PBS Chief Is Optimistic as Congress Debates Funding : Broadcasting: Ervin S. Duggan says battle is far from over, but he strikes conciliatory tone despite ongoing budget threats.

As Congress moves toward floor debate on an appropriation of $240 million for public broadcasting for fiscal 1998, PBS president and CEO Ervin S. Duggan sounded conciliatory and warily optimistic Wednesday.

“We are feeling good about the ultimate survival of public television, and we feel the democratic process is working,” he told about 70 reporters, critics and public TV officials on the closing day of the semiannual network press tour in Pasadena.

With some conservative Republicans continuing to threaten to end all funding, Duggan also cautioned “the battle isn’t over.” He said he was “not going to rest until every member of Congress” understands the value of a system, which, he noted, has provided the educational tools for 2 million Americans to get their high school diplomas.

He also said that Americans continue to support public television, citing a 76% approval rating on a CNN poll this week.

Congress has approved steadily increasing cutbacks for the Corp. for Public Broadcasting, which helps fund the nation’s nearly 1,000 public TV and radio stations. But Duggan said he did not consider those cuts “punitive,” and added that with steep cuts to the Department of Education and the arts and humanities endowments, public broadcasting would also have to take its “proportionate cuts. . . . We feel satisfied,” he said.

He also attacked those who say public television is not drawing enough money from profitable children’s TV series like “Barney” and “Sesame Street,” as peddling “myths.” There are no “enormous profits” to supplant federal funding, he said.

Meanwhile, Duggan indicated that he would fight for a national trust fund that would create an endowment for public broadcasting. He likened the endowment, which would come from non-tax money, to the process of using a gasoline tax to help finance the interstate highway system. Duggan insisted there are only two ways to go--commercialization of the system, which he said is unacceptable, or the trust fund.

At the session, Kathy Quattrone, PBS vice president for programming, announced that among its offerings for 1996 was a series “Adventures From the Book of Virtues”--based on the compilation by conservative political leader William H. Bennett. Duggan was asked whether such programming indicated PBS was caving in to conservative criticisms. He categorically denied it, saying that the morality tales, like the symbol of the American flag, “belong to all of us.”