L.A. School Board Votes to Phase Out KLCS Funding by 1997 : Television: Faced with higher fees and shrinking budgets, the public broadcasting station must either find private monies or close up shop at Channel 58.

Local educational station KLCS Channel 58 faces a financial crisis so severe that its very existence is threatened, according to officials at KLCS and experts on public television.

On Tuesday, the board of the Los Angeles Unified School District, which holds the federal license to operate the public TV station, voted to phase out its funding over a period of five years.

And on July 7, the fees that KLCS must pay to the Public Broadcasting Service will go up by 40%.

“I am terrified,” said station manager Patricia Prescott Marshall. “It’s really a triple whammy: Our PBS fees went up, then our budget was cut, and now, if we don’t get at least $450,000 from some other source than the federal government (when district funding ceases), we won’t get any money from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.”

The corporation, which distributes congressionally appropriated tax dollars to public broadcasting stations, requires that TV stations raise at least that much from non-federal sources to qualify for support.

Unlike KCET Channel 28, which provides a wide range of entertainment and public-affairs programs, KLCS is designed to serve Southern California’s schools and teachers. The station produces much of its own programming, such as “Homework Hotline,” which allows students to call teachers for help with homework problems, and offers a daily slate of instructional programs, targeted at both children and adults.

The biggest threat to KLCS, Marshall said, is the loss of funding from the school district.

Until now, the district has provided $1.3 million of KLCS’ $2.9-million annual budget, according to associate superintendent Paul Possemato, who oversees the station’s operation. The other money comes primarily in the form of federal and state support.

“Originally, the proposal was to cut the whole station”--without the five-year cushion--said school board member Roberta Weintraub, long a staunch supporter of KLCS. “It’s because we have a quarter-of-a-billion dollars worth of budget cuts, and anything we don’t cut has to come out of the benefits or salaries of the employees.”

Possemato said that the district would probably cut its funding of the station by slightly more than $200,000 each year until the 1996-97 school year, at which time KLCS would be completely on its own, although the district would still hold the license.

Starting immediately, Possemato said, the station--which until now has not conducted pledge drives or sought corporate underwriting for its programs--would have to begin competing with KCET Channel 28 for community, corporate and foundation donations.

“We’ve always wanted to be (more) self-sufficient, and we’ve even talked about various ways of being able to raise funds, but we’ve never talked about it in terms of being totally self-supporting,” Marshall said. “We don’t know where the money is out there.”

Possemato said that in order to attract underwriting, the station will have to begin broadcasting more mainstream programming, possibly cutting back on its educational content. KLCS will also have to be involved in entrepreneurial ventures, he said, such as renting out its facilities to private companies.

But even if KLCS cuts back programs like “Homework Hotline” and its instructional English and Spanish programs in favor of more standard public-broadcasting fare, new PBS restrictions might limit the effectiveness of relying on more PBS programs. Under the same rules that increase fees that KLCS must pay to receive PBS programming, KLCS will be required to delay broadcast of any program it receives from PBS by at least eight days.

That’s because, as a small station, KLCS cannot afford to buy the full plate of PBS programs, and has opted for a discount rate. But as a way to offer perks to stations like KCET, which pay the full amount, PBS has not only increased the fees for a discount membership, but also required the delay by stations who use the discount.

“The only way they can survive on their own is to develop a ‘friends’ structure”--an organization of donors that, if one were to come into existence, would likely be called Friends of KLCS--said John Wicklein, a former executive with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting who is now a journalism professor at the University of Ohio. “It’s going to be rough going because they will have to compete with KCET, which has a big development department.”

Priscilla Weck, associate director of business affairs for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, said that the school board’s decision to cut KLCS loose is part of a growing national trend.

As school districts have battled massive budget cuts and loss of their own funding, Weck said, they have withdrawn support from about 20 public television and radio stations nationwide in the last few years.

Besides the loss of money, Weck said, the change has often resulted in a loss of educational programming for the region where the station operates.

“If (KLCS’) programming has been primarily educational and for the schools, I would hope that they’re going to be able to continue to provide that kind of programming,” Weck said. She suggested that perhaps the school district could be persuaded to underwrite specific programs.

Lynn Chadwick, president of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters, said that by keeping the license yet refusing to fund the station, the school district is putting the station in a bind.

“That’s the usual phenomenon, and I think it’s really unfair,” Chadwick said. “The most difficult situation is where the school board maintains control and the station staff is stuck with finding the money.”

Chadwick said her organization has received so many calls from radio and television stations facing similar situations that a special seminar on the problem has been scheduled for the group’s convention this week: “This has happened many times in radio and you’re going to see more of it in TV because of the budget crisis.”