WKPD (channel 29) is a
PBS
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...
member
television station
A television station is a set of equipment managed by a business, organisation or other entity such as an amateur television (ATV) operator, that transmits video content and audio content via radio waves directly from a transmitter on the earth's s ...
licensed to
Paducah, Kentucky
Paducah ( ) is a List of cities in Kentucky, home rule-class city in the Upland South, and the county seat of McCracken County, Kentucky, United States. The most populous city in the Jackson Purchase region, it is located in the Southeastern Unit ...
, United States. Owned by the Kentucky Authority for Educational Television, the station is operated as part of the statewide
Kentucky Educational Television
Kentucky Educational Television (KET) is a statewide television network serving the U.S. Commonwealth (U.S. state), commonwealth of Kentucky as a member of PBS. It is operated by the Kentucky Authority for Educational Television, an agency of ...
(KET) network. WKPD's transmitter is located on Coleman Road off of
KY 305 on the west side of Paducah, near the
McCracken County Soccer Complex.
History
WDXR-TV
On May 27, 1966, E. Weaks McKinney-Smith and George T. Bailey, doing business as Channel 29, filed with the
Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, internet, wi-fi, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains j ...
(FCC) for a construction permit to build a new commercial television on channel 29 at Paducah, which was granted by the FCC on January 30, 1967.
[ ( Guide to reading History Cards)] The station took the call letters WDXR-TV; Smith and Bailey were the owners of Paducah radio station
WDXR.
In 1968, Smith and Bailey bought land at the corner of Kentucky Avenue and 4th Street in downtown Paducah for a new building to house WDXR radio and television. Construction on the facility began in the summer of 1969; while the building was finished early the next year, it was not until December 1970 that the station announced a planned launch date for April 1, 1971, and programming focused on the Paducah area.
Channel 29 began telecasting May 31, 1971, as an
independent station
An independent station is a broadcast station, usually a television station, not affiliated with a larger broadcast television network, network. As such, it only broadcasts broadcast syndication, syndicated programs it has purchased; brokered pr ...
.
Programming offerings initially included two daily newscasts. It also aired syndicated programming and local sports telecasts, as well as a local church service.
Tragedy struck WDXR radio and television on February 21, 1974, when Weaks McKinney-Smith died in a New York City hospital at the age of 49, nearly a month after suffering a heart attack on a business trip to try to affiliate the station with
ABC, which was already seen in parts of the market from
Harrisburg, Illinois
Harrisburg () is a city in and the county seat of Saline County, Illinois, United States. It is located about southwest of Evansville, Indiana, and southeast of St. Louis, Missouri. Its 2020 population was 8,219, and the surrounding Harris ...
-licensed
WSIL-TV
WSIL-TV (channel 3) and KPOB-TV (channel 15) are television stations licensed respectively to Harrisburg, Illinois, and Poplar Bluff, Missouri, United States, serving as the American Broadcasting Company, ABC affiliates for Southern Illinois, So ...
. With Weaks's death and Bailey selling his shares later that year, the station became 100 percent owned by Lady Sarah McKinney-Smith.
On October 22, 1975, at 12 midnight Central time, WDXR-TV suspended operations after going bankrupt. A week later, the station issued a two-sentence statement confirming that it had asked the FCC to remain silent. No reason was given, but a representative of the church, when he visited the station to ask about the suspension, saw men from
RCA
RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded in 1919 as the Radio Corporation of America. It was initially a patent pool, patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse Electric Corporation, Westinghou ...
carting away equipment.
As a KET transmitter
That same year, Kentucky Educational Television commissioned a study that reported the establishment of new transmitters to serve Paducah and
Owensboro a high priority. Parts of the Jackson Purchase area received a signal from WKMU, the network's transmitter that is licensed to
Murray, but without specially designed antenna setups, as local schools had, the public could not receive a consistent clear signal. KET filed for the channel directly, only to discover that the WDXR-TV license was still active.
Lady Sarah sold the WDXR-TV building, though without any television production equipment (which had been removed), to J. Spencer Solomon, owner of a production firm in
Benton, in September 1976. A lengthy courtship for facilities and the worse nature of the signal gap in the Owensboro area threatened to cost Paducah its shot at having a KET transmitter. However, in January 1977, a deal was reached to donate the WDXR-TV license to KET.
The FCC approved the license transfer on January 30, 1978. KET, however, opted not to use the former tower of WDXR-TV near
Melber and instead pressed forward with plans to build at a site owned by the
McCracken County government. The new tower, located on Coleman Road, would also provide facilities to the state early warning system and would cost $1 a year instead of $26,000 to buy the WDXR-TV tower site. Construction on WKPD, as the transmitter was renamed, was delayed by a backlog of state projects; the station returned to the air September 9, 1979, as the 14th KET transmitter.
Coverage area
Although WKPD covers most of the same areas of the Purchase region as WKMU except for
Fulton County, WKPD's signal can also be received in areas of the region where WKMU cannot. Examples include parts of
Ballard County, as well as areas of southernmost
Illinois
Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. It borders on Lake Michigan to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and the Wabash River, Wabash and Ohio River, Ohio rivers to its ...
and parts of
Mississippi County in southeast
Missouri
Missouri (''see #Etymology and pronunciation, pronunciation'') is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking List of U.S. states and territories by area, 21st in land area, it border ...
. WKPD's signal coverage extends from
Charleston, Missouri, to
Cairo, Illinois
Cairo ( , sometimes ) is the southernmost city in the U.S. state of Illinois and the county seat of Alexander County, Illinois, Alexander County. A river city, Cairo has the lowest elevation of any location in Illinois and is the only Illinoi ...
. The WKPD signal is received as far east as
Eddyville, as far south as
Mayfield near WKMU's tower, and as far north as northern
Johnson
Johnson may refer to:
People and fictional characters
*Johnson (surname), a common surname in English
* Johnson (given name), a list of people
* List of people with surname Johnson, including fictional characters
*Johnson (composer) (1953–2011) ...
and
Pope
The pope is the bishop of Rome and the Head of the Church#Catholic Church, visible head of the worldwide Catholic Church. He is also known as the supreme pontiff, Roman pontiff, or sovereign pontiff. From the 8th century until 1870, the po ...
counties in Illinois.
Cable and satellite carriage
Since 2003, the main channel of WKPD is available on
DirecTV
DirecTV, LLC is an American Multichannel television in the United States, multichannel video programming distributor based in El Segundo, California. Originally launched on June 17, 1994, its primary service is a digital Satellite television, s ...
and
Dish Network
DISH Network L.L.C., often referred to as DISH, an abbreviation for Digital Sky Highway, is an American provider of satellite television and IPTV services and wholly owned subsidiary of EchoStar Corporation.
The company was originally establ ...
satellite television
Satellite television is a service that delivers television programming to viewers by relaying it from a communications satellite orbiting the Earth directly to the viewer's location.ITU Radio Regulations, Section IV. Radio Stations and Systems ...
in the entirety of the Paducah–
Cape Girardeau market, including both customers who live on the
Illinois
Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. It borders on Lake Michigan to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and the Wabash River, Wabash and Ohio River, Ohio rivers to its ...
or
Missouri
Missouri (''see #Etymology and pronunciation, pronunciation'') is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking List of U.S. states and territories by area, 21st in land area, it border ...
sides of the market, and the Paducah market's two other principal cities of Cape Girardeau, Missouri, and
Harrisburg, Illinois
Harrisburg () is a city in and the county seat of Saline County, Illinois, United States. It is located about southwest of Evansville, Indiana, and southeast of St. Louis, Missouri. Its 2020 population was 8,219, and the surrounding Harris ...
. All
cable television
Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with bro ...
providers in the Kentucky segment of the
media market
A media market, broadcast market, media region, designated market area (DMA), television market area, or simply market is a region where the population can receive the same (or similar) television station, television and radio broadcasting, ra ...
provide at least the main channel of the network.
WSIU-TV
WSIU-TV (channel 8) is a PBS member television station in Carbondale, Illinois, United States. It is owned by Southern Illinois University alongside NPR member WSIU (91.9 FM). The two stations share studios on the university's campus in Carbo ...
is mostly carried on cable in the Illinois and Missouri segments of the market.
Technical information
Subchannels
The station's digital signal is
multiplexed
In telecommunications and computer networking, multiplexing (sometimes contracted to muxing) is a method by which multiple analog or digital signals are combined into one signal over a shared medium. The aim is to share a scarce resource— ...
:
Analog-to-digital conversion
WKPD-TV shut down its analog signal over UHF channel 29 in compliance with the
2009 digital television transition. Although the mandatory deadline was June 12, 2009, after the
DTV Delay Act
The digital television transition in the United States was the switchover from analog to exclusively digital broadcasting of terrestrial television programming. It was originally set for December 31, 2006, but was delayed several times due ...
pushed back the deadline from February 17, the analog signal was shut down on April 16. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 41. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 29.
WKPD moved its digital signal to UHF channel 23 as part of the network's participation in the 2016–17 FCC
Spectrum incentive auction.
Programming
See also
*
Kentucky Educational Television
Kentucky Educational Television (KET) is a statewide television network serving the U.S. Commonwealth (U.S. state), commonwealth of Kentucky as a member of PBS. It is operated by the Kentucky Authority for Educational Television, an agency of ...
References
External links
KET*
{{Kentucky Educational Television
Kentucky Educational Television
WKPD
Television channels and stations established in 1971
1971 establishments in Kentucky