Bunker Hill ? Smoky Hills Public Television has pulled the plug on the station’s “NewsLink” program, which had been devoted to news from western and central Kansas.

On Monday, the station’s board approved a 2004 budget that eliminated the half-hour nightly news program that began in May 2002.

Viewers who tuned in expecting to see the news at 6 p.m. and its repeat broadcast at 10 p.m. saw alternate shows that were plugged in to the schedule after the board’s decision Monday afternoon.

At the board’s request, the station’s finance committee presented two budgets for next year. One carried a debt of almost $70,000 but kept “NewsLink” operating. The other option, the one the board accepted on an 8-6 vote, cut “NewsLink” at a projected savings of about $113,000.

That budget will leave the station with about $26,000 at the end of the year.

“From my point of view, ‘NewsLink’ isn’t necessarily sacred. I think local programming is,” board member Ted Bannister said.

But board member Jean Cavanaugh disagreed, saying “NewsLink” gave viewers an alternative to news programs that focus on Wichita. She suggested that sponsors who had dropped their support because of their own financial difficulties might renew if the rates were lowered.

Fellow board member Frank McKinney agreed and asked for a 60-day delay to recruit more business sponsors.

Board member Randall Weller, meanwhile, compared the station’s current condition to the moments before a plane crash.

“When an airplane’s in a nose dive, one of the things it starts doing before it hits the ground is it starts shedding things, and that appears what the condition of this institution is in right now,” he said. “We’re in a nose dive, so we’re starting to shed things. Usually that doesn’t stop the crash.”