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KWSU-TV Pullman to go off air at end of year in effort to save $$$

valvashon

valvashon

WSU has announced that PBS affiliate KWSU-TV Pullman (RF10) will go off the air at the end of the year in an effort to save money, part of an effort to save $2b a year due to federal budget cuts. The NWPR (Northwest Public Radio) network will not be affected nor will KTNW-TV (RF22), the PBS affiliate in the Tri-Cities of Richland/Pasco/Kennewick. KWSU-TV has studios in Pullman; KTNW operates as a semi-satellite of KWSU but has some studio facilities at the WSU campus in the Tri-Cities.

How much will shutting down KWSU-TV really save if you are still operating KTNW? Why not just make one a complete satellite of the other? Yes, job losses are tough for everybody, especially the ones RIF'd and there is duplication of PBS programming in the Spokane-Pullman-Moscow-Lewiston market but I really can't see how much will be saved by not paying for site rental and electric for the KWSU transmitter. It's an educational license so you can't really even sell it.

Something doesn't add up here, at least to me.

Lewiston Tribune

Daily Evergreen
 
valvashon said:
WSU has announced that PBS affiliate KWSU-TV Pullman (RF10) will go off the air at the end of the year in an effort to save money, part of an effort to save $2b a year due to federal budget cuts. The NWPR (Northwest Public Radio) network will not be affected nor will KTNW-TV (RF22), the PBS affiliate in the Tri-Cities of Richland/Pasco/Kennewick. KWSU-TV has studios in Pullman; KTNW operates as a semi-satellite of KWSU but has some studio facilities at the WSU campus in the Tri-Cities.

How much will shutting down KWSU-TV really save if you are still operating KTNW? Why not just make one a complete satellite of the other? Yes, job losses are tough for everybody, especially the ones RIF'd and there is duplication of PBS programming in the Spokane-Pullman-Moscow-Lewiston market but I really can't see how much will be saved by not paying for site rental and electric for the KWSU transmitter. It's an educational license so you can't really even sell it.

Something doesn't add up here, at least to me.

Lewiston Tribune

Daily Evergreen
Click to expand...
KTNW is a full-service PBS affiliate, and making KWSU (which is now a "beta" PBS station, the Program Differentiation Plan) a 100% satellite of KTNW would duplicate primary PBS service in the Spokane market even more than it already is (KSPS and KUID). You had a similar situation in the Charleston-Huntington WV market, with three primary PBS stations in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio (actually four if you count WOUB Athens, which was once part of the C-H market) until WOSU shut down its satellite WPBO in Portsmouth for reasons similar to the closure of KWSU. Granted, you have a considerable distance between Spokane and the Moscow-Pullman area, but two primary PBS stations that close together in the latter cities would be hard to sustain given recent budget realities.
 
KSPS-TV has many translators but none directly for Pullman. The list is here: Translator Updates

KWSU 1250 has great groundwave coverage - in fact KWSU-AM has an odd "sharetime" arrangement with AM 1250 KKDZ in the Puget Sound, albeit not the traditional concept of "sharetime" but KWSU is forced to signoff at midnight so KKDZ can be at full power overnights.
 
I do hear that KWSU's broadcast areas would still be covered by Idaho Public Television and KSPS, but from what I am hearing in this forum, will that mean KTNW will now also serve the Pullman–Clarkston area?
 


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