Each December for the past two decades, a group of actors from Arena Players could be found busily learning lines from a play that won an annual contest for the region's black writers. The production was prepared for broadcast the following February on WMAR-TV.

Those activities won't be happening this winter.

Station officials have canceled the competition, saying that they haven't been able to find any advertisers in recent years to help defray the $20,000 to $25,000 cost of the awards and of producing the play. Those expenses covered building the sets, creating the costumes, and paying the Arena Players' actors and crew.

"We kept carrying it for several years, and kept hoping we'd get some good sponsorship for it," says Drew Berry, general manager for WMAR. "Believe me, it's really tough to be doing this."

Ed Terry, artistic director of Arena Players, says he appreciates the station's efforts over the years, which gave his organization a burst of visibility each year. "What kind of collaborations do you know of that last that length of time?" Terry asks. "We are both sad for this to come to an end."

Berry and other station officials say they intend to maintain ties with Arena Players. WMAR has donated $5,000 for the community theater group in honor of its 50th anniversary. The station has committed itself to air a series of public service announcements singling out Arena Players, and pledged that its anchors will make appearances at public events to raise money for it. Additionally, several segments of Good Morning Maryland and the public affairs show 2 The Point on WMAR have been devoted to the theater.

Put aside, for the moment, the questionable call of promising news coverage to a civic partner, even one that's appealing. The cancellation of the black playwright competition confirms the pattern of the eroding local flavor of all commercial television. "It was a labor of love for myself and the crews of Channel 2," said Harry Kakel, production manager for WMAR. "It was one of the few times that we could pretend we were doing something meaningful."

Local news and even local sports translate to local interest, which means advertisers can target certain consumers, which generates revenues. Public affairs shows, with modest ratings, are usually pushed to less desirable late-night or early-morning slots. Culture is an even tougher sell.

Past aspiring playwrights whose works have been honored included a former official of radio station WEAA-FM; a librarian from the Enoch Pratt; and a convicted felon who died after winning his third award in the competition. H.B. Johnson Jr. wrote prize-winning entries while serving a 35-year-sentence in the Maryland State Penitentiary for armed robbery.

But writers were not the only beneficiaries. Many fledgling actors were given a shot to perform in the one-act plays produced by the station. Actor Clayton LeBouef, who later played a recurring character on NBC's Homicide: Life on the Streets, first performed in Baltimore as Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie in WMAR's production of the 1987 winner, The Eagle and the Lion.

At first, major companies sponsored the broadcast of the play, including McDonald's, Superfresh, Penn Optical and Value City. Now, Berry and Kakel say that support has all fallen away. "Most local stations only define themselves by news today because that's where the money is," Kakel says. "I worry about stations in the future, that we're all becoming cookie-cutter stations."

Berry says he sent copies of all the plays produced over the years to Major Broadcasting Cable Network, an Atlanta-based channel aimed at blacks that can be found in many urban areas, including Baltimore.

"We're been airing them over the past year," says Pat Hooks, commercial operations director for MBC. "We've gotten a tremendous response."

But, Berry says, the lack of advertiser support doomed the new versions of the show, which was presented as part of the station's programming efforts staged for Black History Month. He points out that the roughly $25,000 cost of running the contest and broadcasting the winner's play didn't include the bigger advertising revenues that the station would have received with a different hourlong show during prime time.

Terry of Arena Players says the station offered the theater the chance to save the show by securing advertisers on its own. "Well, we're a community theater," he says. "We don't have that camaraderie with the kind of people who could sponsor it."

Berry says, regretfully, "Things like that absolutely need to be funded. Television is very expensive."

Here's a nugget of wisdom from WBFF's Emily Schmidt, as she warned Baltimore last week about an impending storm: "An ounce of philosophy beats a pound of cure." Words to live by, if only we knew what they meant.

Questions? Comments? Story ideas? David Folkenflik can be reached by e-mail at david.folkenflik@baltsun.com or by phone at 410-332-6923.