WKMJ-TV (channel 68) is a Public Broadcasting Service ( PBS)

member Member may refer to: * Military jury, referred to as "Members" in military jargon * Element (mathematics), an object that belongs to a mathematical set * In object-oriented programming, a member of a class ** Field (computer science), entries in ...

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 ea ...

licensed A license (or licence) is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something (as well as the document of that permission or permit). A license is granted by a party (licensor) to another party (licensee) as an element of an agreeme ...

Louisville Louisville ( , , ) is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the 28th most-populous city in the United States. Louisville is the historical seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County, on the Indiana border. ...

Kentucky Kentucky ( , ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States and one of the states of the Upper South. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north; West Virginia and Virginia ...

, United States. It is the

flagship station In broadcasting, a flagship (also known as a flagship station or key station) is the broadcast station which originates a television network, or a particular radio or television program that plays a key role in the branding of and consumer loyalt ...

for KET2, the second television service of

Kentucky Educational Television Kentucky Educational Television (KET) is a state network of PBS member television stations serving the U.S. Commonwealth of Kentucky. It is operated by the Kentucky Authority for Educational Television, an agency of the Kentucky state governm ...

(KET), which is owned by the Kentucky Authority for Educational Television. The station's

master control Master control is the technical hub of a broadcast operation common among most over-the-air television stations and television networks. It is distinct from a production control room (PCR) in television studios where the activities such as swi ...

and internal operations are located at KET's main studios at the O. Leonard Press Telecommunications Center in

Lexington Lexington may refer to: Places England * Laxton, Nottinghamshire, formerly Lexington Canada * Lexington, a district in Waterloo, Ontario United States * Lexington, Kentucky, the largest city with this name * Lexington, Massachusetts, the oldes ...

. WKMJ's transmitter, like those of several other Louisville stations including main KET transmitter

WKPC-TV WKPC-TV (channel 15) is a Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) member television station licensed to Louisville, Kentucky, United States. Owned by the Kentucky Authority for Educational Television, the station is operated as part of the statewide Ke ...

, is located at the

Kentuckiana Kentuckiana, a portmanteau of Kentucky and Indiana, is the area in the Upland South region of the United States containing metropolitan areas with counties in both Kentucky and Indiana. Kentuckiana is primarily the Louisville metropolitan area, in ...

Tower Farm at Floyds Knobs, in Floyd County,

Indiana Indiana () is a U.S. state in the Midwestern United States. It is the 38th-largest by area and the 17th-most populous of the 50 States. Its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Indiana was admitted to the United States as the 19th ...

. WKMJ and WKPC are the only KET-owned stations whose transmitters are outside Kentucky's borders.

History

As KET's original Louisville station

When Kentucky Educational Television began broadcasting in 1968, it was built to provide the widest statewide coverage with the fewest transmitters possible. Network officials expected that the transmitters in Elizabethtown (WKZT-TV, channel 23) and Owenton (WKON-TV, channel 54) would provide sufficient service in the Louisville area. Reception, however, was poorer than expected, prompting KET in March 1969 to announce plans to file for UHF channel 68 and strike a deal with

WAVE-TV WAVE (channel 3) is a television station in Louisville, Kentucky, United States, affiliated with NBC and owned by Gray Television. The station's studios are located on South Floyd Street in downtown Louisville, and its transmitter is located in ...

for a new tower, which would also house a stronger

. The station, with the callsign WKMJ (the -TV suffix was added in 1983), began test broadcasts on August 17, 1970, and full service began two weeks later. Channel 68 originally went off the air when the rest of the stations of KET was airing the same programming as WKPC-TV. Duplication remained low, and at the end of 1982, an agreement was reached for WKPC-TV to be the primary PBS outlet in Louisville. However, after this arrangement, duplication returned. In 1995, after WKPC-TV experienced a series of financial reversals caused by for-profit ventures intended to bolster station income, talks about intending to merge the two stations began, with channel 15—with its stronger signal—becoming the primary KET station. An agreement was reached in December 1996, by which KET acquired certain technical assets, including the land to the Floyds Knobs tower it still shared with WKPC-TV, and the license.

The launch of KET2

On July 1, 1997, KET's main programming moved to WKPC-TV. WKMJ-TV simultaneously suspended operations for a transmitter overhaul; it returned a month later at increased power, carrying a new service called KET2, which initially featured additional children's programs, adult education programming and local productions. Outside of Louisville, KET2 was seen on cable systems statewide.

Digital subchannel history

In 2009, WKMJ-DT2 began broadcasting the

Kentucky Channel The Kentucky Channel, also known by its Program and System Information Protocol short name and on-screen logo bug as KET KY, is a full-time 24/7 statewide digital television programming service originating from PBS member state-network Kentucky E ...

, simulcasting the DT3 subchannel of all other KET stations. Also in 2009,

KET ED KET ED, known as the Education Channel, was a digital television programming service operated by PBS member network Kentucky Educational Television. The service provided programming from the Annenberg/CPB project, along with encore presentation ...

became available on WKMJ-DT3, on a 24-hour-a-day basis until September 2009, when WKMJ-DT3 went silent for four years following that linear service's discontinuation. In 2013, WKMJ-DT3 began broadcasting the

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 ...

network by

American Public Television American Public Television (APT) is an American nonprofit organization and syndicator of programming for public television stations in the United States. It distributes public television programs nationwide for PBS member stations and indepe ...

(APT). As the only KET station broadcasting that service, Louisville was the only major market in Kentucky to receive that channel. In late 2020, the KET2 subchannel was upgraded to 720p HD, with KETKY on 68.2 upgraded to widescreen standard definition. This upgrade also took place on the DT2 and DT3 feeds of all other KET satellites.

Programming

As the second service of KET, WKMJ-TV broadcasts the national PBS schedule from the

PBS Satellite Service The PBS Satellite Service (also known as the PBS National Program Service, with the primary C-band feed being formerly known as PBS Schedule X in Eastern Time, with the West Coast delay signal designated PBS-XP) consists of feeds relayed from PB ...

along with additional syndicated programs from

(including how-to programs, documentaries, and imported comedy and drama series), Kentucky-focused public affairs programs, and some local programming focusing on the Louisville area. , WKMJ-TV does not air children's programming broadcast by PBS or through independent distributors; this is despite that FCC Children's Television Act regulations (which require television stations to air a minimum of three hours of educational children's programming per week) apply to WKMJ, as it transmits the KET2 schedule locally. (While KET2 is simulcast on the DT2 subchannel of KET's other stations, exemptions to Children's Television Act enforcement—as implemented in January 2020—only apply to services transmitted exclusively through subchannels.)

Availability

KET2 was originally available exclusively in the Louisville market over-the-air upon its launch in 1997; some cable systems elsewhere in Kentucky (including systems in Lexington) began to carry the service. The over-the-air statewide relaunch of KET2, via the

digital television Digital television (DTV) is the transmission of television signals using digital encoding, in contrast to the earlier analog television technology which used analog signals. At the time of its development it was considered an innovative adva ...

signals of all KET stations broadcasting the statewide feed, occurred in 2002 by making it available through a second

digital subchannel In broadcasting, digital subchannels are a method of transmitting more than one independent program stream simultaneously from the same digital radio or television station on the same radio frequency channel. This is done by using data compres ...

. The 15 principal KET satellites and 3 accompanying digital low-powered translators provide KET2 on their respective DT2 subchannels. Currently, KET2's cable carriage covers roughly 62% of all subscribers in the state. This includes most

Charter Spectrum Spectrum is a trade name of Charter Communications, used to market consumer and commercial cable television, internet, telephone, and wireless services provided by the company. The brand was first introduced in 2014; prior to that, these ser ...

systems, including all of the state's major cities and several rural areas. It is also available on

DirecTV DirecTV (trademarked as DIRECTV) is an American multichannel video programming distributor based in El Segundo, California. Originally launched on June 17, 1994, its primary service is a digital satellite service serving the United States. I ...

and

Dish Network DISH Network Corporation (DISH, an acronym for DIgital Sky Highway) is an American television provider and the owner of the direct-broadcast satellite provider Dish, commonly known as Dish Network, and the over-the-top IPTV service, Sling ...

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. The signals are received via an outdoor parabolic antenna com ...

in the Louisville market."KET - Cable and Satellite Company Channel Listings".

Archived
from the original November 9, 2022. Retrieved November 9, 2022. KET2 is also available on cable in Louisville's southern Indiana suburbs.

Digital television

WKMJ-DT

WKMJ-TV began broadcasting its digital television companion signal, WKMJ-DT, in 2003, making it the last television station in the KET system to do so.

Analog-to-digital conversion

On April 16, 2009, WKMJ-TV shut down its analog signal on UHF channel 68 in compliance with the federally-mandated

digital television transition The digital television transition, also called the digital switchover (DSO), the analogue switch/sign-off (ASO), the digital migration, or the analogue shutdown, is the process in which older analogue television broadcasting technology is con ...

. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 38. Digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as 68, its former UHF analog channel, which was one of the upper-band UHF channels (52-69) that was discontinued for broadcast television use with that transition.

Spectrum incentive auction results

In July 2017, WKMJ-TV held a construction permit to move its digital signal to UHF channel 34 as part of the network's participation in the Spectrum incentive auction. WKMJ's digital signal was reallocated to its new position in October 2019.

ATSC 3.0

On September 19, 2022, at 11 a.m.

Eastern Daylight Time The Eastern Time Zone (ET) is a time zone encompassing part or all of 23 states in the eastern part of the United States, parts of eastern Canada, the state of Quintana Roo in Mexico, Panama, Colombia, mainland Ecuador, Peru, and a sma ...

, the signal of WKMJ was upgraded to become the first

ATSC 3.0 ATSC 3.0 is a major version of the ATSC standards for television broadcasting created by the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC). The standards are designed to offer support for newer technologies, including HEVC for video channels of u ...

station in the KET system, and the second ATSC 3.0 station in the Louisville market after WBKI.

WKMJ digital channels

WKMJ is the only KET-network station whose subchannels are not configured the same way as the other satellites. The station's 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 - a ...

in this manner:

References

External links

Kentucky Educational Television
* {{Navboxes , list1={{Kentucky Educational Television {{Lexington TV {{Louisville TV {{HuntingtonCharleston TV {{Cincy TV {{Evansville TV {{Paducah TV {{Bowling Green TV {{Nashville TV {{Knoxville TV {{Tri-Cities TV {{Bluefield TV {{PBS Kentucky {{Public broadcasting in the United States 1970 establishments in Kentucky Kentucky Educational Television KMJ-TV PBS member stations Television channels and stations established in 1970 ATSC 3.0 television stations