A Shaper of Channel 13 Robert Kotlowitz Dies at 87

Robert Kotlowitz, author and publisher, who reluctantly became manager of public television in 1971 and has continued to develop the line of homegrown and imported shows - including "The Report MacNeil / Lehrer," "Live at the Met" "Dance in America" ??and "Brideshead Revisited" - which represent a high point of American television, died Saturday at home in Manhattan.

The cause was prostate cancer, his son Alex said.

Mr. Kotlowitz had just resigned as editor of Harper, in a battle with the new owners for editorial control, when John Jay Iselin, the new president's main public television stations in the country, Channel 13 in New York, offered job.

"Like what?" I've never been in a TV studio, "said Kotlowitz asked in an interview with Channel 13. Mr. Iselin said, he replied:" You will be the editor. "

"Why?" Mr. Kotlowitz hesitant to ask.

"We'll see," said Iselin.

Mr. Kotlowitz, who was senior vice president of programming and distribution, and has remained on channel 13 until his retirement in 1990, was known as a kind of minister of Culture and home to some of the most ardent advocate Mr. Iselin's most ambitious decisions.

Ist proposed an evening news half an hour with Jim Lehrer and Robert MacNeil in 1973, after the couple had anchored public television coverage of Senate Watergate hearings.

The agreement has been difficult, but largely thanks to the tenacity of Mr. Kotlowitz met two years later as "The Report MacNeil / Lehrer." The program, which was seen across the country since December 1975, now known as "PBS NewsHour."

In 1981, when Channel 13 had financial problems, Mr. Kotlowitz convinced Mr. Iselin invest $ 500,000 in a series produced by Granada Television in England. The series "Brideshead Revisited," based on the novel by Evelyn Waugh, has become one of the most successful television audiences.

Mr. Kotlowitz played a similar role in introducing the audience to "Monty Python Flying Circus", a live performance at New York City Ballet and the Philharmonic Orchestra of New York, "Bill Moyers Journal" and "Nature".

Mr. MacNeil, who became a friend, said Mr. Kotlowitz aesthetic sensibility deeply influenced PBS programming. "He had innate good taste, and a deep familiarity with literature and art in all its forms," ??said MacNeil said in an interview.

Before the advent of cable, when public television was one of the only alternatives to the speed of the network in many small towns, he added, "Bob was what brought people to opera, ballet The New York Philharmonic. "

In a review in the Washington Post Book World "Somewhere Else," Michele Murray that Mr. Kotlowitz by Isaac Bashevis Singer. "He made the best singer in 'The Manor' and 'The Farm', he wrote," to explain what is essentially the same story of the breakdown of the traditional life of communities isolated Jewish shtetl in Poland. "

In addition to his son, Alex, Mr. Kotlowitz survivors include another son, Dan, a sister, Elaine Magarill, and four grandchildren. His wife, Billie Kotlowitz Leibowitz, who died in 1994.

Mr. Kotlowitz told interviewers that while he was not looking for a job in public television, glad that he was ahead. The work, he said in the interview with Channel 13, took him to the arena of the great pleasures of life: music, art, books, nature, history, current events.