KACV-TV

KACV-TV (channel 2), branded 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 Southwest 24th Avenue and South Jackson Streets[1]); KACV-TV's transmitter is located west of US 87–287 in unincorporated Potter County.

History

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After National Educational Television (NET) had many of its functions superseded and assumed by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in 1970, PBS had maintained an arrangement to distribute its programming to the

Programming

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.

callsign	KACV-TV
branding	Panhandle PBS
digital	9 (VHF)
virtual	2
translators	see
affiliations	2.1: PBS 2.2: PBS Kids 24/7 2.3: Create
owner	Amarillo College
licensee	Amarillo Junior College District
location	Amarillo, Texas
country	United States
airdate	August 29, 1988
callsign meaning	Amarillo College Voice
sister stations	Radio: KACV-FM
former channel numbers	Analog: 2 (VHF, 1988–2009) Digital: 8 (VHF, 2002–2009)
erp	30 kW
haat	398 m
facility id	1236
coordinates	35.37492°N, -101.88258°W
licensing authority	FCC
website	http://www.panhandlepbs.org

History

Programming

Technical information

Subchannels

Analog-to-digital conversion

Translators

See also

External links

References