pilot than to get a studio to buy it.

“It’s not an easy sell, that type of show,” said Jeff Segal, president of MCA’s Universal Family Entertainment. “Even with the FCC being an issue and everybody trying to do pro-social shows.”

Submissions from amateurs are rare, Segal said. And more often than not the proposals that come from established Hollywood professionals are far from fresh.

Margaret Loesch, president of the Fox Children’s Network, said programmers have learned to accept proposals funneled only through agents, lawyers or reputable production companies to avoid lawsuits.

She said the idea of do-it-yourself TV pilots are unusual and “very intriguing.”

Lewis and Bowers said they are prepared to continue down the do-it-yourself road if necessary.

“We can always sell tapes door to door,” Bowers said, laughing.

Or classroom to classroom, Lewis said, more seriously. “There are thousands of schools out there.”