NPR BUDGET MAIN TOPIC AT TALKS

Perhaps “Dynasty’s” Carrington family could simply contribute a few of its millions to National Public Radio and the recurring financial crises would end. But that’s no way to run a soap opera.

The public radio network that produces the award-winning daily news magazines “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered” held its annual planning conference here this week and, inevitably, talk turned to NPR’s annual budget crisis.

This year’s crisis is not nearly so dire as that of two years ago, when years of mismanagement and dwindling government subsidy combined to plunge the 250-station radio network more than $7 million in debt.

This time, however, the continued health of NPR’s two best-known programs might be at stake, about 700 conference delegates were told.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which has been the chief NPR underwriter during the network’s rocky 14-year history, has insisted that it does not plan to raise the network’s annuity next year beyond what it gave last year. The bare-bones proposal that the corporation’s 10-member board will vote on next month calls for a 1986 contribution to NPR of $11.3 million.

According to its own latest revised 1985 budget, NPR is actually getting more from the CPB this year: about $11.4 million.

NPR officials continue to hold out hope that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting will approve a $13.9 million grant--the amount that the network feels it must have to maintain current service and allow some expansion.

But if the agency follows through and approves only $11.3 million, NPR President Douglas J. Bennet told broadcasters the network will be able to do little more than produce its two best-known drive-time news shows--and only on weekdays. Programs about arts and musical performances, drama and special programming by, for and about women, minorities, the handicapped and other under-represented groups would probably have to be cut, he said.

“This company, in a news configuration, is two shows, and that’s it,” Bennet said. “The company will continue to erode on an $11.3-million budget.”

He said that such a budget would offer no cost-of-living increase, would allow only limited training of new personnel and would close out NPR’s engineering division altogether.

A new weekend version of “Morning Edition,” which is expected to debut later this year, would also have to be scuttled, along with the weekend version of “All Things Considered,” Bennet said.

The network has attempted to expand its services while continuing to pay off its $7-million debt. That budget squeeze, coupled with its attempt to stay current with inflation and reward its staff with cost-of-living increases, has put NPR into its latest crunch.

Despite their careful and candid belt-tightening measures and very successful fund-raising efforts this past year (a weeklong national pledge drive in April raised $6 million for NPR stations), NPR officials had to ask the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for a mid-year bail out of $921,000 in March to assure that the two news programs would have production funds for the rest of 1985.

The growing rift between NPR and the federal agency that supplies it with more than 80% of its operating funds widened further last week with the resignation of corporation President Edward J. Pfister.

Pfister, who was to have been a luncheon speaker at the Denver conference on Tuesday, quit in protest over the board’s refusal to support a planned expedition of public TV executives to the Soviet Union, where they expected to propose an exchange of U.S. and Soviet television programs.

Bennet praised Pfister as “a strong supporter of the insulation and heat-shield role of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.”

Bennet and other NPR officials expressed fear that Pfister’s departure might mark the crumbling of that insulation, exposing NPR and the stations it serves to the whims of Congress (which allocates federal funds to the corporation for distribution) and/or the Reagan Administration (which appoints the corporation’s board of directors and has long sought to reduce federal expenditures on public broadcasting).

In an attempt to create its own “heat shield,” the NPR member stations Wednesday were debating a plan that would make the stations--not NPR itself--the recipient of the annual CPB subsidy. Each of the 250 member stations would then pay NPR for the right to air “All Things Considered” and “Morning Edition” individually.