Liberty, Equality and Pursuit of Balance : Television: ‘Declarations’, which premieres tonight on PBS, is the first series from ITVS, an independent service born from a battle with public TV’s upper echelons.

With “Declarations”--a three-part series on a trilogy of American ideals encompassed in the Declaration of Independence--the relatively new and rather long-awaited Independent Television Service declares its arrival.

Beginning tonight on PBS and continuing over the next two Tuesdays, “Declarations” explores issues of liberty, equality and the pursuit of happiness. It is the Independent Service’s first series, though a dozen other programs have aired since last June.

At first, the producers toyed with the idea of calling the series “Declaration of Independents.” Which might have been appropriate, given that ITVS--as the independent, federally funded organization calls itself in the alphabet-soup world of public TV--grew out of a decade-long battle between independent producers and the upper echelons at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and PBS over who and what got funded for production.

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Through the Telecommunications Act of 1988, Congress mandated that CPB set up a mechanism to give money directly to independent producers, bypassing the PBS hierarchy, asserting that it is “in the public interest to encourage the development of programming that involves creative risks and that addresses the needs of unserved and underserved audiences, particularly children and minorities.”

Now comes “Declarations: Essays on American Ideals,” the $1.2-million showcase project, containing such a profusion of voices and viewpoints through personal essays, “soapbox” commentaries and on-the-street or playground interviews--children are included too--that at times it’s a cacophony. There are liberals, conservatives, rich, poor, representatives of every racial and religious background as well as anti-religionists, gays, straights--and, in the end, no prevailing point of view.

According to executive producer Richard O’Regan, who heads Claypoint Productions in New York, such balance was deliberate. Indeed, he said, “ ‘Balance’ was written into our contract--as balanced as you can get with a finite group of people.”

“We made it an absolute commitment that we would create a forum in which ideas from all over the political spectrum would be listened to and respected,” said O’Regan, who worked at ABC News from 1977 to 1987.

It has taken nearly six years for ITVS, based in St. Paul, Minn., to begin presenting a steady flow of programming, primarily because, even after it was formed, battles continued with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the independent federal agency that helps fund public TV.

The odyssey began with a nine-month wrangle between the National Coalition of Independent Public Broadcasting Producers, which had fought for the independent service, and CPB over who belonged on the ITVS board. That ended in September, 1989. It wasn’t until June, 1991, that CPB signed the key operating and production agreements with ITVS. In December, 1991--a year after its first solicitation of 24,000 independent producers resulted in 2,043 proposals from 47 states and territories--ITVS awarded its first $3 million in grants to 26 program projects.

Then in 1992, some Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) and Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), questioned whether ITVS and its $8 million-a-year budget ought to exist.

“If a good deal of your institutional energies are focused on the political arena that relates to your existence, then the ship isn’t really moving forward,” said John Schott, ITVS’ first executive director (1990-1993) and former producer of “Alive From Off Center.” “I spent a good deal of time in Washington answering questions, providing information and education for people who didn’t really understand what we were.”

“I think Dole saw us as the weak link in PBS’ chain,” said Lawrence Daressa, co-director of the independent producers’ coalition and board member of ITVS. “Basically he decided to eliminate ITVS from public television’s authorization because of various programs we had funded”--including a documentary that Marlon Riggs was working on at the time of his death in April, “Black Is, Black Ain’t,” about African American identity. For conservatives, Riggs was a touchstone of controversy because of “Tongues Untied,” his 1989 autobiographical study of gay black sexuality, which aired on PBS’ “P.O.V.” series.

Other senators got on the bandwagon against ITVS, noted Daressa, but through the help of Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.), “we were able to beat that back.”

Asked whether the balance in “Declarations,” which was commissioned on his watch, had anything to do with politics, Schott responded: “I think it ought to be something that ITVS stands for in any case, and does. . . . Indeed, there are many points on the compass, whether they’re cultural or racial or ideological.”

ITVS got its first program on the air last June--”Greetings From Out Here,” a road trip movie by Ellen Spiro, a lesbian filmmaker who went back home to the South to see how gays were living. It ran on 102 of nearly 350 public-TV stations, and is being re-offered for broadcast next month. Since then, 11 more programs have aired, including, most recently, “Anatomy of a Springroll,” in which filmmaker Paul Kwan attempts to reconcile his youth in Vietnam with his life today in San Francisco.

James T. Yee, former executive director of the National Asian American Telecommunications Assn., who succeeded Schott last summer as executive director of ITVS, says the challenge now is convincing the full roster of PBS stations “to consider our programming (for broadcast). It’s a slow, trust-building relationship.”

Besides “Declarations,” ITVS has funded 59 other individual programs and five series that are either awaiting scheduling or are still in production. One of the series, “TV Families,” is a five-hour dramatic series dealing with ways that TV reflects and defines the notion of “family.”

But now that ITVS is rolling along, some independent producers worry that it might fall into the same trap that it charged PBS itself with--playing it safe.

Marco Williams, a Los Angeles black filmmaker (“In Search of Our Fathers” on PBS’ “Frontline”) who was one of the 15 principal producers on “Declarations,” said he was “frustrated by the process.” He notes that there’s some buzz in the independent producer community as to what ITVS stands for.

“The problem is that ITVS is serving two masters,” said Williams. “One is PBS/CPB and the other is the independent film community. They want to get on PBS, and PBS hasn’t put many of their shows on. So hence, ‘Declarations’ is trying to appeal to this sense of not being so controversial.”

* “Declarations: Essays on American Ideals” premieres tonight at 9 on KVCR-TV Channel 24 and at 10:30 on KCET-TV Channel 28.