‘Life & Times’ to Go Live 5 Days a Week

“Life & Times,” KCET-TV Channel 28’s half-hour public affairs series, will go live five nights a week, beginning in January, station President and Chief Executive Officer Al Jerome said Wednesday.

This will mark the first time in more than 20 years that KCET has had a live presence Monday through Friday nights. Only one of “Life & Time’s” five weeknight editions currently airs live.

The announcement came after the public television station’s board on Tuesday adopted a $47.3-million budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1--an increase of about $3 million.

“The significance of KCET producing a live, weeknight news/public-affairs program cannot be overstated,” Jerome said. “The strong qualities of the show--its substantive interviews, in-depth analyses of important local and regional issues and documentaries about citizens making a difference in our community--will only be enhanced. . . .

“A live nightly public affairs program was one of my first priorities when I joined KCET 16 months ago,” he added. “While our ultimate goal is to have an hourlong broadcast, we have taken the most critical step in getting there.”

Jerome set no timetable for expansion to an hour, and KCET noted that specific plans for the live series will be announced closer to its debut.

With the Emmy Award-winning, locally produced series entering its seventh season, it’s also the first time that the “Life & Times” budget will be fully funded by corporations and foundations. The show’s budget for the current fiscal year, $1.8 million, was partially underwritten by subscribers. Next year’s funding of $2.7 million comes from grants by the James Irvine Foundation, the L. K. Whittier Foundation, Bank of America, Edison International and GTE.

In a brief interview before flying to Dallas for a PBS meeting, Jerome said he was able to raise the necessary funding because “there was a widespread feeling that this type of service is necessary and would be unique, [including] live coverage of the breaking events of the day with the depth of perspective . . . found nowhere else in the [local] media.”

Barbara Goen, KCET’s vice president of communications, said that the station’s overall production budget for fiscal 1998 will be $16.1 million, up from the current year’s figure of nearly $10 million.

As for upcoming national productions, Goen noted that KCET is anticipating doing a three- or four-part series on the history of American aviation, tentatively titled “Turbulent Skies.” The station also will present a new Shari Lewis children’s series--”Charlie Horse Music Pizza”--designed to teach music appreciation. The 40-episode series, to air over a two-year period, will begin shooting in Canada this summer and will debut in January.

KCET is also involved in production of 13 new episodes of “Adventures From the Book of Virtues.”

On the local front, the station will continue presenting Huell Howser’s variety of programming on slices of California life and is planning a program on Mexican music.

The new KCET budget projects revenues of $16.5 million in membership income, which will be about $1 million short of the $17.7 million that had been budgeted for 1997. Goen said KCET might have been “overly optimistic” in projecting subscriber donations. Since 1994, she said, subscriber income has been flat.