First Layoffs, Now Budget Cuts at KCET : Television: The station will trim budget by about 17% and curtail programming. ‘The economy has caught up with KCET,’ its president says.

Still smarting from overambitious 1991 budget plans that left the station $5 million behind its projections, KCET Channel 28 is scaling back its budget for next year by about 17%.

The new $40-million budget--approved Friday by the station’s board of directors and scheduled to go into effect July 1--when KCET’s fiscal year begins, is the smallest in three years, according to the station, which did not make the full budget available. It includes a $2.4 million cut in spending for locally produced programs and reflects the layoffs of 17 people earlier this month, said station president William Kobin. Through a hiring freeze which will continue into the new budget, the station has trimmed an additional 24 people from its staff during the last several months.

“We’ve trimmed across the board,” Kobin said. “The economy has caught up with KCET.”

According to station spokeswoman Barbara Goen, KCET will probably end 1991 $1.5 million below local membership projections and another $3.5 million down in corporate donations.

Viewers will see the evidence of the cuts in reduced national and local programs produced by the station.

Despite a planned $100,000 increase in spending for local programs next year, the bite will be more immediately evident in programs aimed specifically at Southern California audiences.

Programs including “The L.A. History Project” and “Take Five,” a series of five-minute programs on arts, culture and science, will not return next year. The weekly series “KCET Journal” and “By the Year 2,000” are also not on the schedule, but the station is seeking funding to bring them back as occasional specials, said Stephen Kulczycki, senior vice president and station manager. The programs were canceled, Kulczycki said, because they were funded with special corporate grants that have run out.

The station is developing at least one new local project next year, a nightly series about which the station will not disclose details. While Kulczycki would not describe the new project in full, station officials said earlier this month that future local productions will be shot primarily in-studio, with fewer expensive documentary-style forays into the community.

KCET’s budget for national programming will be $2.5 million less next year than in 1991, but according to Kulczycki and Kobin, that figure reflects the fact that expensive programs like “The Astronomers” were paid for in 1991.

The station still plans to produce three new national series and a national two-hour special next year.

“Millennium: Tribal Wisdom and the Modern World” is a 10-hour series on tribal cultures hosted by Harvard cultural anthropologist David Maybury-Lewis. “Madness” is a series on mental illness hosted by British physician and entertainer Jonathan Miller. “Dancing Healers” is a dramatic series about an American doctor who studies the ways of American Indian healers. “Mozart on Tour” will be a two-hour special about the composer.

In the past, KCET has been criticized by some station employees and local producers for emphasizing national production over programs about its local viewing area.

Kulczycki disagreed, saying that the new series, “is a very large project, the largest in terms of hours on that we’ve ever had on the air,” he said. “It’s going to be about the Los Angeles community, about life in the city.”

According to Kobin, it is more difficult to raise money for local programs, so the station has allocated slightly more of its discretionary money--about $50,000--to produce them next year.