Rebecca Eaton can't quite explain how she chooses the productions for PBS' "Masterpiece." She just knows the right ones when she sees them.

"And I do pick them all," says Eaton, who in September will mark her 25th anniversary as executive producer of "Masterpiece" (the 47-year-old PBS series dropped its "Theatre" last year). "So if you don't like them, it's me you can complain to."

Eaton, who was in town this week to meet with major donors at KETC (Channel 9), took over "Masterpiece Theatre" in the "Jewel in the Crown" era, when fans of intelligent TV still considered sitting down Sunday nights for sophisticated British dramas a religious experience.

Nobody could have imagined how much change was coming to television in the next quarter century, as a handful of cable networks grew into hundreds — producing every kind of original programming. Even the BBC stepped on PBS' toes, launching its own U.S. cable outlet.

All the while, Eaton kept searching out and scheduling the best programs she could find. "I just have this inner sense of the level of quality I'm looking for, the excellence of writing, directing, acting and production," she said Wednesday at KETC's Grand Center headquarters, taking a break between lunch with donors and shooting a promo for the station's next membership drive.

"Masterpiece" still has no corporate underwriter, after the departure of longtime backer ExxonMobil in 2004.

"All our funding comes from PBS now," Eaton said. Wherever she goes, she's always hoping that a local corporation with a few hundred thousand dollars to spare will sign on. "This is a brand you can't buy, an audience you can't buy," she said.

But meanwhile, "Masterpiece" is flourishing since being divided last year into three segments, "Masterpiece Classic" (the British dramas of yore), "Mystery" (wrapping in the old Thursday night "Mystery!" series, which Eaton also ran) and "Contemporary."

Dividing the program into segments lets viewers know what they'll see when, Eaton said. When "Mystery!" was first folded into "Masterpiece Theatre," "people were getting whiplash going from Jane Tennyson one week to Jane Eyre the next," she said.

Despite advance trepidation from some longtime "Masterpiece" fans, the change "has been solidly successful," Eaton said. "Masterpiece" averages about double the ratings of PBS' overall prime time, and beyond numbers, the series is also generating new — and younger — members for PBS stations.

"The Complete Jane Austen," which launched the changeover last fall with six adaptations, "brought in tons of new viewers, and some of them stayed" for such productions as last spring's Charles Dickens adaptation "Little Dorrit," recent winner of seven Emmy Awards.

Looking to the future, PBS is giving new audiences every chance to watch "Masterpiece" and other programs in contemporary ways, Eaton said.

"For our core audience, we're still appointment viewing," she said. "But the younger audience — and I include myself in that, because I'm a very young 61 — doesn't watch that way. We DVR everything and watch when we feel like it, and I want to encourage our viewers to think about watching that way, too."

"Masterpiece," like most PBS programs, is also available as free streaming video at PBS.org shortly after it airs. And the first "Masterpiece Contemporary" offering of the season, Sunday night's "Endgame," about the negotiations that ended apartheid in South Africa, will be released theatrically shortly after it airs, giving more people a chance to see it before its DVD issue.

Longtime "Masterpiece Theatre" viewers may still think of Alistair Cooke, but the three current hosts break the smoking-jacket mold. Indie-film favorite Laura Linney introduced the most recent "classic" productions, quirky Scottish actor Alan Cumming took over "Mystery," and recent "Dr. Who" star David Tennant makes his debut Sunday as host of "Masterpiece Contemporary." (He'll also reprise his role of Hamlet in the Royal Shakespeare Company production due on PBS next year.)

Tennant's fans may not cross over that much with "Masterpiece" fans, but it certainly doesn't hurt that he brings his own following.

Introducing Tennant to TV critics in July, Eaton pointed to "the variety of his talents and the street cred that he has, certainly with younger viewers," before adding, "I think David is an actor that our older audience would like to mother and our, hopefully, younger audience would like to marry."