WNET Gets Grant to Produce PBS News Series on Religion

NEW YORK — WNET-TV, the public television station here, has received a $5-million grant to produce a weekly news program for PBS about religion and ethics.

“Religion is all around us, yet it’s not really being covered by public TV or the commercial networks,” said Tamara Robinson, vice president of national programming for WNET. “This series will focus on a wide range of topics, from Islamic fundamentalism to the religious perspective on issues such as welfare reform.”

The grant from the Lily Foundation will fund 39 half-hour programs. The series, which is due to be formally announced today by PBS President Ervin Duggan at a news conference in Pasadena, will premiere this summer. It is tentatively titled “Religion Newsweekly” and will be hosted by Robert Abernathy, a former NBC News correspondent who currently contributes occasional pieces on religion to NBC newscasts.

Robinson said that the series will have features and profiles of notable spiritual leaders as well as news stories.

“If we were already on the air today, we would have wanted to profile Cardinal Joseph Bernardin,” said Robinson, referring to the late Catholic leader who used his struggle with pancreatic cancer to help other cancer patients. He died in November.

“Religion Newsweekly” will cover a variety of religious viewpoints and, as a news program, will not “proselytize” for any particular religion, she said.

The Lily Foundation grant represents a resurgence in the funding of new programs at WNET-TV, one of the flagship stations in the PBS system. Executives there said they will be spending nearly $40 million on original programming for the 1997-98 season, compared to just $5.7 million two years earlier.

WNET, like other PBS stations, has suffered cutbacks in government and corporate support in recent years. Station President William F. Baker credited WNET’s improved financial picture to a successful drive to create a programming endowment and to finding new corporate and foundation sources of underwriting.

“You have to have seed money to develop national programming,” Baker said. “I’m proud that we’ve increased our new productions with serious shows like the religion series.”

WNET will produce 16 series and specials on PBS during the coming season, including an eight-part “Beyond Wall Street,” which will include financial information for the average person; “Inspired by Bach,” a three-part performing-arts series; “Imaging America,” focusing on three communities around the country; and “Live Long and Prosper,” an eight-part series on how technology has affected medicine.