KCET to Launch Local Series in January : Television: Called ‘Life & Times,’ the show will focus on people, culture and issues in Southern and Central California.

Public-television station KCET, which has canceled virtually all of its local series, plans to launch a new series about people and issues in Southern and Central California in January, Channel 28 officials said.

But station manager Stephen Kulczycki cautioned that funding for the ambitious weeknight project is not yet in place. And he said that with the exception of a handful of specials and reruns of the canceled series “By the Year 2000,” KCET would not add new local series to its lineup this fall.

Called “Life & Times,” the series will air Monday through Friday from 7:30 to 8 p.m., Kulczycki said. It will focus on people, culture and issues in Southern and Central California through documentary-style profiles, in-studio discussions and video commentaries submitted by viewers.

“This (new series) is going to be the foundation of our local production efforts in the next few years,” Kulczycki said. “We needed a little time to change gears from the ‘By the Year 2000’ plan and into the ‘Life & Times’ plan, and we needed a little time for working on the production and time to generate support for it.”

As described by Kulczycki and others at the station, “Life & Times” is really two programs in one. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, the program will consist of short, documentary-style profiles of local people. According to publicist Julio Martinez, the program will address community concerns and culture by focusing on the people who are involved with various issues and the arts.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, the series will feature in-studio discussions of current issues, as well as home-video footage in the form of taped commentaries and slice-of-life stories from area residents. The station plans to solicit help from a corps of citizen correspondents, who will submit tapes about life in Los Angeles and its environs.

“We’re looking for people who are verbal, colorful and from any walk of life to digest news stories through their perspectives and filter issues through multicultural viewpoints,” Martinez said. “We’re not looking for typical television news people.”

In addition, Martinez said, KCET viewers will be encouraged to submit “video letters to the editor” about current issues.

Kulczycki called “Life & Times” a “multimillion-dollar project,” but he declined to say how much money the station plans to spend on it. KCET has earmarked $5 million of its$40-million budget for local programming during fiscal 1991-92, which began July 1, and Kulczycki said “Life & Times” would be the biggest expense from that fund.

Before production can begin, the station must raise what Kulczycki called a significant amount of money from foundations and corporate donors, but he would not say how much the station needed.

The search for funds has been particularly difficult for the past two years, as the economy has continued to slow and corporate coffers grow ever tighter. Last year, KCET’s fund-raisers brought in $3.5 million less from corporations and foundations than they had originally planned, and $1.5 million less in membership donations.

“We haven’t secured all the funding we need to actually have this on the air yet, but we’re moving forward, and we’re confident we’re going to attract the funding,” Kulczycki said.