Public Television

For decades, public access programming on cable television has provided a virtually free forum for community activists and aspiring entertainers, for preening star wannabes as well as serious-minded political watchdogs. But in Los Angeles and across California that forum began crumbling last week, a development that advocates say will strip ordinary citizens of a valuable 1st Amendment platform.

It is that time of year again, when attacks on PBS remind those of us who labor in its besieged vineyards how much we must be prepared to defend our unique but vulnerable institution.

Skip E. Lowe was on his way back from the TV studio Wednesday when he learned that his 30-year-old public access show may not fade to black in Los Angeles after all. Across town, City Council members were struggling to keep the plug from being pulled on Los Angeles' public access TV network. New cable company franchise rules threaten to cut off the city's four channels reserved for public, educational and governmental uses.

PBS has awarded documentary filmmaker Ken Burns an unprecedented 15-year contract to continue providing public television stations with his signature films on American history. "What that represents is an extraordinary commitment from Ken that signals he plans to spend the rest of his professional life working with public television," said PBS President and Chief Executive Paula Kerger in an announcement Saturday to the semiannual gathering of the Television Critics Assn. in Pasadena.

"America at a Crossroads" did not get off to an auspicious start. From the beginning, the ambitious $20-million effort to examine the complexities of the post-Sept. 11 world through a series of documentaries -- an initiative of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the private nonprofit that distributes federal funds to public television and radio -- was greeted with skepticism.

Amid public television's ongoing struggles for funding, Los Angeles' KCET has created an ambitious plan to expand local programming. The initiative, "Celebrate the Southland, KCET at Ten," includes a mix of proposed programs including viewers' restaurant reviews and solutions to government problems, celebrity home tours and profiles of hometown heroes.

In an unprecedented move, the agency that oversees public broadcasting has stepped in to arrange distribution for a TV documentary on Islam that PBS had rejected as unworthy. The federally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting helped find a new distributor for "Islam vs. Islamists: Voices From the Muslim Center" after seven Republican members of Congress and one Democrat demanded that CPB ask PBS to air it or release it elsewhere.

KOCE will remain Orange County's public television station after its owners announced an agreement Thursday that gives the world's second-largest religious broadcaster a toehold in Southern California, ending more than three years of legal fighting over the station's fate.

After a year of fractious struggles in public broadcasting over politics and finances, the Public Broadcasting Service turned inward this week for its next leader, selecting a veteran public television station executive known for her diplomatic skills to guide PBS. The PBS board of directors announced Monday that it has selected Paula Kerger, a top executive at New York's Thirteen/WNET, to be the system's next president and CEO.

William J. Lamb, a former KCET executive who helped bring such landmark programs as "Cosmos" with Carl Sagan and "American Playhouse" to public television, has died. He was 76. Lamb, who lived in Santa Cruz, died Saturday at a Hancock Park rehabilitation center of complications from a stroke after heart surgery, according to his daughter, Diane Tobey-Harding.