Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 2, 1994 TAG: 9401080004
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By PATRICIA BRENNAN THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
``Challenge to America'' (Monday and Tuesday nights at 9 p.m. on WBRA-Channel 15) reports on the interworking of education and business in Japan and Germany and compares those societies' approaches to ours.
The four one-hour installments are: ``Old Ways, New Game,'' a look at global competition; ``The Heart of the Nation,'' a look at the values that the three nations teach their children; ``The Culture of Commerce,'' comparing America's entrepreneurial style of capitalism with the business practices of Germany and Japan; and ``Winning Strategies,'' presenting five American success stories and discussions on educational reform and corporate strategies.
The series concludes with Smith's interview with President Clinton, addressing the same issues examined in the mini-series.
``Change is difficult,'' said Smith. ``We in this country love to talk about change. We all want to know the latest. But all you have to do is to think about how many people there are who are trying to lose weight. Losing weight is about fundamental change. If you think about that problem, you think about how hard it is to change a company: You're asking a whole lot of people to go on a new diet. And that's hard.''
Smith knows more than a bit about change. A former newspaperman who won the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting, he is now a television producer. In his transition, he served as on-screen correspondent and writer for several documentaries, including one based on his own book, ``The Power Game.'' He also appeared on PBS's ``Washington Week in Review'' for nearly 20 years.
Although he has made other documentaries, they were all done with other producers. ``Challenge to America'' is the first project for which Smith created his own production company.
``It has actually been a fascinating experience for me, to run a small business at a time when you're talking about how businesses are run,'' said Smith. ``I'm taking seriously everything I'm hearing, and where I can, the good stuff I'm trying to apply.''
Smith, working with his executive producer, Philip Burton, said he made some production decisions based on what he had learned from Japanese car-makers.
One was to spend money when he needed to in order to save time and money later. In one case, he chartered an airplane to bring to Washington former Secretary of Labor Ray Marshall, whose remarks would be significant to the film. In another, Smith opted to take time and shoot footage he thought he would want rather than to return to the site later at further expense.
``One of the things that American industry assumed for a long time was that quality and cost were in opposition to each other,'' Smith said, ``that if you wanted high quality, you were going to have high cost; that if you wanted to drive the cost down, you were going to sacrifice quality.
``One of the lessons of the Japanese production system is that cost and quality are not at odds with each other, that if you want high quality and you pursue it intelligently and effectively, in fact you will actually save money. Do it right the first time, and you do not have to spend a lot of time fixing it; you don't have to hire a whole lot of people to do inspection and control.''
Smith's companion book to ``Challenge to America'' will appear well after the series airs.
by CNB