WCTE (channel 22) is a PBS member television station in Cookeville, Tennessee, United States, serving the Upper Cumberland region. Owned by the Upper Cumberland Broadcast Council, the station originally had studios within the west-side stadium construction of Tucker Stadium on the campus of Tennessee Technological University on North Peachtree Avenue; after an extensive relocation effort, the studios are now located on East Broad Street in downtown Cookeville, adjacent to the Putnam County courthouse.[1] Its transmitter is located northwest of Monterey, Tennessee. Although Cookeville is part of the Nashville market, the station also serves the western fringe of the Knoxville market.
History
WCTE first signed on the air on August 21, 1978. It was the last in a series of stations launched by the Tennessee Department of Education over a 12-year period, finally bringing public television to the last remaining part of the state that previously had little or no access to it. Some of the western parts of the viewing area could pick up the signal of Nashville's WDCN (now WNPT) when it broadcast on channel 2 from 1962 to 1973, but WDCN's move to the weaker channel 8 in 1973 left most of the territory without PBS service for five years.
In 1984, the state relinquished WCTE and its other stations to community boards, such as the UCBC.