"Frontline" producer on Charlotte: You're optimistic (and kind of defensive)

Ofra Bikel is a producer, director and writer for the PBS show "Frontline." She is not, she says, an economist.

Bikel was in Charlotte earlier this month interviewing community and business leaders for a report on the city that "Frontline" hopes to air this spring. Among the questions she's asked is this: How does Charlotte reimagine its economic future?

As we wrote earlier, it's a question that presumes we might have some reimagining to do, given the banking trouble that's hit Charlotte so bluntly. Will our future be different than the previous two decades of bank-aided prosperity?

Bikel called today, however, to say she has little interest in predicting how Charlotte's economic landscape might someday look. Her aim, at least initially, was to report on the impact the financial crisis has had on people, and she thought Charlotte offered a more intimate connection between banks and citizens than New York, the nation's biggest banking city.

"It's so involved in the lives of people (in Charlotte)," she says. "This is what I hope the show is going to be about."

What has she seen thus far? First, that we're a little defensive about the banks.

Actually, not just a little defensive.

"The town is very defensive about the banks," she says. "I hear a lot of people saying, 'We have a lot of other industries.' Of course you have."

She has, however, seen an outlook here that's more difficult to find in New York. "I think Charlotteans take it better than the people in New York," she says. "They're very optimistic."

That might be, she speculates, a factor of churches here helping more people sort through their difficulties. But she is unsure.

"I'm a little perplexed, to tell the truth," she says. "I'm not quite sure what to make of it."

That's why she'll be returning later this month to conduct more interviews and begin shooting.

We'll tell you what we hear.