KUHT

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KUHT or HoustonPBS (VHF channel 8 in Houston, Texas) is a PBS member television station operated by the University of Houston. It also serves as the PBS member station for Beaumont.

History

The station commenced broadcasting on May 25, 1953 from the Cullen Building on the main campus of the University of Houston as the first public television station in the United States, and one of the earliest stations of NET, National Educational Television, which eventually merged into PBS. Its dedication ceremonies were broadcast on June 8 of that year. Originally licensed to both UH and the Houston Independent School District, UH became its sole licensee in 1959.

The station also offered the university's first televised college credit classes. Running 13 to 15 hours weekly, these telecasts accounted for 38 percent of the program schedule. Most courses aired at night so that students who worked during the day could watch them. By the mid-1960s, with about one-third of the station's programming devoted to education, more than 100,000 semester hours had been taught on KUHT.[1]

In 1964, KUHT moved into new studios on Cullen Boulevard and purchased a new transmitter that enables the station to not only broadcast beyond Harris County into its surrounding areas, but it also begins broadcasting in color. Five years later, in 1969, the Association for Community Television (ACT) is formed to fund KUHT.

PBS era

By 1970, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) joined with KUHT and other stations to form PBS, which combined televised educational lectures with popular programs that remain PBS staples to this day, such as Sesame Street, NOVA, and Masterpiece Theatre. In 1982, with assistance from Capital Cities' ABC affiliate, KTRK and Metromedia's independent station, KRIV, KUHT launches on a new transmitter in Missouri City, making it one of several television and radio stations that now broadcast from that location.

On August 21, 2000, KUHT moved to its current studios at the Melcher Center for Public Broadcasting, where KUHT shares broadcast facilities with public radio station KUHF, both owned by the University of Houston, where the complex is located.

KUHT's digital signal, KUHT-DT (VHF channel 9), launched on May 12, 2001.

Trivia

• KUHT was known on-air as "Houston Public Television" for many years before adopting the "HoustonPBS" moniker in the early 21st century. For most of the 1990s and early 2000s, KUHT's logo also did not include the number 8.
• The station is also noted in Houston for many technical firsts at the local level. In 1981, KUHT became Houston's first closed captioned television station, and ten years later, in 1991, it became the first station in Houston to offer descriptive video services (DVS), and other services for the visually impaired as well as bilingual viewers via a secondary audio program (SAP).

External links

• KUHT - HoustonPBS
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