KCET Raises $5 Million in Hard Sell : Television: Public station uses aggressive fund-raising tactics, threatening to cut programming if viewers don’t come through.

An unusually aggressive fund-raising campaign at KCET Channel 28--in which the public station threatened to cut programming if viewers didn’t pony up enough money--raised more than $5 million in less than three months.

But while the campaign, KCET Countdown, raised more money than officials had hoped, it still left the station $2 million short of its original budget for the year. The drive coincided with the end of the station’s fiscal year, which ended last Tuesday.

KCET Executive Vice President Donald Youpa said in an interview that the station never expected to make up the final $2 million, and had adjusted its spending accordingly earlier in the year.

“This brings us in at the target we would have projected,” said Youpa, who is in charge of the station’s fund-raising. “Our overall goal in April was to raise $5 million, and it appears we probably will top it by about $40,000.”

The fund-raising tactics used for this campaign were vastly different from KCET’s typical approach, which has primarily been to stay away from negative pitches and instead sell viewers on the benefits of joining a public television station.

A letter sent by Youpa to KCET subscribers, for example, said that as of June 15 the station had only two weeks to raise $1.7 million.

“Either we balance our budget by June 30th,” the letter read, “or we’ll be faced with major cutbacks in our programming.”

Youpa would not say in the interview which programs had been targeted for cuts, or whether a plan to cut programs had been drawn up. In a separate letter sent to subscribers, he said that the station had “frozen salaries, closed offices, (and) cut back in virtually every budget category--except programming.” In the past, Youpa has been careful to avoid talking about the station’s financial woes. But he said that this time, with donations low for the third straight year, the hard-sell pitch could not have been avoided.

“We were never quite in this position, where we saw that we had this need to make this effort and make the year come out,” Youpa said.

The campaign, he said, was a multimedia effort that involved direct mail, telemarketing, pitches in the station’s magazine and on-air pledge activities.

“We felt we had to do this type of campaign to bring (the money) in,” Youpa said. “We had to be honest and say, ‘We have a problem and please help us.’ ”

Much of the additional money that was pledged came from viewers who were already subscribers, Youpa said. Their contributions are significant, because it was in the area of contributions from current subscribers that KCET has fallen the most short in recent months.

Youpa said that the station is expecting donations from members to remain flat next year, as the state’s economy continues to struggle. But he said he disagreed with some public television executives, who believe that the base of support for public television has been so damaged by the economy that it may never recover.

Still, he said, KCET plans to work on its public image in the coming year, positioning itself as an educational entity and a player in discussing and helping to resolve community issues.

“It isn’t easy, it’s not going to get easier, but I’m confident we’re going to see (support) for KCET,” Youpa said.