NPR Cuts Hourly Newscasts by 25% in Economy Move : Radio: The public broadcasting network ends the round-the-clock schedule it started during Gulf War.

Feeling the sting from falling corporate and public contributions, National Public Radio has cut back its hourly newscasts by 25%.

The decision to reduce the programs from 24 per day to 18 was quickly implemented: Top management told affiliated stations about the cuts April 23, and they went into effect Sunday night.

“It just became financially impossible” to do the newscasts, said NPR spokeswoman Mary Morgan.

The turnaround was so fast that some programmers didn’t even know about it. At KPCC-FM (89.3) in Pasadena, program host Rene Engel attempted twice Monday night to switch to NPR news, failing both times.

“When we tell the listeners something is going to be there and it’s not there, then it is embarrassing,” said KPCC program and news director Larry Mantle, who said that programmers at KPCC did not know that NPR had pulled the newscasts. “Fortunately, it happened to us with one of our very strongest air people--Rene is very good at ad-libbing.”

The cutbacks had less of a direct impact at KCRW-FM (89.9), because the station was only running one of the overnight newscasts, at midnight. But KCRW spokeswoman Sarah Spitz said that programmers at the Santa Monica station were also surprised by the swift change.

“They did notify the system, but on a very short notice,” said Spitz, who said she received an electronic mail memo from NPR about the change Friday. “We were under the impression that the budget was intact through the end of 1991.”

NPR started broadcasting 24 hours a day Jan. 15, the day before the war began in the Persian Gulf. As recently as last month, NPR’s vice president for news and information, Bill Buzenberg, said that he planned to continue the newscasts indefinitely.

But the network spent $1.4 million covering the Gulf crisis and the war, and while it raised enough money to cover most of those expenses through an appeal to stations and a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, there was little left over.

In fact, finances are so tight that the network is attempting to cut $1.1 million from its $38.3 million budget by Sept. 30, the end of its fiscal year, according to Morgan. The news division must cut $90,000.

“It’s a function of the economy,” Morgan said. Companies that normally donate to public radio “are looking real hard at their expenditures. We think that if the economy starts to reverse itself, it will change pretty quickly.”

No layoffs are planned, but a number of positions have been frozen, she said.

However, if the network’s financial situation does not improve, stringent cost-cutting measures are planned for next year, Morgan said. Already, the news division has had to slash its $16.3-million budget proposal for fiscal year 1992 by $965,000.