Jonathan Storm: Sam Katz's documentary on Philadelphia to preempt 'Wheel of Fortune' Tuesday

Sam Katz may not have been able to win the mayor's office or the governorship, but he has done something maybe even more difficult: Pry a half-hour of time out of the 6ABC schedule for a show he has produced. And not just any half-hour.

Tuesday, instead of Wheel of Fortune, which on some nights gets higher ratings than any of the ABC network offerings on 6ABC, the channel will present the pilot episode of Philadelphia: The Great Experiment, at 7:30 p.m. It's the first step of what Katz hopes one day will become a seven-hour series on the 400-year history of the city.

Unlike most network pilots, high-priced extravaganzas that stand in as the first episode of a series, "The Floodgates Open" is what Katz calls a "proof of concept," not even the project's final look at the crucial years in Philadelphia's history that it portrays, 1865-76.

The idea is that potential financial supporters of the larger project will see that Katz and his team have a good goal and know how to accomplish it. Mission accomplished. Only the most intense Wheel fan will miss Pat and Vanna and their puzzles and prizes.

The Great Experiment is a fantastic concept. Does any city in the United States have a richer history than Philadelphia? Has anyone done a video examination of it?

Katz and his team (his son Phil is a major player) demonstrate that they can work the archives, find the talking heads - ex-NPR journalist Juan Williams and MSNBC's Chris Matthews among them - and round up actors and camera crew to stage the re-creations competently. The finished product will be familiar to anyone who has watched history, especially Ken Burns' efforts on PBS.

However, it lacks the flow of more polished work, and fails to tie up obvious loose ends. City Hall is a focus, but the program never specifically mentions when ground was broken or the structure completed.

Much of the film is devoted to an Election Day, Oct. 10, 1871, following passage of the 15th Amendment which guaranteed U.S. citizens the right to vote, no matter what their "race, color, or previous condition of servitude." Amid mob violence, Negro leader Octavius V. Catto was gunned down by a crony of Irish leader William McMullen. But the year remains vague in the documentary, and it never mentions the date.

The film ends with a discussion of the 1876 Centennial celebration, the first World's Fair held in the United States, and while there are many pictures of the buildings and installations, narrator Michael Boatman never mentions that the fair was in Fairmount Park.

Dates and places are important in history documentaries not for the pop quiz that will follow, but because they provide guideposts for the audience. Katz & Co. need to scrutinize their future work for ambiguity.

But "The Floodgates Open" also works in many ways, immersing viewers in a critical and lesser-known era in Philadelphia's history, demonstrating how quickly things changed and examining some of the forces - often specific individuals - who inspired that change.

Eleven years in 22 minutes seems pretty quick, but, as Katz points out, the 400-year history would require not seven, but more than 13, hours at that pace. That's Ken Burns territory, and, as Burns has demonstrated, it can be a slog. Documentarians with smaller finance spigots (which means every other one of them) must operate at a more frenetic pace.

That can make for better, more entertaining work. Katz says that if he gets his financing, he plans on "shifting from the traditional mode of historical storytelling, and focusing on pivotal moments - bigger stories, and not as many stories."

It's a great idea, but the method will make it even more important to ground those stories with dates and places and the other traditional architecture long used by historians.

Philadelphia: The Great Experiment

7:30 p.m. Tuesday on 6ABC