KCET Takes Steps to Combine Gay Pride With Pledge Drive

Taking a cue from other affiliates that have discovered the fund-raising value in airing a gay and lesbian television magazine, KCET will build one day of its pledge drives this month around “Gay Pride Episode 2000,” an “In the Life” production.

John Catania, a producer for “In the Life,” a documentary-based series with each episode featuring short vignettes on gay and lesbian life, and the organization’s spokesman, said many affiliates don’t want to touch anything considered “controversial” or daring during pledge drives.

“Usually when pledges come around, they move ‘In the Life’ about as far away as they can get . . . but to us it’s nice when a major station, a flagship station [like KCET], sees our work as something that can draw members,” said Catania, adding that KCET is the largest public station yet to use “In the Life” as fund-raising programming.

“In the Life” premiered in June 1992, but only six public television stations in the country aired it, including KCET. In 1999, KCET aired two documentaries dealing with gay history during pledge week, “The Castro” and then “After Stonewall,” both of which drew favorable response from callers, according to station spokeswoman Barbara Goen. So this year, KCET is hoping the magazine format of “In the Life” will draw in those viewers interested in gay issues who don’t have a large chunk of time to invest in a documentary.

“We are able to go beyond documentary work--and those documentaries have been extremely important to gay life--but we can take a miniature look at the gay experience,” Catania said. “We can focus on someone, say in Iowa, for six or seven minutes and look at their gay experience in America.”

Phone lines lit up last year at WMFE, the public television station in Orlando, Fla., when it aired an “In the Life” episode for the first time during a pledge drive--even though the show ran at midnight.

This week’s hourlong program on KCET tracks six stories: “The New Hepatitis Awareness,” “Kinney and Buscemi Glance Back at ‘Parting Glances,’ ” “Queer Poets on the Slam Scene,” “Helena, Montana’s First Gay Pride March--An ITL Archives Report,” “Out on the Bench--Judge Deborah A. Batts of New York” and “The Laramie Project--Voices From Wyoming.”

* “In the Life, Gay Pride Episode 2000” can be seen tonight at 10 on KCET.