KOCE Will Drop ‘EastEnders’

The day has long since passed when it was true that “the sun never sets on the British Empire.” And this week, Old Sol sank a little lower on the Southland’s cultural horizon with word that after Wednesday, the BBC TV series “EastEnders” no longer will be shown locally.

KOCE Channel 50, the Orange County Public Broadcasting System station with exclusive Southern California rights to “EastEnders,” won’t pick up the next package of 165 episodes of the highly rated British soap because, the station’s program director said this week, “we can’t afford it.”

Kirk Groenveld said the issue isn’t the popularity of the show, which has been lauded as a down-to-earth alternative to such fantasy-oriented American soaps as “Dallas” and “Dynasty.”

“It is very popular,” Groenveld said. “I think in our last membership survey, it was the eighth most popular series, and our ratings tend to back that up.”

Indeed, since a letter about the cancellation appeared last week in the TV Times, viewers have been calling and writing the station in what KOCE officials describe as an unprecedented response. One of about 25 PBS stations nationwide that carry the series, KOCE has been showing “EastEnders” twice a week since January, 1988. (Los Angeles PBS station KCET Channel 28 passed on the series last year because station officials felt that it would require too great a block of programming time.)

Station spokeswoman Nancy Lambing said KOCE has received dozens of letters “and at least 100 phone calls--that’s much more than ever before. We are really becoming aware now of how popular this show has been. Once it goes off we feel the floodgates will open.”

“Viewers are asking ‘How can you cancel it?’ But they only have half the story,” Groenveld said. “The other side of the story is that we can’t afford the next season. . . . It’s not an arbitrary decision. When you can’t afford steak, you don’t buy steak--you find something else or go to a different store.”

The next batch of shows would cost about $30,000 that the station’s management has decided to spend elsewhere, Groenveld said. KOCE will spend about $350,000 buying programs this year; the most expensive single series is the PBS-produced “Nova,” which costs KOCE $48,000 to $50,000 per year.

Groenveld further cited a concerted effort by PBS stations nationwide to carry as much of the system’s original programming as possible to raise PBS’s profile in the face of increasing competition from cable, home VCRs and other entertainment media.

“The decision on ‘EastEnders’ is part of a much larger consideration for us, and that is at what point to do we have to support PBS programs? This decision was made at the highest offices here,” Groenveld said.

The show was, however, promoted prominently during pledge drives in March, with no mention that KOCE would stop carrying it after the initial batch of 130 episodes runs out on Wednesday.

In addition, “EastEnders” actress Linda Davidson, who plays punk-ish single mother Mary Smith and was featured in KOCE pledge-break pitches last month, was in the Southland this week lining up interviews to promote the show, unaware that KOCE was dropping it. (See related story on this page.)

Groenveld said some subscribers complained that, as “EastEnders” fans, they felt their contributions “were taken under false pretense. Unfortunately, it was a case where we’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t. If we tell people ‘Gosh, this is going off the air,’ would that say, ‘Don’t pledge anything; don’t pay for programs you’ve been watching for a year?’ And if we say ‘Gee, we want to continue this program, so send in your money’--do you return their checks if we don’t get enough?”

Groenveld did offer one glimmer of hope for the show’s future. “If a corporate underwriter wanted to support ‘EastEnders,’ we would make every effort to bring the series back,” he said.

Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for the show’s U.S distributor, BBC Lionheart International in New York, said “at the present time, no one else is under license” to carry the show. The distributor declined comment on whether other stations have dropped “EastEnders” this season.

Set in London’s working-class East End, the show follows the lives of a dozen or so regular characters including a couple who own the popular Queen Vic pub, an unwed pregnant teen-ager, a yuppie couple and a Turkish immigrant who is a taxi driver and cafe owner and who is married to a British woman.

In contrast with most American prime-time programming, there has never been a gun used, or even shown, on the series. Instead of featuring back-biting social climbers and multimillion-dollar corporate takeovers, the series deals with such issues as unemployment, politics and social policy.

In England, where the series began in 1985, “EastEnders” has been the nation’s No. 1 program and counts members of the royal family among its estimated 30-million regular viewers.

At the British Dominion and Social Club in Garden Grove, reaction to the news of the show’s cancellation brought more than one whist game to a halt on Wednesday night.

“My wife will go bleeding nuts when she finds out,” said bar director Malcolm Evans.

“I’ll send in a donation if they’ll keep it on for life,” said Beryl Robert of Westminster, as she compared notes with her table partners on the latest plot developments.

“It’s got a humor you normally don’t see in American shows,” added Sharon Jones of Westminster.

Richard Nadine, program director for San Jose PBS station KTEH, said officials there “wouldn’t think of dropping ‘EastEnders,’ ” which he said is one of the top three moneymakers for the station during pledge drives.

KTEH got a solid indication of its “EastEnders” audience during a recent pledge drive when they bumped the show to broadcast a basketball game. “The phones were all ringing and we thought everyone was calling to support the basketball game,” Nadine said. “But they were calling complaining that ‘EastEnders’ wasn’t on. It was the first time we preempted the show and people were totally outraged. If we were to cancel it up here, we’d be in deep doo-doo.”

Said KOCE’s Groenveld: “A series like this develops a cult following of very loyal viewers. It is written so professionally. . . . It’s a quality show, I recognize that.”

Times staff writer Jan Herman contributed to this article.