Public Television

In an attempt to mount a new documentary series for public television, four non-commercial stations have set out to raise funds for what they're calling "The American Documentary." The stations in the consortium are the same ones that presently produce public television's "American Playhouse" drama series: KCET Channel 28 in Los Angeles, WNET in New York, WGBH in Boston and South Carolina Educational Television.

Cultural TV programming has come and gone during the past 15 years, but public television's "Great Performances" series endures. In the opinion of many on the cultural scene here, it now is "the only game in town" for fine-arts performance programming.

Public television broadcasters have asked the government to allow them in the future to raise money a new way: by charging viewers for "Barney & Friends," "Nova" and other noncommercial programs. The Public Broadcasting Service and the Washington-based lobbying group for the nation's 203 public stations want federal regulators to grant them broad new commercial powers as stations make the transition to digital technology, a new form of broadcasting, beginning next year.

James Day, 89, who co-founded an early public television station and became known for his masterful interviews with well-known figures, died April 24 of respiratory failure at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. His death was announced by KQED-TV Channel 9, the San Francisco station he helped create in 1954. For 16 years, he was president and general manager of the station. He is credited with establishing now-standard public TV fundraising techniques such as pledge nights and televised auctions.

Sometime in the future, worries William H. Kobin, president of public-television station KCET, an official god of television will sit down to sift through all the network, cable, independent and syndicated programming through history to compile a list of the most important and most innovative television shows. And he fears that if public television doesn't make some changes, its new programs might not make the list.

President Bush on Wednesday signed into law a bill that sharply increases government subsidies for public television and bans the broadcast of "indecent" programs before midnight. Congress approved the three-year, $1.1-billion reauthorization for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting earlier this month and still must pass legislation appropriating the money.

The inspector general of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is launching an investigation into whether public television and radio stations around the country inappropriately used federal funds to lobby against threatened budget cuts this summer. Kenneth A.

Ideas put forward by officials of the Public Broadcasting Service for "reinventing public television" sound more like those of bureaucrats worried about protecting their cushy jobs than any notion of serving the public.

Former CBS News President Fred Friendly on Wednesday had few good words to say about commercial television stations and supported a proposal to impose a fee on these "money machines" to help foot the bill for public broadcasting. Friendly, testifying for more than an hour before a Senate Commerce subcommittee, said Congress has a duty to establish a stable source of money for the public TV and radio system it created 20 years ago.

Take your pick. Do you and your family want to watch "Sesame Street," "The Puzzle Place," "The Frugal Gourmet," "NOVA," "Masterpiece Theatre," "This Old House" and "Mystery" or sitcoms, sex-filled soap operas, tabloid talk shows and violent police dramas, intermixed with lots of advertising? Fortunately, you and I actually do have a choice. The reason: public television. For more than 25 years, public television has been providing an alternative to commercial networks.