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KEDT (channel 16) 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 ...
in
Corpus Christi, Texas Corpus Christi ( ; ) is a Gulf Coast of the United States, coastal city in the South Texas region of the U.S. state of Texas and the county seat and largest city of Nueces County, Texas, Nueces County with portions extending into Aransas County, T ...
, United States. It is owned by South Texas Public Broadcasting alongside
NPR National Public Radio (NPR) is an American public broadcasting organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It serves as a national Radio syndication, syndicator to a network of more ...
member KEDT-FM (90.3). The two outlets share studios on South Staples Street in Corpus Christi; the TV station's transmitter is located near Petronila, Texas.


History

KEDT was created by businessman
Charles Butt Charles Clarence Butt (born February 3, 1938) is an American heir and billionaire. He inherited his family's San Antonio–based H-E-B supermarket chain in 1971. The privately held company has more than 400 stores and $38.9 billion in sales, ac ...
to bring public television to south Texas. Butt, part of the family that founded the
H-E-B H-E-B Grocery Company, LP, is an American privately held company, privately held supermarket chain based in San Antonio, San Antonio, Texas, with more than 435 stores throughout Texas and Mexico. The company also operates Central Market (Texas) ...
supermarket chain, joined with Don Weber, another businessman, and the two approached the Corpus Christi business community with a proposal to start a local PBS television station. Others became interested, and soon formed a Board of Directors. The station's original equipment were donations from KVVV-TV of
Galveston Galveston ( ) is a Gulf Coast of the United States, coastal resort town, resort city and port off the Southeast Texas coast on Galveston Island and Pelican Island (Texas), Pelican Island in the U.S. state of Texas. The community of , with a pop ...
, an independent station that had ceased operations in 1969. The original transmitter location was on a site donated by a local rancher. The original broadcast facilities were in an abandoned school building in town, and the original programming was provided by
San Antonio San Antonio ( ; Spanish for " Saint Anthony") is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the most populous city in Greater San Antonio. San Antonio is the third-largest metropolitan area in Texas and the 24th-largest metropolitan area in the ...
PBS station
KLRN KLRN (channel 9) is a PBS member television station in San Antonio, Texas, United States. It is owned by the Alamo Public Telecommunications Council, with studios on Broadway Street in downtown San Antonio and a transmitter on Foster Road (nea ...
via telephone cables. KEDT signed on the air on October 16, 1972. The station moved into its current facilities the following year. KEDT was well received in the community; the station received additional funding from philanthropy. In 1980, South Texas Public Broadcasting System, the station's owner, applied for a low-power repeater station for
Victoria Victoria most commonly refers to: * Queen Victoria (1819–1901), Queen of the United Kingdom and Empress of India * Victoria (state), a state of Australia * Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, a provincial capital * Victoria, Seychelles, the capi ...
that would have expanded KEDT's reach in South Texas. In addition, KEDT began to produce its own programming, supplementing PBS fare. However, the Corpus Christi economy was heavily dependent on one industry that is subject to its fortunes and misfortunes. As the energy industry began to disappear in the mid- to late 1980s, so would the funding KEDT received in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Corporate and personal donations to the station all but vanished, and the locally produced programming did not generate enough revenue to meet the station's needs. Plans for the Victoria repeater were scrapped in late 1984. By the end of the 1980s, KEDT was deeply in debt. The station began to recover in the 1990s through debt restructuring, aggressive cost-cutting, and revenue enhancement. KEDT outsourced many of its non-essential functions and began changing its programming. One such change was the addition of distance learning in conjunction with local educational establishments. The advent of the new century brought new opportunities and challenges to KEDT. Digital television (DTV) has brought new financial burdens to the station, but also allowed for modernization. As of 2003, the station was still using some of its original equipment and transmitter from 1972, so DTV presented an opportunity to modernize. In addition, DTV has allowed the station to air even more programming.


Helicopter crash

On January 16, 2008, a U.S. Navy MH 53 Sea Dragon
helicopter A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which Lift (force), lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning Helicopter rotor, rotors. This allows the helicopter to VTOL, take off and land vertically, to hover (helicopter), hover, and ...
crashed into KEDT's tower, killing three sailors, damaging the top 75 feet of the 1000-foot tower, including the beacon light and the antenna, and knocking the station off the air. KEDT resumed broadcasting the next day from auxiliary facilities at reduced power.


Programming

KEDT carries programming similar to other PBS member stations. KEDT produced several original programs for broadcast nationally on PBS. Of note is ''Lone Star'', an eight-part series on the history of Texas, produced in honor of the Texas Sesquicentennial in 1986. It was hosted by
Larry Hagman Larry Martin Hagman (September 21, 1931 – November 23, 2012) was an American actor, best known for playing ruthless oil baron J. R. Ewing in the 1978–1991 primetime television soap opera ''Dallas'', and the handsome astronaut Major Anthon ...
and continues to be requested by Texas schools for use in supplementing their Texas history courses. Another notable production was ''John Henry Faulk: The Man Who Beat the Blacklist'', hosted by
Bill Moyers Bill Moyers (born Billy Don Moyers; June 5, 1934) is an American journalist and political commentator. Under the Johnson administration he served from 1965 to 1967 as the eleventh White House Press Secretary. He was a director of the Council ...
and
Studs Terkel Louis "Studs" Terkel (May 16, 1912 – October 31, 2008) was an American writer, historian, actor, and broadcaster. He received the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 1985 for ''The Good War'' and is best remembered for his oral histor ...
. The documentary detailed the effects of
McCarthyism McCarthyism is a political practice defined by the political repression and persecution of left-wing individuals and a Fear mongering, campaign spreading fear of communist and Soviet influence on American institutions and of Soviet espionage i ...
on
John Henry Faulk John Henry Faulk (August 21, 1913 – April 9, 1990) was an American storyteller and radio show host. His successful lawsuit against the entertainment industry helped to bring an end to the Hollywood blacklist. Early life John Henry Faulk wa ...
, a Texas radio broadcaster, and on the nation as a whole. ''Justice for My People: The Dr. Hector P. Garcia Story'' focused on Dr. Hector P. Garcia, a Mexican-born medical doctor from Corpus Christi, who was cherished by many thousands with whom he had contact. Other local programs included ''Liz Carpenter and the Good Old Boys'' and ''
USS Lexington USS ''Lexington'' may refer to these ships of the United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the naval warfare, maritime military branch, service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is the world's most powerful ...
: Always Ready!'', the latter a documentary about the
World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
aircraft carrier An aircraft carrier is a warship that serves as a seagoing airbase, equipped with a full-length flight deck and hangar facilities for supporting, arming, deploying and recovering carrier-based aircraft, shipborne aircraft. Typically it is the ...
that compiled the longest service record in the history of the
United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the naval warfare, maritime military branch, service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is the world's most powerful navy with the largest Displacement (ship), displacement, at 4.5 millio ...
.


''Challenge!''

The second most watched show on KEDT (the most-watched being ''
Antiques Roadshow ''Antiques Roadshow'' is a British television programme broadcast by the BBC in which antiques appraisers travel to various regions of the United Kingdom (and occasionally in other countries) to appraise antiques brought in by local people ( ...
'') is the locally produced
quiz bowl Quiz bowl (quizbowl, scholars' bowl, scholastic bowl, academic bowl, academic team, academic challenge, etc.) is a family of quiz-based competitions that test players on Outline of academic disciplines, a wide variety of academic subjects. Stand ...
program ''Challenge!'', where teams from local high schools compete in an academic quiz show hosted by Eric Boyd. 24 high schools begin in the competition in a single elimination tournament until there is only one team remaining. There is also a one-hour ''All Star Challenge!'' game, in which twelve top players from twelve different teams are selected to compete. ''Challenge!'' is funded by a number of local businesses and universities, and the top four teams and all competitors in the All-Star game receive scholarship money from
Del Mar College Del Mar College (DMC) is a Public college, public community college in Corpus Christi, Texas. Founded in 1935, DMC encompasses three primary campuses and one campus annex. As defined by the Texas Legislature, the official service area of DMC is ...
and
Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi (Texas A&M–Corpus Christi, TAMU–CC, A&M–Corpus Christi, or A&M–CC) is a Public university, public research university on Ward Island (Texas), Ward Island in Corpus Christi, Texas, United States. It i ...
.


Technical information


Subchannels

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— ...
: KEDT-DT was granted an original construction permit on August 20, 2001, to transmit on
UHF Ultra high frequency (UHF) is the ITU designation for radio frequencies in the range between 300 megahertz (MHz) and 3 gigahertz (GHz), also known as the decimetre band as the wavelengths range from one meter to one tenth of a meter ...
channel 23. As with many other DTV facilities, KEDT-DT has not been able to build the facilities as quickly as planned, and the station has had to request several extensions of the construction permit. On April 30, 2003, the station was granted Special Temporary Authority (STA) to broadcast at reduced power to conserve financial resources. The STA has been extended several times, and the station has requested to make its temporary operations permanent, as its DTV signal coverage matches its analog signal coverage, and compares favorably with the DTV signal coverage of a local commercial television station that has already maximized its DTV signal.


Analog-to-digital conversion

KEDT shut down its analog signal, over
UHF Ultra high frequency (UHF) is the ITU designation for radio frequencies in the range between 300 megahertz (MHz) and 3 gigahertz (GHz), also known as the decimetre band as the wavelengths range from one meter to one tenth of a meter ...
channel 16, on June 12, 2009, the official date on which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 23, using
virtual channel In most telecommunications organizations, a virtual channel is a method of remapping the ''program number'' as used in H.222 Program Association Tables and Program Mapping Tables to a channel number that can be entered as digits on a receiver's ...
16.


See also

*
List of television stations in Texas This is a list of broadcast television stations that are licensed in the U.S. state of Texas. Full-power stations VC refers to the station's PSIP virtual channel. RF refers to the station's physical RF channel. Defunct full-power stations *Cha ...
* Channel 23 digital TV stations in the United States * Channel 16 virtual TV stations in the United States


References


External links


Official websiteJustice for my People: The Dr. Hector P. Garcia Story''Challenge!'' site
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kedt 1972 establishments in Texas PBS member stations Television channels and stations established in 1972 EDT