The ‘Sixties’: Tackling a Hot Topic : Television: Of the 300 companies approached, only two would underwrite the program. ‘People didn’t want to be involved with something about the ‘60s.’

It’s been more than 30 years since John F. Kennedy inspired a nation brimming with youthful, postwar idealism and heralded in the wrenching decade of the 1960s.

But all these years later, the period--which historians say didn’t really end until the mid-’70s--apparently is still considered by some people to be too hot to touch.

The producers of the PBS series “Making Sense of the Sixties”--which, barring last-minute preemptions for war coverage, is scheduled to debut at 9 tonight on Channels 28 and 15, and at 8 on Channel 24--approached 300 companies in their search for underwriters. They found only two: Tom’s of Maine, a maker of natural personal care products, and clothing maker Syms Corp.

“People didn’t want to be involved with something about the ‘60s,” said David Hoffman, the series’ director and one of its executive producers. “They were afraid of what we would do.”

In the end, the series was funded almost entirely by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which contributed $2.3 million.

“We tried for three solid years to get corporate funding,” said Ricki Green, executive producer for WETA, the Washington-based public television station that produced the program in association with Hoffman’s company, Varied Directions. “We went to every company that has baby boomers as their market.”

Alarmed, perhaps, at visions of marijuana, communal living and Kent State, nearly all said, “No.”

Tom Chappell, who founded Tom’s of Maine in 1970 with his wife, Kate, said that he agreed to back the program because it was the idealism of the ‘60s that inspired the couple to start their company in the first place.

“The content of the show is very much specific to the roots of our motivations for being in business,” said Chappell, who donates 7.5% of company profits to charity each year and used company resources to help the town of Kennebunk, Me., where Tom’s is located, set up a recycling program.

“We try to be a different kind of competitor, be a more sensitive listener with consumers and (sell) a product that has high quality and a respect for nature,” Chappell said. “All of these were senses we had in that period as young people.”

According to Green and Hoffman, executives at most other companies said they simply did not want to be associated with a program about the ‘60s.

“It’s perceived as such a divisive era, and an era that many, particularly older people, would like to forget,” said Green.

“Making Sense of the Sixties” takes on the controversial period in six hourlong episodes, to be aired in 2-hour blocks over three consecutive nights.

Like the PBS blockbuster, “The Civil War,” which aired miniseries-style in September, the series will be shown over all public television stations during the same time slot. The scheduling is part of programming chief Jennifer Lawson’s plan to coordinate prime-time schedules and create a sense of excitement about major PBS shows.

The first two episodes, due to air tonight, look at the conservative ‘50s as the period which gave birth to the ‘60s in a segment called “Seeds of the Sixties,” and, in “We Can Change the World,” the Kennedy years, including the burgeoning civil rights movement.

Tuesday’s programs look at the rebellion and counterculture that characterized the middle and late ‘60s with “Breaking Boundaries, Testing Limits,” and zero in on 1968, the year in which the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy were assassinated and the Vietnam War reached its peak, with “In a Dark Time.”

Wednesday, “Picking Up the Pieces” and “Legacies of the Sixties” examine the ‘70s, including the Kent State University killings, and look back at the decade from the perspective of the ‘90s.

In Los Angeles, KCET plans to continue the ‘60s theme by re-running two series about the era. “An American Family,” the documentary that followed the Loud family of Santa Barbara through their day-to-day lives in 1973, started Sunday and will run after “Making Sense of the Sixties” at 11 each night and for eight consecutive nights thereafter. And the PBS series “Vietnam” will be aired on Thursday nights at 10, beginning this week.