KCET’s March Pledge Drive on a Rising Scale : Television: Despite the success of its campaign, the public-TV station still anticipates a budget shortfall of more than $1 million.

KCET Channel 28 ended its March pledge drive significantly ahead of last year, but the public-TV station still anticipates a budget shortfall of more than $1 million, spokeswoman Barbara Goen said Tuesday.

The unanticipated boost in pledges has allowed the station to put off its plans to lay off an estimated 15 employees this week, but the possibility of job cuts still looms, Goen said.

“There will not be staff layoffs at KCET in March,” Goen said. “But they are still being discussed. We are looking at this on a day-to-day basis.”

KCET estimated that revenues from the 18-day drive, which ended Monday, will amount to $1.9 million, up from $1.4 million last year.

But the station had already built a hefty increase into its $40-million budget for this year, so about $145,000 of the extra $500,000 is already accounted for, said Goen, Channel 28’s vice president for public information.

And for the year as a whole, membership continues to lag. Last week, KCET predicted that by the end of the fiscal year on June 30, if current trends continue, it would be $1.3 million short in membership renewals, and $100,000 short in contributions from new members. The figures are higher than those released by the station just a few weeks earlier, when President William Kobin estimated that renewals would be off by $1 million.

“We’re thrilled with the results of this pledge drive,” Goen said. “But against our entire budget and against the problems (with membership and in the national economy), it doesn’t change our life significantly.”

The success of the drive this year gives the station a slight edge over a severe downward trend in pledges over the past several years. In 1985, KCET’s March drive lasted for 16 days, recruited 34,604 members and earned $1.86 million. By 1990, the drive, which lasted 19 days, brought in only 25,555 members and earned just $1.4 million. This year’s drive netted 31,533 members.

Part of that can be attributed to the station’s increased emphasis on its August and December fund drives, Goen said, but it also reflects an overall drop in donations that have affected public television across the nation.

Station executives attributed the surprise success of this year’s drive to the phenomenal popularity of “Carreras, Domingo and Pavarotti in Concert With Zubin Mehta,” a taped concert in which the three great tenors sang together for the first time.

KCET ran the program four times during the last five days of the drive, and each time, pledges exceeded station goals by tens of thousands of dollars.

“We feel very strongly that without the tenors show, we would have been right where we anticipated,” Goen said.

KCET had originally planned to air the program only twice, but added a third showing after officials heard that it was garnering unprecedented numbers of pledges at other stations. A fourth showing was added after “Carreras, Domingo and Pavarotti” generated $213,000 in pledges the first night it was shown--more than twice as much as any program had ever garnered for KCET.

“This pledge drive was made successful by one good show,” she said. “But one good show doesn’t change the economy, doesn’t change the trends we’ve seen, and doesn’t change the look of public television nationally. These are still times in which to be careful.”

KCET FUND RAISING The March Pledge Drives

YEAR LENGTH MEMBERS RAISED 1985 16 days 37,505 $1,861,223 1986 16 days 34,604 1,773,471 1987 16 days 32,737 1,672,066 1988 17 days 31,542 1,640,523 1989 17 days 31,089 1,615,590 1990 19 days 25,555 1,440,398 1991 18 days 31,533 1,920,604

NOTE: 1991 figures are preliminary estimates. SOURCE: KCET Channel 28