WGBH appeals to viewers to fund show about adoption

In an era of shrinking corporate donations and uncertain federal financing, WGBH is experimenting with a new fund-raising strategy: asking viewers to finance a show that has yet to be produced.

Today, the public broadcasting station will unveil adoptionfilm.org, a website designed to raise money for a documentary about the changing nature of adoption.

The project, tentatively titled ''Adoption: An American Revolution," would include a two-hour TV special and an outreach effort through libraries and schools, said executive producer Judith Vecchione. It is tentatively scheduled to air in November 2006 and will cost about $1.6 million.

While WGBH received an initial grant from PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vecchione said, the station needs to raise matching funds for about three-quarters of the project's cost.

So in addition to soliciting the usual donations from corporations and foundations, she said, executives decided the adoption community was large enough to warrant a special solicitation. The pitch, Vecchione said, is ''this is a program that you're hungry for. Help us make it."

Station executives hope the public television brand will appeal to adoptive parents, who have been angry about the way commercial TV portrays the issue. Adam Pertman, a former Globe reporter who is executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, cites January's ''Who's Your Daddy?" special on Fox and an ABC 20/20 segment last year that made adoption ''into a game show."

Pertman is a senior adviser to the project, which was inspired by his book ''Adoption Nation."

WGBH produces about a third of the prime-time content on PBS. Some projects are funded partly through corporate underwriting, but corporate budgets have been increasingly limited, said Jon Abbott, the station's vice president and chief operating officer.

WGBH is among the most successful public television stations in the nation in terms of raising viewer pledges, which ordinarily go into a general fund, Abbott said. But this show seemed a perfect test case for targeted fund-raising, he said. And Vecchione said other public television stations are watching closely.