State PBS Networks

[Stanislav]

I’ve always wondered about the evolution and development of educational TV stations; specifically, why some states built out a statewide public network with government involvement to one degree or another (funding, or control/oversight), while others just let local groups and concerns fend for themselves. It’d be interesting to speculate on what reasons (especially political) there were for going one way or the other.

Take the Deep South as an example. Here we have:

GEORGIA – Georgia Public Television (GPTV), overseen by the Georgia Public Television Commission. Includes all PBS stations in the state, except for Atlanta’s WPBA (which is O&O by the Atlanta Board of Education).

SOUTH CAROLINA -- South Carolina Educational Television (SCETV), operated by the South Carolina Educational Television Commission. Consists of all PBS stations in the state (four of which, along with flagship WRLK, have local/regional production and opt-out capabilities).

NORTH CAROLINA -- University of North Carolina Television (UNC-TV), operating all PBS outlets in the state, except for community-owned WTVI in Charlotte.

ALABAMA – Alabama Public Television (APT); again, run by a government commission (Alabama Educational Television Commission), and encompassing every PBS transmitter in the state.

MISSISSIPPI -- Mississippi Public Broadcasting (MPB), ditto (Mississippi Authority for Educational Television).

LOUISIANA – Louisiana Public Broadcasting (LPB), with the Louisiana Educational Television Authority operating all public stations in the state except WYES New Orleans.

There certainly is a common pattern here. And it’s interesting that there is such longstanding governmental support for educational/public TV (especially considering the alleged liberal bias of PBS) in states that historically have ranked near the bottom in public school funding/facilities and test scores.

And yet, Florida, the biggest (population-wise) state in the region, never made an attempt to develop or control a statewide PBS network, leaving operation and programming to individual local authorities, mostly tied to universities:

WSRE Pensacola (Pensacola Junior College)
WFSU/WFSG Tallahassee/Panama City (Florida State University)
WJCT Jacksonville (Jacksonville Community Television)
WUFT Gainesville (University of Florida)
WDSC New Smyrna Beach (Daytona State College)
WMFE Orlando (Community Communications, Inc.)
WBCC Cocoa (Brevard Community College)
WEDU Tampa (Florida West Coast Public Broadcasting, Inc.)
WUSF Tampa (University of South Florida)
WXEL West Palm Beach (Barry University)
WGCU Fort Myers (Florida Gulf Coast University)
WPBT Miami (Community Television Foundation of South Florida)
WLRN Miami (Miami-Dade County Public Schools)

Florida has also been historically rather stingy when it comes to its public school system, yet other states with far more traditionally underfunded education (Alabama, Mississippi, etc.) managed to build out a unified public TV system.

Maybe part of it is that Florida is really three states in one. In general, north Florida’s demographics, politics, even climate, are more like the Old South (thus the old joke that, in Florida, you have to go north to go South); Central Florida has the tourist traps, a diverse population with a lot of transients, relocated “snowbirds,” and puertorriqueños; and South Florida dominated by retirees and Cuban expatriates. Sure, these are generalizations, and the three regions’ human landscapes are even more complex than this, but the fact remains that Florida’s population is very diverse, much more so than the other southern states. Perhaps that is why there was never a push towards public TV on a unified statewide basis; better to let each station serve the unique needs of its audience.

From a personal standpoint, I like our setup in the Sunshine State. We have three PBS outlets (WMFE, WDSC, WBCC) available both cable/satellite and OTA in my area, and all three have completely separate programs, and diverse programming strategies. Much better than having three passive repeaters all relaying the same shows, IMHO.

Maybe some of you could do an overview of the states in your own neck of the woods, and speculate on the “statewide PBS network vs. local control” issue and history.

 

[Davros2006]

I believe there's a statewide network in Maine.

 

[Tim L]

Here is the situation in Ohio as I know it..Copied/Pasted and slightly edited from a post I did a few months back at Satelliteguys.us Free To Air Forums..Didnt feel like typing it again..

Here in Ohio, several entities operate PBS stations..
Including:

WVIZ-25 Cleveland-Run by a board, not a University
WNEO-45 Alliance/WEAO-49 Akron Operated By Akron Univ., Kent State and Youngstown State (simulcast)
WOSU-34 Columbus/WPBO-42 Portsmouth-Ohio State University (Simulcast)
WOUB-20 Athens/WOUC-44 Cambridge-Ohio University (Simulcast)
WPTD 16 Dayton/WPTO 14 Oxford-Greater Dayton Public TV (originally operated by Miami U., Wright State and Central State) Now Public Media Connect

WCET-48 Cincinnati-First Public TV station in the US-Now part of Public Media Connect(WPTD/WPTO)-Different programming on 14, 16 and 48..

WGTE-30 Toledo-Greater Toledo Public Television
WBGU-27 Bowling Green-Bowling Green State University

 

[IndigoCoyote]

Interesting subject, S!

Here's my $.02 from the other end of the lower 48.

Washington- Largest city (Seattle) also has largest university by far (University of Washington.) University started it's own educational station (KCTS-King County Television Service) way before PBS and had already established itself on many cable systems and pretty well built up a dominant media brand, saw little need to build a statewide network since it pretty well serviced the major parts of the state already on its own. Spokane public schools and Tacoma public schools developed their own stations and designed them to superserve their own areas. An odd situation- the best communications school in the state is in Pullman (Washington State U) which is a long ways from the media centers so dificult to launch a TV empire from there. SO they focused on Radio- in this case NW Public Radio.

Oregon- the largest city (Portland)does not have the big universities- those are elsewhere. Since there was no dominant channel early on, it made more sense to work together, hence OPB- Oregon Public Broadcasting- on both the TV and radio side. The network is now headquartered in Portland, but still has a lot of presence where it started in Corvallis.

I wonder if this pattern holds up in other states. Biggest city has biggest university= no network, biggest university in small town= network.

 

[w9wi]

I wonder if this pattern holds up in other states. Biggest city has biggest university= no network, biggest university in small town= network.

It does seem to hold more or less in Wisconsin.

The largest university is in Madison, not exactly a small town but Milwaukee is bigger.

University built one of the country's first educational TV stations, in 1954. Public TV came to Milwaukee three years later, with a station operated by the local vocational school. In the early 1970s a statewide network was built, with station locations more or less coinciding with the stations of an existing educational radio network.

(Wisconsin was the first state to have a statewide public radio network, launched in 1947 and essentially complete by 1952.)

However, the state TV network does not cover the entire state. The Milwaukee station is still controlled by the vocational school. (and added a second channel in 1963) The Madison station is still technically controlled by the university, though its schedule is almost 100% identical to the state network and is controlled from the same building. (the state network is licensed to a separate state agency) For many years, the Madison station was on cable in Milwaukee - I don't think they dropped it until DTV came along last summer. (it may even still be on in the digital tier)

(the state *radio* network *does* cover the entire state, controlling FM stations in Madison and Milwaukee.)

It does NOT hold in Tennessee. Largest cities are Nashville and Memphis, major university is in Knoxville, no statewide network, separately-controlled educational stations in each major city. (and two smaller stations in two smaller cities) Though again, while Knoxville isn't the biggest city in the state, it's not exactly a small town.

 

[IndigoCoyote]

Ha ha, guess I should have said "smaller cities" as opposed to "small town." But I think you all got the drift.

I think my mind is muddled by the pummeling my Seahawks are taking at the hands of the Packers right now. Though not unexpected, it's still pretty depressing. :'(

 

[Tim-In-Houston]

Aside from metro Atlanta (and, perhaps, metro Birmingham), most of these states are mainly rural with only one or two major (or semi-major) population centers, which would make funding difficult to sustain if the stations were left to their devices. Not knowing the particulars, but the fact that PBS/NPR stations in Florida are operated mainly by state universities indicates to me that they likely receive state funding. They may not be networked on their programming, but the funding - if not the oversight - is there by proxy.

I imagine it also has to do with economies of scale: since PBS/NPR affiliates pay for the programming service, the cost of programming is reduced (on a per viewer/listener basis) by offering the programming to the entire state - rather than a local market - as they are likely not paying for the retranmission of each show on each stick but are able to combine their total audience (or total potential audience).

 

[kirkiefan]

You forgot KET (down in dem dar hills) in Bluegrass land!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KET

As a teenager in 1971 I remember picking it up on my mom's TV set on a clear day during Easter vacation from school. Picked up two stations...one from Owensboro and the other(I think) from Paducah. They were airing only two programs that day and kept repeating them....yet it was promoted as KET's "SPECIAL" Friday. By 1 or 2 in the afternoon both signals faded.

 

[Stanislav]

Aside from metro Atlanta (and, perhaps, metro Birmingham), most of these states are mainly rural with only one or two major (or semi-major) population centers, which would make funding difficult to sustain if the stations were left to their devices. Not knowing the particulars, but the fact that PBS/NPR stations in Florida are operated mainly by state universities indicates to me that they likely receive state funding. They may not be networked on their programming, but the funding - if not the oversight - is there by proxy.

In a way, you are technically correct, at least for the state universities (UF, FSU, etc.) -- it's more like there is one additional level between state and stations. The state universities and colleges get funding from the state government, then they in turn spend what they will of it on their TV (and radio) stations. So, it's not like the Florida legislature directly allocates funds specifically for public broadcasting. And in any case, the individual stations make their own decisions on how to allocate their funds, what programming to spend on, and each does their own fundraising (see entry under "Beg-a-thons"). So in reality, some of the state dollars flow indirectly to some of the public stations, but there is no stadewide control or oversight.

Plus, not all the stations are operated by state universities or colleges. Barry University (WXEL) is a private, Catholic school. WJCT, WMFE and WPBT are run by community non-profit concerns, while WLRN is operated by a local school board. So, that's 5 of the state's public stations that have no connection, direct or indirect, to the state university/college system.

As for the whole "largest city - largest university" concept, that's never been the case in Florida. Historically, the largest university was UF in Gainesville -- not even close to being among the largest cities in the state. More recently, UCF in Orlando (my alma mater...go, Knights!) has overtaken UF in size, but Orlando, even with its phenomenal growth the last 40 years, is not the biggest city in the state (though among the biggest) -- Jacksonville's #1 (by virtue of its enormous geographic area), followed by Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, and then Orlando.

 

[Stanislav]

You forgot KET (down in dem dar hills) in Bluegrass land!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KET

I did say I was covering the "deep South." I didn't do Tennessee or Virginia, either.

 

[RadioDze]

In North Carolina, the first public station, WUNC-TV in Chapel Hill, was the 10th such station in the country when it signed on in 1955 with a prime Low VHF signal (channel 4) located such that it could service several of the state's major cities (Raleigh, Durham, Greensboro, High Point and, to a somewhat lesser extent, Winston-Salem and Fayetteville).

North Carolina already had a statewide system of public colleges, the flagship University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, being the one at which WUNC-TV was based, with studios on that campus as well as one each at North Carolina Women's College (now UNC-Greensboro) and North Carolina State University in Raleigh. The stations also predated what we now know as PBS by more than a decade and concentrated on using the TV medium for distance education. These are two reasons the network concept probably took off here.

In the other major city in the state at the time, Charlotte, the school board signed on its own public station, WTVI-TV 42, in 1965, wihc, as mentioned in an earlier post, is the only standalone public TV station in North or South Carolina.

The rest of North Carolina was, and still is, considerably rural, though, also in 1965, WUNC-TV began to build its statewide network with another VHF station, WUNB-TV 2 (now WUND-TV) along the coast at Columbia.

You can kind of follow the expansion of the network by the order of the last letter of each station's call sign. On September 11, 1967, three UHF channels signed on, two in the mountains, Linville's WUNE-17 and Asheville's WUNF-33 along with Concord-licensed WUNG-58, which effectively provided the Charlotte region with another public TV channel.


In 1971, WUNJ-TV 39 in Wilmington brought a second coastal signal.

The year 1972 brought WUNK-25 in Greenville and WUNL-26 in Winston-Salem.

The network added WUNM-19, Jacksonville in 1982, WUNP-36, Roanoke Rapids in 1986 and WUNU-31, Lumberton in 1996.

A 12th transmitter, WUNW-27 in Canton is expected to air in 2010.

Charlotte today has three public TV options between WTVI, UNC-TV's WUNG transmitter and Rock Hill SCETV border blaster WNSC-TV 30, while UNC-TV is on cross border cable systems in such communities as Myrtle Beach, SC and Danville, Va and even relicensed Columbia's WUND to Edenton to become a Norfolk-Porstmouth-Newport News, Va-market station, thus getting cable and satellite must carry there.

 

[dave73]

IN Chicago, WTTW has been around prior to PBS as part of the National Educational Television network. They were on the air in 1955. They're owned by Window to the World Communications, Inc. They're the dominant PBS station in the Chicago market. They've never been part of a statewide network. Chicago's other PBS station, WYCC, which is now on RF 21, went on the air 1983 on channel 20. They're owned by The City Colleges of Chicago on the south side of Chicago. They also don't belong to any statewide network. WYCC focusses more on educational programming than general programming, but they do have it in their library. WTTW focuses on childrens programming during the day, and general programming at night (WTTW Prime is a 24 hour primetime programmed channel).

Chicagoland's 3rd PBS station is WYIN-DT. They went on the air on November, 1987 on channel 56. They're now on RF 17. They rose from the ashes of the old WCAE channel 50 (the original non-commercial license), which originally was run by the Lake Central School System at Lake Central High School in St John Indiana. I don't have much information on the station, but they went on the air in either the mid to late 70's, and went off the air in 1983, due to lack of funds to keep the PBS station on the air. The Northwest Indiana Public Broadcasting Corporation was created sometime after 1983, and they got the money to get a tower up, and other equipment needed to have a TV station serving NW Indiana. Like the old WCAE, WYIN isn't part of a statewide network either. Their programming is similar to WTTW, but they have their own newscast to do their own news. They did drop it for a while when they contracted with then US Cable to have them do the news, and allow WYIN to air it. When the cable company cancelled their news show, WYIN got back into creating a news show. It's low budget, but they do deliver the news for NW Indiana,and not Chicago. Too bad the local programming isn't in HD yet, as they don't have HD cameras at this time. The channel is however setup for 720p HD, and they do air some programs in HD, if it was filmed in HD.

University built one of the country's first educational TV stations, in 1954. Public TV came to Milwaukee three years later, with a station operated by the local vocational school. In the early 1970s a statewide network was built, with station locations more or less coinciding with the stations of an existing educational radio network.

(Wisconsin was the first state to have a statewide public radio network, launched in 1947 and essentially complete by 1952.)

However, the state TV network does not cover the entire state. The Milwaukee station is still controlled by the vocational school. (and added a second channel in 1963) The Madison station is still technically controlled by the university, though its schedule is almost 100% identical to the state network and is controlled from the same building. (the state network is licensed to a separate state agency) For many years, the Madison station was on cable in Milwaukee - I don't think they dropped it until DTV came along last summer. (it may even still be on in the digital tier)

This was a rarity back in the day. MATC wouldn't have been able to get WMVT on the air had it not been for the FCC to grant them a waiver to own 2 TV stations in Milwaukee. Had the waiver not been granted, who knows if Milwaukee would have 2 PBS stations. WMVS almost didn't go on the air after corporate for-profit companies tried to get channel 10 licensed for commercial use, and not non-commercial use, since that was a prime channel in the day.

 

[ercjncpr]

I have often wondered why California does not have a simulcasting statewide PBS network. We have a state wide PBS "syndication" arrangement, but it is not a connected "live" network in the traditional sense.

 

[ShawnHill1]

I have often wondered why California does not have a simulcasting statewide PBS network. We have a state wide PBS "syndication" arrangement, but it is not a connected "live" network in the traditional sense.

Yeah, you sorta have "mini-networks" in a sense. Valley Public Television covers both Fresno (main signal) and Bakersfield (repeater), both KCET and KVCR have feeds specifically for the Palm Springs market, and the Bay Area's KQED and KTEH are under the same ownership.

 

[Mike Stroud]

You forgot KET (down in dem dar hills) in Bluegrass land!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KET

I did say I was covering the "deep South." I didn't do Tennessee or Virginia, either.

Stanislav, maybe I can help a bit, at least on Tennessee. Unlike, say, Alabama, Tennessee did not have a statewide model for ETV in the early days of the medium in the 1950s. Instead, the initiatives were taken at first by a community group in Memphis (WKNO, channel 10) and the school board in Nashville (WDCN, now WNPT, on channel 2, now 8). Memphis and Nashville were, and still are, far and away the state's largest cities and clearly the most sophisticated technologically and culturally for that time. Therefore, those stations obtained strong backing by civic and business leaders from the beginning.

By way of contrast, Tennessee's State legislature was dominated at the time, much like its nearby sister states, by rural interests who were instinctually (not to mention ideologically) conservative, generally resisting the intrusion of the State into local control of education (still a heated issue in many places to this day). But district reapportionment by Federal court orders brought more urban legislators into the mix on Capitol Hill in the 1960s, and with the CPB and Federal money beckoning the states later in the decade, the State finally took the plunge into filling in those parts of Tennessee other than the Memphis and Nashville markets with ETV service.

The State, via its Board of Education, took a gradualist, phase-in approach, first planting WSJK (now ETPtv, or East Tennessee Public Television) in Sneedville, Tennessee, just below the Virginia line in the high mountains of northeastern Tennessee, in 1967. That station, on channel 2, wound up serving both the Knoxville and the Tri-Cities markets. The next year, western Tennessee outside the Memphis area received WLJT, channel 11, transmitter at Lexington, Tennessee, as a repeater of WKNO. That left Chattanooga as the only major city left in the state without ETV service, and the State started up WTCI, channel 45, there in 1970. Then things began to sputter, as State revenues took a hit from the national recession. This meant that it took eight long years before the last station, WCTE, channel 22, based in Cookeville and serving the hilly-to-mountainous "Cumberland Plateau" region between Nashville and Knoxville, began.

In the meantime, things were not perfect. WSJK's staff knew that the channel 2 frequency was not positioned well to give the Knoxville area a clear signal, and they petitioned for a UHF translator. That got shelved, despite an FCC allocation. Likewise, another one for the Tri-Cities never got off the drawing board. The State had likely exhausted its resources on starting up the stations to the point where it did not establish a serious program of maintenance (physical or institutional) for them, meaning that each station had to make do with its budget appropriation. Any unusual equipment failures--tough.

Not surprisingly, station managers began to believe that perhaps State control was not such a good thing, especially given those four stations' diverse needs. A classroom of all white children in the mountains of East Tennessee had to be served rather differently than a predominantly black classroom in the counties near Memphis, for example. And it was never really a serious possibility for the stations to be networked--the geography alone was a deterrent, to say nothing of urban/rural differences. The only program that the stations aired in common was a half-hour report each week during the State legislative session, that aired intermittently throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

So, the State agreed, circa 1981, to release the stations to ad hoc community boards, allowing each station to pursue its own managerial style and fundraising approaches. By the mid-1980s, all stations were now in local hands. This most notably affected WSJK, which finally got its long-desired translator, WKOP, in 1988-89. WLJT started programming separately from WKNO as well. By the 1990s, the State legislature discontinued even token financial support, with little or no adverse effect to the stations. Incidentally, 2000 marked the end of WDCN's affiliation with the Nashville-Davidson County Board of Education, the last governmental licensee of a PBS station in the state.

 

[dustintv]

Colorado only recently developed a statewide network. In the past KRMA in Denver and KTSC in Pueblo were separately run PBS stations. Then in 1999 KTSC would simply become part of Rocky Moutain PBS which that the point consisted of KRMA and its Grand Junction satellite KRMJ.

Since then KRMU and KRMZ have also signed to be part of network. Today the only PBS station in Colorado outside the Rocky Mountain PBS network is KBDI.

 

[radiorob2.0]

You forgot KET (down in dem dar hills) in Bluegrass land!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KET

As a teenager in 1971 I remember picking it up on my mom's TV set on a clear day during Easter vacation from school. Picked up two stations...one from Owensboro and the other(I think) from Paducah. They were airing only two programs that day and kept repeating them....yet it was promoted as KET's "SPECIAL" Friday. By 1 or 2 in the afternoon both signals faded.

Owensboro didn't have KET circa 1971, neither did Paducah. Until Channel 31 (Owensboro/Henderson) debuted, KET for Owensboro was from WKMA Madisonville (Channel 35). Paducah was served by Channel 21 Murray/Mayfield until KET purchased the license of the former WDXR-TV Channel 29. Both stations began service in the late 70's.

 

[dustintv]

It case it comes up again, here is the full list of states with Statewide PBS Networks:

Alabama Public Television
AlaskaOne
Arkansas Educational Television Network
Connecticut Public Television
Georgia Public Broadcasting
Idaho Public Television
Iowa Public Television
Kentucky Educational Television
Louisiana Public Broadcasting
Maine Public Broadcasting Network
Maryland Public Television
Mississippi Public Broadcasting
Nebraska Educational Telecommunications
New Hampshire Public Television
New Jersey Network
Oklahoma Educational Television Authority
Oregon Public Broadcasting
Prairie Public Television--North Dakota
Rocky Mountain PBS--Colorado
South Carolina Educational Television
South Dakota Public Broadcasting
UNC-TV--North Carolina
Vermont Public Television
West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Wisconsin Public Television
Wyoming PBS

Regional-wide networks: These are small groupings of PBS stations which cover large regions of a state. Blue Ridge's 3 stations covers Appalachia in Virginia, while Smokey Hills 4 stations cover the vastness of western Kansas.

Blue Ridge PBS--Virginia
Southern Oregon Public Television
Smokey Hills Public Television--Kansas
Network Knowledge--Illinois

 

[easttxtv]

There is also OETA, Oklahoma's set of PBS stations, which, according to http://www.oeta.tv/about/history.html , was originally brought about by the state legislature there. For a few years in the 1980s, Oklahoma City had 2 PBS stations, but the 2nd, Ch.43 was sold to Paramount Stations. The current list of main stations and translators is at http://www.oeta.tv/dtv/channels.html .

To my knowledge, there's never been any kind of legislative or private-sector push for a centralized set of PBS stations in Texas. Every market that can, seems to take it upon themselves to somehow bring public TV about, except for the Abilene/San Angelo, Sherman/Denison, Tyler/Longview, and Wichita Falls markets, which depend on KERA/13 in Dallas for their PBS signal. North Texas Public Broadcasting, which runs KERA/13, applied for and got a Wichita Falls translator on Ch.44 in recent years; last October, NTPB applied for a Tyler translator on Ch.25 (no approval showing yet for that one). I guess it's too early to tell whether NTPB plans to apply for one for Abilene. NTPB's recent launch of a 2nd radio station seems to have taken up much of their administrative and financial attention of late. Amarillo depended on KERA/13 for PBS until 1988, when Amarillo College launched KACV/2; strangely enough, even though Amarillo has their own PBS station, no one in the market tried to launch a local NPR-oriented radio equivalent--in recent years, Amarillo was added to High Plains Public Radio, based in Garden City, KS.

 

[Mario500]

A new article about the history of Alabama Public Television was posted online this month and here is part of the network's story:

Seth Gordon Persons, the governor of Alabama between 1951 and 1955, encouraged the Alabama Legislature to pass legislation to create an educational TV network based on what he believed was an effective solution to the state's inability to always consistently qualified teachers in all areas.

The Alabama Educational Television Commission was created in 1953 and consisted of six board members representing education and each congressional district in Alabama. The governor chose the members of the commission. The Alabama State Docks in Mobile gave the commission $50,000 in the beginning, since the state did not provide funding for the commission's first work.

Here is a link to the rest of the story:

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=210205279318