‘Kim’s World’ Open to Disabled and Beyond . . .

Kim Powers is one of those adventurous television hosts who has done just about everything in front of the camera.

She has let a tarantula crawl up her arm. She has let an adult tiger clamp its jaws on her arm. She has danced. She has ridden a horse, ridden an elephant. She has snow-skied and scuba-dived. She has even gone bungee jumping.

What can you say? The woman’s an incorrigible ham. And oh, yes. She is deaf and blind.

The vivacious Powers hosts “Kim’s World,” an upbeat, smile-faced, do-it-herself Saturday series for youngsters on Kaleidoscope (KTV), a relatively obscure, but highly ambitious cable network that on April 30 hopes to take a giant stride toward the big time by expanding to a 24-hour format. The good news for KTV is that Tele-Communications Inc., the nation’s largest cable TV operator, is reportedly interested in buying a chunk of the new venture.

Based in San Antonio, KTV has been offering three hours of ad-supported programming a day on 220 cable systems that reach 15 million households. The new, improved KTV has signed up some 30 cable systems (none so far in the Los Angeles area) and is confident of pushing off with at least a million households, said Bill Nichols, the network president and CEO, by phone. In addition, some of the cable systems carrying the three-hour format will add portions of the expanded format.

What they are getting is something unique:

* A cable network with endorsements from a slew of blue-ribbon charities and a bipartisan congressional advisory board that include U.S. Sens. Bob Dole, Tom Harkin, Orrin Hatch and Paul Simon and House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

* More important, a cable network with a fairly vast array of programs targeting mostly persons with a variety of disabilities.

In addition to the weekly “Kim’s World,” these include a nightly newscast devoted to health and disability, a late-night home-shopping program featuring mostly products keyed to disabilities, and a nightly movie. There’s also a weekly public affairs show from Washington hosted by Tony Coelho, chairman of the President’s Commission on Employment of People With Disabilities.

All KTV programs carry on-screen subtitles for the hearing impaired. Many also have simultaneous regular audio and signing, and, for the sight-impaired, voice narration. In the case of movies, for example, the latter means that an off-screen voice describes what is happening on the screen.

A terrific idea, an important idea.

Yet, will non-disabled viewers be put off by all of this on-screen clutter, or will they ultimately become desensitized to it, as they have to those clunky logos that local stations attach to their pictures? In fact, will many non-disabled viewers be motivated even to give KTV a tumble? Such questions may be central to the future of a 24-hour specialized network that will compete for channel space with a broadening array of original programming from cable suppliers.

Will having friends in high places ultimately matter that much? How likely is it that KTV will be snapped up, for example, by local cable systems that already omit the higher-profile Court TV or Comedy Central or CNBC?

Even though a 1991 Harris poll found that 30% of Americans have some sort of disability, KTV still would seem to be the essence of narrowcasting, programming aimed at a specific audience. Yet, intending to blow past the 4-million-household level that Nichols says the 24-hour KTV must have to break even by 1996, the network hopes to widen its audience beyond the disabled community. Included in its new lineup, for example, is a weekly program aimed at members of the influential American Assn. of Retired Persons.

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Nichols says he likes his chances, sounding confident that the cable industry “will open its eyes and make room” for KTV. Americans with disabilities represent $700 million in buying power, according to that Harris poll. “We are the only network in the country that can quickly organize the most powerful political consumer group in the nation,” Nichols said.

Nichols had been in the cable industry for a dozen years when he and some friends inaugurated KTV in 1991. “I knew the (Americans With Disabilities Act) was coming in,” Nichols said, “and I saw this as a new market opportunity to do good business and do something good at the same time.” He has a disability himself but won’t identify it, he says, because he doesn’t want to be seen as playing favorites in the disabled community.

Two shows he can’t afford now but hopes to have produced in the future are a live call-in series with a psychiatrist (“It would be a hot, hot show”) and a sitcom starring actors with disabilities.

That sounds like a future gig for Powers, an actress who was appearing in a San Antonio theater program (as the only participant with a disability) when she was noticed by a KTV executive, who mentioned her to Nichols and Ron Dixon, executive vice president for programming and production. Soon, Powers had her own show, a likable half-hour that just ripples with the charisma, effervescence and daredevil spirit of its host.

“I like to share my life experiences with the children,” said Powers from San Antonio through Nichols’ wife, Phyllis, who beside being KTV’s executive vice president for corporate affairs is a tactile interpreter who communicates by touch with the hearing impaired.

Powers, who is married and in her early 30s, was born deaf. At age 11, while attending the Texas School for the Deaf, she developed retinitis pigmentosa, a form of tunnel vision, and ultimately lost nearly all her sight. She can distinguish only light and, occasionally, shapes.

“I have always wanted to be in drama and have been involved in theater all my life,” she said. Encouraged by friends and family, she got even more involved after her sight loss. “Some people thought that I couldn’t do that,” she said, “but they were wrong.”

Were they ever. Powers is now preparing to tape another 13 episodes of “Kim’s World,” hoping that it will enable her to be a role model for others, just as Helen Keller was for her. “I want young children to understand what it’s like to be disabled and to be curious about feeling things and smelling things and touching things the way I do,” she said. “I want children, especially those who are deaf and blind, to understand that they can experience life and participate in things like I do.”

Including bungee jumping? Remember, kids, don’t try it at home.