Though Fields' staff will coach video crews, he has been happily surprised to find a high level of professionalism in videotapes already being made. Joan Hershey, a Great Performances producer, will be line producer for the project, while Fields is executive producer with other local programming projects to oversee. Fields, a onetime Westinghouse Broadcasting colleague of WNET President Bill Baker, joined WNET last fall to develop the project, which grew out of Baker's conversations with Cablevision Chairman Chuck Dolan. Baker has pointed out that arts programming is one area where public TV retains a strong leadership position, with limited competition. Rainbow will pay WNET only the cost of transmitting its programming by fiber-optic cable to a cable operations center in Manhattan, according to Fields.
Fields has experience with lean production budgets.
Until two years ago he was station manager of WQED's sister station, WQEX, which made more local programming than all the city's other stations combined, he says. WNET is talking with Rainbow about a role in the Learning Center channel, according to Fields. Cablevision and Rainbow have been pioneers in regional cable programming, both in sports channels and in starting the first 24-hour local news channel, on Long Island. Rainbow, a subsidiary of Cablevision and NBC, also operates Bravo, American Movie Classics and the Independent Film Channel.