WJCT, Inc. is a

non-profit A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...

public media organization in

Jacksonville, Florida Jacksonville is a city located on the Atlantic coast of northeast Florida, the most populous city proper in the state and is the largest city by area in the contiguous United States as of 2020. It is the seat of Duval County, with which th ...

, United States. It operates PBS member television station WJCT "Jax PBS" (channel 7) and

NPR National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...

member radio station

WJCT-FM WJCT-FM (89.9 MHz) is a public radio station in Jacksonville, Florida. Owned by WJCT, Inc., it is an NPR member station. It shares studios with its sister PBS station WJCT (channel 7) on Festival Park Avenue, near TIAA Bank Field in Downtown Jac ...

89.9, as well as their associated digital platforms. The company's studios and offices are located on Festival Park Avenue in the Stadium District in downtown Jacksonville.

History

In 1952, following a four-year-long freeze on awarding station licenses, the

Federal Communications Commission The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdicti ...

(FCC) revised its channel allocation table and reserved 242 frequencies, including channel 7 in Jacksonville, for noncommercial educational use. In Jacksonville,

podiatrist A podiatrist ( ) is a medical professional devoted to the treatment of disorders of the foot, ankle, and related structures of the leg. The term originated in North America but has now become the accepted term in the English-speaking world for ...

Dr. Heywood Dowling launched a campaign to bring educational television to the First Coast region. While many other public stations at the time were affiliated with universities, Dowling proposed that Jacksonville's station be owned and funded by the community. Civic leaders embraced the concept, and after years of fundraising, the FCC issued a

construction permit Planning permission or developmental approval refers to the approval needed for construction or expansion (including significant renovation), and sometimes for demolition, in some jurisdictions. It is usually given in the form of a building perm ...

for channel 7 on February 27, 1957. WJCT television first went on the air on September 10, 1958. Its first broadcast was a report by then-Florida governor

LeRoy Collins Thomas LeRoy Collins (March 10, 1909 – March 12, 1991) was an American politician who served as the 33rd Governor of Florida. Collins began his governorship after winning a special election in 1954, was elected to a four-year term in 1956 ...

on educational television. As Channel 7 initially had no production facility of its own, it used the studios of the city's two commercial stations, WMBR-TV (channel 4, now

WJXT WJXT (channel 4) is an independent television station in Jacksonville, Florida, United States. It is owned by Graham Media Group alongside CW affiliate WCWJ (channel 17). Both stations share studios at 4 Broadcast Place on the south bank of th ...

) and WFGA-TV (channel 12, now WTLV). It was Florida's second public television station, following WTHS-TV in

Miami Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a coastal metropolis and the county seat of Miami-Dade County in South Florida, United States. With a population of 442,241 at ...

. Its service area extended past Jacksonville to

Live Oak Live oak or evergreen oak is any of a number of oaks in several different sections of the genus ''Quercus'' that share the characteristic of evergreen foliage. These oaks are not more closely related to each other than they are to other oaks. ...

St. Augustine Augustine of Hippo ( , ; la, Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis; 13 November 354 – 28 August 430), also known as Saint Augustine, was a theologian and philosopher of Berber origin and the bishop of Hippo Regius in Numidia, Roman North Afr ...

, and Palatka, Florida, and

Folkston, Georgia Folkston is a city in and the county seat of Charlton County, Georgia, United States. Folkston is in the Jacksonville Metropolitan Area. The population was 2,502 as of the 2010 census, up from 2,178 in 2000, largely due to the extension of the ...

. Its first month was dedicated to national programs from

National Educational Television National Educational Television (NET) was an American educational broadcast television network owned by the Ford Foundation and later co-owned by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. It operated from May 16, 1954 to October 4, 1970, and ...

. WJCT added a radio station,

, in 1972. Originally on air under the name "Stereo 90", WJCT-FM's broadcasting covered music, fine arts, news, and public affairs. In October 1973, WJCT produced its first television and radio

simulcast Simulcast (a portmanteau of simultaneous broadcast) is the broadcasting of programmes/programs or events across more than one resolution, bitrate or medium, or more than one service on the same medium, at exactly the same time (that is, simul ...

of a concert by the

Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra The Jacksonville Symphony is an orchestra based in Jacksonville, Florida. Concert hall As one of a handful of American orchestras with its own dedicated concert hall, the Jacksonville Symphony performs the majority of its programs in the Robe ...

. In 2014, WJCT spearheaded the Digital Convergence Alliance Network Operations Center (DCA-NOC), a central master control operation funded by a grant from the

Corporation for Public Broadcasting The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) is an American publicly funded non-profit corporation, created in 1967 to promote and help support public broadcasting. The corporation's mission is to ensure universal access to non-commercial, ...

. This was the first network operations center developed in a partnership of 11 public broadcasting companies.

Television

The schedule of WJCT television, known as "Jax PBS", includes programming from PBS and other programming services, including the BBC and American Public Television. WJCT also produces and broadcasts local news, public affairs programs and documentaries. Subchannels include Create,

PBS Kids PBS Kids is the brand for most of the children's programming aired by the Public Broadcasting Service ( PBS) in the United States. Some public television children's programs are not produced by PBS member stations or transmitted by PBS. Inste ...

, and

World In its most general sense, the term "world" refers to the totality of entities, to the whole of reality or to everything that is. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the worl ...

. On April 6, 2009, WJCT's analog signal on channel 7 left the air for good.http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-06-1082A2.pdf Jacksonville TV stations might not wait to switch to digital
''

The Florida Times-Union ''The Florida Times-Union'' is a daily newspaper in Jacksonville, Florida, United States. Widely known as the oldest newspaper in the state, it began publication as the ''Florida Union'' in 1864. Its current incarnation started in 1883, when th ...

'', February 6, 2009.

Radio

WJCT-FM (89.9 MHz) is the primary public radio station in Jacksonville, offering four streams of programming over its

HD Radio HD Radio (HDR) is a trademark for an in-band on-channel (IBOC) digital radio broadcast technology. It generally simulcasts an existing analog radio station in digital format with less noise and with additional text information. HD Radio is used ...

signal and online. The main subchannel and analog broadcast consists of nationally syndicated public talk shows as well as ''First Coast Connect'', its flagship local news program. Additional subchannels carry the

Classical 24 Classical 24 is a syndicated, satellite-delivered public radio service providing classical music to its carrying stations. It generally airs overnights on many non-commercial and a handful of commercial classical music stations. However, the se ...

classical music service and two other music services: Anthology, a mix of music from the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, and The Independent, focusing on new and local music. WJCT also operates the regional

radio reading service A radio reading service or reading service for the blind is a public service of many universities, community groups and public radio stations, where a narrator reads books, newspapers and magazines aloud for the benefit of the blind and vision-imp ...

, broadcast as an analog subcarrier for the visually impaired and streamed online.

References

External links

WJCT-TV PBS 7's official website
* * {{NPR Florida NPR member stations PBS member stations JCT-FM Television channels and stations established in 1958 JCT (TV) 1958 establishments in Florida