KOBIN HAS BRIGHTENED THE PICTURE AT KCET-TV

Three years after taking the leadership reins at KCET Channel 28, William Kobin says he is proud of what the public TV station has achieved and impatient to do even more.

“I feel it’s the end of a chapter,” said Kobin, president and chief executive officer of the Los Angeles station. “It’s like the end of Phase I. I feel we’ve accomplished an enormous amount over these three years and that we’ve reached a certain plateau. I hope we’ve reached a point where we can continue to increase at the same steady rate we have been.

“But, if you ask me if I’d rather do that or accelerate and try to do it faster, I’d say I want to go for it!”

And that’s just what he intends to do. “I really believe we will make a major effort over the next three to five years to make the station what it ought to be,” he said.

However, he declined to discuss how he hopes to step up growth in such areas as funding, viewership, subscribers and production, indicating that his plans still are being formulated.

Kobin’s long-term goal, stated even before he arrived at Channel 28’s Hollywood studios on Jan. 17, 1983, has been to turn KCET into “the best public television station in the country”--not necessarily in terms of having the biggest budget or producing the most programs, but in terms of fulfilling its potential.

While considerable progress has been made, Kobin said “we’re still a hell of a long way from where we should be, given the resources and talent that exist in this community and that I now believe exist at this station.”

He takes much more satisfaction in having met the short-term goals he had set three years ago: “to rebuild confidence in KCET’s financial stability and our creative capability.”

When Kobin took over at Channel 28, having previously run the public TV station in Minneapolis-St. Paul, KCET was beginning to recover from a yearlong financial crisis that had led to severe cutbacks in programming and the dismissal of one-third of the staff. The station was no longer considering selling its 4 1/2-acre facilities to stave off bankruptcy, but it was still $3.5 million in debt.

Today, KCET owes just $432,000 to three banks and is due to finish paying that off by the end of October. The station has finished the last three fiscal years in the black, even as its yearly operating budget has climbed 55%, from $15.4 million to $23.7 million.

In the same period, the station’s ratings have grown to what are record levels for the non-commercial station and the subscriber rolls--those viewers who voluntarily contribute $35 or more in support each year--have swelled from 210,000 to about 280,000, also a record. KCET raised more money (slightly more than $1 million) during its on-air fund-raising drive in December than any other public TV station in the country during the same 12-day period.

KCET’s production slate, badly battered by the station’s ill financial winds, has grown steadily, too, with series such as “KCET Journal,” “Videolog,” “Actors on Acting,” “Turning Points” and “Arts Illustrated” and national specials such as “Wings,” “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” “Paper Angels,” “Mr. Previn Comes to Town” and last week’s drama, “Maricela,” on the PBS “Wonderworks” series.

To ensure continued programming growth, the station established what it calls a creative venture fund in December, 1984, a bank account to be used for buying rights, hiring consultants, shooting pilots and otherwise developing new projects that can then be submitted to potential underwriters for production and promotion funding. Last month the station received major grants for the fund from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Irvine Foundation.

“The turnaround has been phenomenal, I think,” said Tom Thompson, a KCET employee since 1977 and executive producer of the station’s news and public affairs programming since February, 1981. “You just get a sense that things are moving. You get a feeling that we’re on the up escalator. It’s great.”

He credits Kobin for imposing stability and improving internal communications at the station, for establishing realistic programming goals that emphasize quality over quantity and for bringing in a former associate from KTCA-TV in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Stephen Kulczycki, as vice president of programming. “The guy is a terrific programmer with a really good sense of the kinds of programs we ought to be pursuing,” he said of Kulczycki.

That doesn’t mean the struggle is over, Thompson said. “If there’s any frustration here, it’s that we want to do more. We need more money, a bigger staff, more facilities.”

He won’t get any argument from Kobin. Asked what his biggest disappointment has been in three years at KCET, the 56-year-old president said, “I would have liked to have gone even further. I would like to have achieved more in every area--done more local programming, done more national programming, replaced more equipment, added more people.

“In order to do those things, though, you need considerably more money.”