KCET Officials Refuse to Comment on Cutback Plans : Television: Fund-raising plea offers dire predictions. KOCE, however, expects to end the fiscal year with an $8,000 surplus.

In a recent “Dear Member” letter that appeared to voice dire predictions about its fiscal and programming future, KCET-TV warned subscribers that Los Angeles’ public-television station “will need to raise another $1,873,400” by the end of the current fiscal year June 30 “to balance its budget.”

Or else.

“With one month to go,” chief operating officer Donald G. Youpa wrote on May 30, “KCET must find [the money] or face cutbacks that could affect programming. . . . Insufficient funding would mean that some programs could disappear in the year ahead.”

Neither Youpa nor station president William H. Kobin would comment this week on the letter. But Barbara Goen, vice president for public information, seemed to inject a somewhat calmer note.

While not taking back any of the letter’s wording and insisting that it was “absolutely accurate,” she said that “we have been in this position before where we needed to raise a large amount of money. . . . We have had to raise a lot of money in many Junes.”

Goen explained that in June, 1993, the station needed $1.9 million to balance its budget, and in 1994 was $1.7 million short heading into the final month of the fiscal year. In both instances the money was raised.

She further pointed out that the nearly $1.9-million figure this year is “the June goal in the whole membership marketing area,” including membership renewal, weekend pledge nights over the next three weekends and KCET’s annual direct-mail sweepstakes.

KCET currently has 340,000 members and contributors.

Asked what program cuts might be made if the June money is not raised, Goen replied that the station is “absolutely not going to speculate on activities, programs or anything.”

She added: “We are very hopeful. We need the support very much. The letters to our contributors are a part of our [membership] campaign.”

The budget shortfall is separate from the $2 million that KCET is still seeking from corporate funders for its $6.5-million second season of “The Puzzle Place,” a children’s series now airing on PBS. This spring, as the station and its production partner, Lancit Media Productions, began filming the last 24 installments of the 65-episode series, station executives said that if the money does not materialize, they would scale back ancillary activities around the series, such as promotion, rather than use other KCET funds to make up the difference.

Orange County’s public television station, KOCE Channel 50, is experiencing no revenue shortfall and expects to end the fiscal year, as it usually does, with an $8,000 surplus, according to President William A. Furniss. The station has a total budget of $4.8 million.