KAET

KAET (channel 8), known as Arizona PBS, is a PBS member television station in Phoenix, Arizona, United States, owned by Arizona State University (ASU). It operates from a building shared with the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication on ASU's Downtown Phoenix campus, and its transmitter is located on South Mountain on the south side of Phoenix. Its signal is relayed across central, northern, and southwestern Arizona on a network of 13 translator stations.

History

In late 1959, as it was preparing to build new facilities for itself, Phoenix commercial television station KVAR offered to sell its old transmitter on South Mountain, valued at $150,000, to ASU for $30,000. The offer jumpstarted plans to build an educational television station in Phoenix and prompted the Arizona Board of Regents to authorize expenditures for the transmitter and additional equipment in January 1960.

On November 8, 1960, the Federal Communications Commission granted the construction permit to ASU. Having found that the call letters KASU was already in use at Arkansas State University, the call letters KAET was selected, for "Arizona Educational Television". The station began broadcasting January 30, 1961, with a series of telecourses as well as programming from National Educational Television; the station's first local production was a Spanish 101 course. By 1966, KAET broadcast 50 hours a week of programs. It converted to color, first with network shows, with a grant for a color broadcast chain in 1967; the station's lobbying for color conversion was aided when the staff delivered a color television set to university president G. Homer Durham. In 1973, KAET moved from its original home in the Engineering Center to another location on the Tempe campus, the newly built Stauffer Hall communications building.