On the Media: KCET still delivers the news — or does it?

KCET's daring and possibly foolish flight away from the PBS network has been in force only since New Year's Day, but it doesn't seem too early to guess that one program in the station's new lineup will not win a lot of fans. "Newsline" takes the place of the dependable and time-tested "NewsHour," the staple nightly news program that public television viewers see as the civilized antidote to the loud and contentious world of cable TV. Now, KCET viewers get half an hour of "Newsline" and half an hour of "BBC World News." There's nothing at all wrong with the former, at least if you're a resident of Asia or a swath of the western Pacific, or if you have a particular fascination with traditional Korean wedding ceremonies, the finer points of conveyor-belt sushi, Japanese trade policy or men in diapers wrestling over a large ball. That's a partial roster of the stories that arrived, front and center, on the news program Monday, the first weeknight of regular programming since KCET unveiled its post-PBS lineup.

The longtime Los Angeles flagship for PBS announced last year that it would leave the public TV network in a dispute over about $7 million in annual dues.