KQED (TV)

KQED is a Public Broadcasting Service-member public television station in San Francisco, California, broadcasting digitally on UHF channel 30 (Ex-Analog Channel 9). This channel is also carried on Comcast cable TV and via satellite by DirecTV and Dish Network. Its transmitter is located on Sutro Tower in San Francisco.

It is one of the most-watched PBS stations in the country during primetime.

Noteworthy KQED television productions include the first installment of Armistead Maupin's miniseries Tales of the City, Tongues Untied by Marlon Riggs, and a series of programs focusing on the historic neighborhoods in San Francisco, such as The Castro and The Fillmore District. Ongoing productions include The Josh Kornbluth Show, California Connected, Check, Please! Bay Area, Spark, This Week in Northern California and QUEST.

History

KQED was organized and created by veteran broadcast journalists James Day and Jonathan Rice on June 1, 1953 and first went on air April 5, 1954. It was the sixth public broadcasting station in the United States, debuting shortly after WQED in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The station's call letters, Q.E.D., are taken from the Latin phrase, quod erat demonstrandum, commonly used in mathematics.

In its early days following sign-on, KQED broadcast only twice a week for one hour each day. Despite the very limited schedule, the station was still losing money, leading to a decision in early 1955 from its board of trustees to close down the station. Its staff got the board to keep the station on the air and try to get needed funds from the public in a form of a televised auction, in which celebrities would appear to auction off goods and services donated to the station. While the station still came a little short, it did show that the general public cared to keep KQED on the air. Since then, the auction became a fund-raising tool for many public television stations, though its usage waned in recent years in favor of increased usage of special pledge drives throughout the year.

Channel 9 had a sister station, KQEC, which broadcast on Channel 32. KQED had inherited the station in 1970 (as KNEW-TV) from Metromedia, but found they could not operate it without losing money. Various PBS and locally produced programs from KQED would air erratically and at different times of the day on KQEC. In 1988, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) revoked KQED's license to operate KQEC, citing excessive off-air time, further charging dishonesty in previous filings with regard to the specific reasons. The alleged dishonesty was in reference to KQED's claim of financial woes for keeping KQEC off the air for most of 1972 through 1977, and again for several months in 1979 and 1980. After being revoked from KQED, the reassigned license was granted to the Minority Television Project (MTP), one of the challengers of the KQED/KQEC filing. The KQEC call letters were changed to KMTP-TV under the new license.

During the early 1990s, when the State of California reintroduced the death penalty, the KQED organization waged a legal battle for the right to televise the forthcoming execution of Robert Alton Harris at San Quentin State Prison. The decision to pursue the videotaping of executions was controversial amongst those on both sides of the capital punishment debate.

KQED was co-producer of the television adaptation of Armistead Maupin's novel, Tales of the City, which aired on PBS stations nationwide in January 1994. The original six-part series was produced by Britain's public-service Channel 4 Corporation with KQED and PBS' American Playhouse. The six-part miniseries featured gay themes, nudity and illicit drug use in this fictional portrayal of life in 1970s San Francisco. Although the program gave PBS its highest ratings ever for a dramatic program, PBS bowed to threats of federal funding cuts and announced it would not participate in the television production of an adaptation of the second book in the series, More Tales of the City.

On May 1, 2006, KQED, Inc. and the KTEH Foundation merged to form Northern California Public Broadcasting. The KQED assets including its television (KQED TV) and FM radio stations (KQED-FM) were taken under the umbrella of that new organization. Both remain members of Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR), respectively. With this change, KQED and KTEH are considered as sister-stations today.

On November 11, 2010, KQED and NBR Worldwide, LLC, the owners of PBS' Nightly Business Report, reached into an agreement to open a bureau in the Silicon Valley in order to enhance coverage of NBR.

On January 4, 2011, KQED expanded its broadcasting areas to include both San Luis Obispo and Santa Maria, as then-PBS affiliate KCET left public broadcasting at the end of 2010. Those areas are currently available only via cable.

Programming

KQED currently airs most of its programming on television 24 hours a day. On a typical weekday, the station is dominated by children's programming in the mornings and in the late afternoons, with news and other programming between noon and 4pm and after 6pm. Prime time programming includes programming carried by PBS. On Saturdays, several cooking shows and other home programming airs during the daytime, with movies or special programming during the evenings and overnight hours. On Sundays, children's programming airs during the morning, with reruns of popular shows during the daytime and prime time.

For many years, KQED has carried PBS Newshour ever since its debut. The program would eventually open its West coast studios at KQED in 1997 to extend coverage throughout the United States.

Children

Although KQED and KTEH airs many children's programming distributed by other stations including WGBH and WNET, KQED did not distribute any children's programming until 2007, when Raggs became the first children's programming to be distributed by the station. Raggs would first be tested on ten public television stations, including KQED and its partners (but not counting its partners), and eventually in 2008, KQED would distribute the program nationally. However, Raggs was not distributed by PBS itself, but instead by American Public Television.

On May 11, 2009, PBS announced another show, The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That! with KQED as the presenting station. Unlike Raggs, Dr. Seuss's latest show is considered the first children's program distributed by PBS via KQED.

Digital television

KQED broadcasts its ATSC digital television signal on channel 30 from Sutro Tower. The station's digital signal is multiplexed:

All channels are available on Comcast; AT&T; U-verse offers KQED and KTEH, but not KQED World.

KQET

KQED's television programming is repeated in the Monterey/Salinas/Santa Cruz market on KQET analog channel 25 and digital channel 58, licensed to Watsonville.

KQET was first aired on May 17, 1989 as KCAH, a locally-owned PBS member station that served the Monterey area. In the late 1990s, San Jose PBS member station KTEH acquired KCAH, making it a satellite of KTEH.

KCAH changed its call letters to KQET on August 12, 2007, months after the merger of KQED and KTEH. On October 1, 2007, KQET switched programming sources from KTEH to KQED.

KQET terminated its analog transmissions on May 9, 2009, and has now moved its digital signal from its pre-transition UHF channel 58 back to UHF channel 25, its historic analog frequency.

The station broadcasts from Fremont Peak near San Juan Bautista. KQET's subchannels are multiplexed:

Radio

Publishing

In 1955, KQED began publishing a programming guide called KQED in Focus. The program guide began to add more articles and took on the character of a regular magazine. The name was later changed to Focus Magazine and then to San Francisco Focus. In 1984, a new programming guide, Fine Tuning was separated off from Focus, with Focus carrying on as a self-contained magazine. In the early 1990s, San Francisco Focus was the recipient of number of journalism and publishing awards, including a National Headliner Award for feature writing in 1993. In 1997, KQED sold San Francisco Focus to Diablo Publications in order to pay off debts. In 2005, San Francisco Focus was resold to Modern Luxury Media, who rebranded the magazine as San Francisco.

References

External links

KQED Official website

California Connected Official website

This Week in Northern California Official website

KQED-TV (analog) coverage map

KQED-DT (digital) coverage map

Forum discusses proposed changes to KQED's bylaws, which would eliminate members' voting rights.

Results of Member Elections include the elimination of their voting rights

KQED Workers Authorize Strike

Programming information

Category:PBS member stations Category:Channel 30 digital TV stations in the United States Category:Channel 9 virtual TV stations in the United States Category:Television channels and stations established in 1954 Category:DuPont-Columbia Award recipients Category:Television stations in California