REDUCED PROFITS CITED : EXXON TO PHASE OUT SUPPORT OF PBS

Exxon Corp., traditionally one of the leading funders of arts programs on public television, plans to withdraw its support of the non-commercial network over the next three years, corporation and public television officials confirmed Friday.

“The current economic condition of the petroleum industry has reduced our profits, and our profits are related to the contributions we make to PBS,” Ken Kansas, the Exxon official who oversees the company’s public television spending, said in a telephone interview from his office here. “We feel it is prudent to start reducing our contribution now, in a gradual and thoughtful way.”

Currently, Exxon is the only corporate underwriter for public television’s popular and prestigious performing arts series “Great Performances,” which is scheduled to begin its 14th season of partnership with the oil company next fall.

Kansas said that Exxon still will contribute $4.8 million toward the series’ estimated 1986-87 budget of $9.3 million, as planned, but that the company will diminish its support dramatically the following season.

Current plans call for Exxon to give $2.4 million to “Great Performances” in 1987-88, with half of the money earmarked specifically for the series’ “Live From Lincoln Center” programs. It then will contribute $1.2 million for “Live From Lincoln Center” in both the 1988-89 and 1989-90 seasons, Kansas said.

“Beyond this,” he said, “we have no plans to continue in our support.”

“Great Performances” is produced at New York’s WNET by a consortium of stations. In addition to WNET, they are San Francisco’s KQED, Chicago’s WTTW, Dallas/Fort Worth’s KERA and the South Carolina Educational Television Network. Funding for the weekly series also comes from other public television stations nationwide, and from grants made by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Endowment for the Arts.

News of Exxon’s plans follows on the heels of an announcement made by WNET earlier this week of a five-year cost-cutting plan to restructure station operations that will result in focusing the station’s own resources on local rather than national programming. The plan rests on the premise that series such as “Great Performances” must be fully funded from sources outside the station.

“We expect that we will be able to find a (substitute) partner over the next two years,” WNET president John Jay Iselin said by telephone from his office here Friday. Kansas said that Exxon officials will work with WNET to find a substitute source of support for the series.

Iselin also expressed hope that other public television stations around the country will increase their collective support of “Great Performances.” But he said that WNET will attempt to keep the series afloat in any case in order to fulfill its local mission.

“Surely such a performing arts series is of special interest to New Yorkers, and if we are doing it for our metropolitan region, we will be happy to make it available to others,” he said.