PBS member station in Amarillo, Texas
KACV-TV
(channel 2), branded on-air as
Panhandle PBS
, is a
PBS
member
television station
in
Amarillo, Texas
, United States. It is owned by
Amarillo College
alongside student-operated radio station
KACV-FM
(89.9). The two outlets share studios at the Gilvin Broadcast Center on Amarillo College's Washington Street campus (near the intersection of West 24th Avenue and South Jackson Streets
[2]
); KACV-TV's transmitter is located west of
US 87
?
287
in
unincorporated
Potter County
.
History
[
edit
]
In 1955, the Amarillo Junior College District began producing televised
instructional programs
for carriage on local commercial television stations in the area to be viewed in school by local college and secondary school students. At its peak, the district was leasing airtime to broadcast 40 hours of instructional programming Monday through Friday each week. The college established its own academic department for radio and television production in 1971, and eventually broadcast Amarillo Badgers
college basketball
games and other local programs. In 1982, Amarillo College eventually launched a local
educational access cable channel
on channel 2 on most Amarillo-area cable systems.
After
National Educational Television
(NET) had many of its functions superseded and assumed by the Public Broadcasting Service (
PBS
) in 1970, PBS had maintained an arrangement to distribute its programming to the
Texas Panhandle
? which was one of the few areas of the state (and the United States, as a whole) that did not have a PBS member station of its own on a per-program basis via the Amarillo market's commercial stations,
NBC
affiliate
KAMR-TV
(channel 4),
ABC
affiliate
KVII-TV
(channel 7) or
CBS
affiliate
KFDA-TV
(channel 10). (Among them, the popular children's program
Sesame Street
, which was carried locally via KVII-TV).
Viewers in the Texas Panhandle watched PBS programming via
cable television
via either KTXT (now
KTTZ-TV
) in
Lubbock
(in the southern Panhandle) or via a translator of
KRMA-TV
in
Denver
. PBS programming was also available over the air via KWET in
Cheyenne, Oklahoma
(a transmitter of the
Oklahoma Educational Television Authority
[OETA], which reaches the eastern portion of the Amarillo market), or via
KENW
out of
Portales, New Mexico
.
The
VHF
channel 2 allocation in Amarillo was contested between two groups that competed for the
Federal Communications Commission
(FCC)'s approval of a
construction permit
to build and
license
to operate a new television station. Amarillo Junior College District filed the initial application on December 19, 1984.
[3]
The district underwent an FCC licensure tug-of-war with Family Media, Inc., another group seeking to operate a non-commercial station on channel 2. The FCC granted the Amarillo Junior College District a construction permit and license in 1986. The following year (1987), Amarillo College received a $1 million grant from the
United States Department of Commerce
to purchase broadcast equipment; the college concurrently raised about $550,000 in funds from the public and local private contributions, enabling the expansion of its studio facilities.
The station first signed on the air on August 29, 1988. It was the first public television station in the Texas Panhandle, making Amarillo one of the last major media markets in Texas to get its own PBS station. Despite the station's presence, cable providers in portions of the Panhandle continue to carry PBS programming via the OETA?which, in addition to its Cheyenne transmitter, also maintains three
translators
across the state line in the
Oklahoma Panhandle
?instead of KACV in some areas of the eastern Texas Panhandle.
On September 3, 2013, in commemoration of the station's 25th anniversary of broadcasting, KACV changed its branding to "Panhandle PBS" (removing references to its over-the-air virtual channel).
[4]
[5]
Programming
[
edit
]
As a PBS member station, much of KACV-TV's programming consists of educational, children's and entertainment programming distributed by PBS to its member stations as well as content from
American Public Television
and various other distributors. The station's programming schedule also consists of cultural and educational programs,
documentaries
and general interest programming. While there is some cross-promotion between KACV-TV and KACV-FM, the two properties conduct fundraising campaigns independent of one another. The station has also produced some local programming including
artZONE
, and the documentaries
A Conversation with
Ken Burns
and
Braggin' Rights: The Coors Cowboy Club Ranch Rodeo
.
KACV's weekday lineup is mostly filled by children's programs from PBS and American Public Television (such as
Arthur
,
Curious George
,
Wild Kratts
,
Odd Squad
and
Sesame Street
) from 5:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Programs provided by PBS are primarily shown on most nights in prime time except for Saturdays, which instead features a mix of music, documentary and British drama content from American Public Television. Weekends feature additional children's programming in the morning (from 5 to 8:30 a.m. on Saturdays and from 5 a.m. to noon on Sundays), with the remainder of the schedule outside of prime time consisting of travel, cooking and how-to series on Saturdays, and art instruction, British sitcoms, encores of PBS prime time shows and some local programs.
From the station's sign-on until January 2009, the station's broadcast transmitter was typically
turned off
during the overnight hours (generally from noon to 5 a.m.). In order to fill time until the station resumed broadcasts each morning, from 1995 to 2008, Amarillo-area cable providers carried the
PBS Satellite Service
over KACV's assigned channel slots during the designated sign-off-to-sign-on period. (Until the station adopted such a schedule in January 2009, KACV was one of the few remaining broadcast television outlets in the United States that had not converted to a 24-hour-a-day schedule.) Beforehand, many other cable providers around the Amarillo market carried other lower-priority cable networks that limited
headend
frequency space precluded from assigning them to a separate full-time channel over KACV's channel slots as
filler
during overnight/early morning time periods during the broadcast signal's
off-air
period.
Technical information
[
edit
]
Subchannels
[
edit
]
The station's signal is
multiplexed
:
Analog-to-digital conversion
[
edit
]
KACV began transmitting a digital television signal on
VHF
channel 8 in 2002. The station shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 2, on February 17, 2009, the original target date on which full-power television stations in the United States were to
transition from analog to digital broadcasts
under federal mandate (which Congress later pushed back to June 12, 2009, by resolution three weeks before all full-power stations were scheduled to transition). The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition VHF channel 8, using
virtual channel
2.
[7]
Translators
[
edit
]
In addition to maintaining cable carriage within this area, KACV-TV covers a large portion of the Texas Panhandle through a network of
UHF
translators
that distribute its programming beyond the 67.6-mile-wide (108.8 km) range corridor of its broadcast signal.
[8]
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
"Facility Technical Data for KACV-TV"
.
Licensing and Management System
.
Federal Communications Commission
.
- ^
"Amarillo College Campus Map - Washington Street Campus"
.
Amarillo College
. Retrieved
August 2,
2018
.
- ^
"For the Record".
Broadcasting
. Broadcasting Publications, Inc. January 19, 1984. p. 132.
- ^
"KACV-TV is Celebrating 25 Years of Affiliation with PBS"
.
KACV-TV
(Press release). Amarillo College. September 3, 2013.
- ^
"PBS station changes name"
.
Amarillo Globe-News
.
Morris Communications
. November 3, 2013
. Retrieved
August 2,
2018
.
- ^
"RabbitEars TV Query for KACV"
.
RabbitEars
. Retrieved
January 25,
2017
.
- ^
"DTV Tentative Channel Designations for the First and Second Rounds"
(PDF)
.
Federal Communications Commission
. Archived from
the original
(PDF)
on August 29, 2013
. Retrieved
March 24,
2012
.
- ^
"List of TV Translator Input Channels"
. Federal Communications Commission. July 23, 2021.
Archived
from the original on December 9, 2021
. Retrieved
December 17,
2021
.
External links
[
edit
]
|
---|
Amarillo
and
surrounding area
|
- KACV-TV
(2.1
PBS
, 2.2
PBS Kids
, 2.3
Create
)
- KAMR-TV
(4.1
NBC
,
4.2
MNTV
, 4.3
Laff
, 4.4
ANT
)
- KBEX-LP 6
(
YTA
)
- KVII-TV
(7.1
ABC
, 7.2
CW+
, 7.3
Comet
, 7.4
TBD
, 7.5
Charge!
)
- KFDA-TV
(10.1
CBS
, 10.2
Ind.
,
10.3
TLMD
, 10.4
MeTV
, 10.5
Cozi
, 10.6
Oxygen
)
- KCIT
(14.1
Fox
, 14.2
Grit
, 14.3
Mystery
, 14.4
Bounce
)
- KAUO-LD
(15.1
NTD
, 15.2
Get
, 15.3/.8 Infomercials, 15.4
The365
, 15.6 MtrSpt1, 15.6/.7 blanks)
- KVAD-LD (16.1
SBN
)
- K17HI-D
(17.1
3ABN
, 17.2 3ABN Proclaim, 17.3 3ABN Dare to Dream, 17.4 [blank], 17.5 3ABN Radio, 17.6 3ABN Radio Latino, 17.7 Radio 74)
- KPTF-DT
(18.1
GLC
)
- KLKW-LD
(22.1
Estrella
, 22.2
Shop LC
, 22.3
SBN
, 22.4
Buzzr
, 22.5
LX
, 22.6
TXO
, 22.7
The365
)
- KEYU
(31.1
TLMD
, 31.2
H&I
, 31.3
Outlaw
, 31.4
Ion
, 31.5
Dabl
, 31.6
Start
, 31.7
Defy
)
- KCPN-LD
(33.1
MNTV
, 33.2
REW
)
- KXAD-LD (51.1
HSN
, 51.2
HSN2
, 51.3
SBN
)
- Defunct
- K25GI
(
TBN
)
- KAMM-LP 30 (
Tres
)
- KTMO-LP 36
(
TMD
)
- K39HF 39
(
Ion
)
- KTXD-LP 43
(
Azteca
)
- K45IQ 45
(
MTV2
)
- KTXC-LP 46
(
Ind
)
- KAMT-LP 50
(
TeleFutura
)
- K69IH 69
(
INSP
)
|
---|
Northeastern
New Mexico
|
- Albuquerque
channels available in region
- KASA-TV
(2.1
TMD
, 2.2
TXO
,
33.1
TBD
,
47.1
Cozi
)
- KOB
(4.1
NBC
, 4.2
H&I
, 4.3
MeTV
, 4.4
Catchy
, 4.5
Defy
, 4.6
Scripps News
, 4.7
Start
)
- KOAT-TV
(7.1
ABC
, 7.2
Estrella
, 7.3
Crime
, 7.4
LC
, 7.5
Story
)
- KRQE
(13.1
CBS
, 13.2
Fox
, 13.3
Bounce
)
- KWBQ
(19.1
CW
, 19.2
Grit
, 19.3
Laff
, 19.4
Ion
, 19.5
REW
)
- KASY-TV
(50.1
MNTV
, 50.2
Mystery
, 50.3
ANT
, 50.4
Court
)
|
---|
Oklahoma panhandle
|
- Southwest Kansas
channels available in region
- KSWK
(3.1
PBS
/SHPTV, 3.2 PBS HD, 3.3
PBS Kids
, 3.4
Create
)
- KBSD-DT
(6.1
CBS
, 6.2 Local WX, 6.3
H&I
, 6.4
Outlaw
)
- KSNG
(11.1
NBC
, 11.2
TMD
, 11.3
Ion
, 11.4
Crime
)
- KUPK
(13.1
ABC
, 13.2
MeTV
, 13.3
Bounce
, 13.4
Defy
, 13.5
Scripps
)
|
---|
|
PBS
member stations in the state of
Texas
|
---|
|
|