Early years
In 1959, the board of trustees of San Bernardino Valley College gave approval for an exploratory study on activating ultra high frequency (UHF) channel 24, which had been allocated for educational television use by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 1952 but was never assigned; recent changes in state law had allowed the community college to set up and finance its own TV station.[1] The college applied for a construction permit on August 12, 1960,[2] even though trustees were at first hesitant about the concept. One trustee wanted to merely apply for the permit to keep the college's hold on the channel.[3] The FCC granted the permit on July 6, 1961, but trustees initially rejected funds to build the station in a 3–2 vote. The chairman of the board of trustees, in casting the deciding vote, stated, "I personally believe it is not our function to take education beyond the campus, here."[4]
Less than a month after that vote, with high community interest in the project, trustees changed their minds and unanimously voted to build out KVCR-TV, which would be the first educational television station in the state to be run by a junior college.[5] It was seen as more cost-effective to broadcast on campus than to wire campus buildings for a closed-circuit system.[6] Construction of the facility was complete by June 12, 1962, when the first test pattern was sent out,[7] but the first program was not broadcast until September 11. That night, after 15 minutes, the station went off the air because a capacitor failed in the transmitter.[8] KVCR-TV was the only educational station to broadcast in Southern California at the time of its creation. In addition to educational programs for schools and college telecourses, the station also presented educational programs from National Educational Television (NET), forerunner to PBS.[9]
The station grew quickly. Originally broadcasting 10 to 15 hours a week, it doubled its output to 30 hours in 1963.[10] By 1965, KVCR-TV was broadcasting daytime instructional television for 23 school districts in San Bernardino County, including on translators to rebroadcast its signal.[11] KVCR-TV also served as an extension of the broadcasting program at Valley College. The station was entirely student-operated and by 1967 aired 10 to 15 hours a week of local programs, including a weekly public affairs program as well as a daily newscast during the school year.[12] Even though National Educational Television began feeding programs on network lines to stations in 1967, KVCR-TV continued to receive all its NET and PBS programming through KCET in Los Angeles until it was directly connected to the network in June 1972.[13]
With a small signal originating from the Valley College campus, the station's coverage was limited for most of the first 20 years of its history. In 1973, a translator was activated near the campus of the University of California, Riverside; this expanded KVCR-TV coverage to Riverside, which was blocked from the main San Bernardino signal by terrain. The university also had television production capabilities and could produce programs for air on the station.[14] A volunteer support group for KVCR radio and television, Friends of KVCR, was formed in 1973;[15] the next year, the station received a federal grant that allowed it to upgrade to all-color broadcasting.[16] The transmitter had been previously modified to allow the station to pass through network programs in color, a fact station officials were not aware of until they were called by a viewer who complimented them on their color signal.
Regional growth
In 1980, KVCR-TV began planning for a major power increase and transmitter site relocation. This would replace the original facility, which used a transmitter 10 years older than KVCR-TV itself, with a site on higher terrain. Several sites, including Sunset Ridge (used by KHOF-TV), were analyzed,[17] but planning soon focused on Box Springs Mountain near the University of California, Riverside campus.[18] After receiving a $650,000 federal grant in December 1981[19] and awarding contracts for construction work in September 1982,[20] the new facility came into use on December 5, 1983, adding an expected 1 million viewers to the station's coverage area.[21] With the new coverage area, KVCR also began increasing its on- and off-air fundraising activities, hiring its first development director and campaigning for donations on the air.[22]
Digitalization and budget woes
After Little's retirement, Lew Warren became the station's general manager. Motivated by complaints from viewers, he had KVCR-TV switch from being a secondary PBS station in the Program Differentiation Plan—airing 25 percent of the network's output after a minimum eight-day delay—to a primary station. This meant that the full PBS lineup aired on KVCR-TV for the first time in its history. It also was a major expense. In 1997, the station paid PBS approximately $224,000; those payments were set to increase to $544,000 in 1998. However, KCET protested that KVCR should be required to pay the full per-household-covered rate for programs, not a discounted rate like PBS often permitted secondary stations in large markets to pay.[29] The PBS directors agreed with KCET and increased the total bill to about $800,000 a year.[30]
While that was under way, KVCR experienced two major transmitter faults in late 2002. A heat wave in the Inland Empire caused a tube in the transmitter to blow on August 31, 2002;[31] the station was off air until September 18.[32] The transmitter then failed again in a rainstorm in early November;[33]
Expansion to the Desert Cities
In September 2003, PSTV Partners, which operated a television translator on channel 55 (cable 16) serving the Palm Springs area, decided to begin broadcasting KVCR instead of KOCE-TV on its translator because its owner, Jonathan Sussman, felt the Orange County station was not sufficiently responsive to the interests of the Coachella Valley and fretted about a possible sale of KOCE. Sussman also owned Raven Productions, a local program producer, and began contributing several Coachella Valley-oriented programs to KVCR's lineup.[46] In 2005, the station moved to channel 9 over-the-air and on cable after Sussman hired lawyers to argue that the noncommercial channel needed a lower position on cable.[47] At that time, it was the only public station with a broadcast transmitter in the area.[48] KVCR renewed its lease for five-year terms in 2008 and 2013.
In 2016, PSTV Partners transferred the license of K09XW-D to KCETLink, the parent organization of KCET.[49]
First Nations Experience
In 2010, KVCR received a $6 million donation from the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians to start a television channel airing programming about Native American communities in the United States, with a goal to distribute it nationally.[51] The service, First Nations Experience (FNX), began broadcasting as a subchannel on September 25, 2011.[52] The San Manuel Band donated another $6 million to KVCR in 2015 to support expanding FNX.[53]
Incentive auction and possible disaffiliation from PBS
The KVCR stations, typically reliant on contributions from the community college district for much of their operating funding, began to see cutbacks in the 2010s. In 2012, the district cut its support from $1.7 million to $900,000 and advised the stations to plan on receiving no funding for the 2013–2014 fiscal year, and rumors swirled that the radio and television stations could become managed by public broadcasters in Los Angeles.[54] The board then gave the stations an extra year of public support.[55]
In 2017, KVCR sold its UHF-band television spectrum for $157 million in the 2016 United States wireless spectrum auction and moved to very high frequency (VHF) channel 5. The cash infusion represented 150 percent of the entire budget of the community college district.[56][57] It was the 11th-largest incentive auction payment to any station nationwide and the largest for a station in the Los Angeles area.[58]
