WJCT, Inc. is a

non-profit A nonprofit organization (NPO), also known as a nonbusiness entity, nonprofit institution, not-for-profit organization, or simply a nonprofit, is a non-governmental (private) legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public, or so ...

public media organization in

Jacksonville, Florida Jacksonville ( ) is the most populous city proper in the U.S. state of Florida, located on the Atlantic coast of North Florida, northeastern Florida. It is the county seat of Duval County, Florida, Duval County, with which the City of Jacksonv ...

, United States. It operates

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 WJCT "Jax PBS" (channel 7) and

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 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 EverBank Stadium in Downto ...

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 government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, internet, wi-fi, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains j ...

(FCC) revised its channel allocation table and reserved 242 frequencies, including channel 7 in Jacksonville, for

noncommercial educational A non-commercial educational station (NCE station) is a radio station or television station that does not accept on-air advertisements ( TV ads or radio ads), as defined in the United States by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and was ...

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 building permit refers to the approval needed for construction or expansion (including significant renovation), and sometimes for demolition, in some jurisdictions. House building permits, for example, are subject to bu ...

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 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 The CW, CW affiliate WCWJ (channel 17). The two stations share studios at 4 Broadcast Place on the south ...

) and WFGA-TV (channel 12, now

WTLV WTLV (channel 12) is a television station in Jacksonville, Florida, United States, affiliated with NBC. It is owned by Tegna Inc. alongside Orange Park, Florida, Orange Park–licensed American Broadcasting Company, ABC affiliate WJXX (channel ...

). It was Florida's second public television station, following WTHS-TV in

Miami Miami is a East Coast of the United States, coastal city in the U.S. state of Florida and the county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade County in South Florida. It is the core of the Miami metropolitan area, which, with a populat ...

. 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 generally not more closely related to each other than they are to o ...

, St. Augustine, and

Palatka, Florida Palatka () is a city in and the county seat of Putnam County, Florida, Putnam County, Florida, United States. Palatka is the principal city of the Palatka Micropolitan Statistical Area, which is home to 72,893 residents. The Palatka micropolitan ...

, and Folkston, Georgia. Its first month was dedicated to national programs from

National Educational Television National Educational Television (NET) was an American non-commercial educational, educational terrestrial television, broadcast television network owned by the Ford Foundation and later co-owned by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. It op ...

. WJCT added 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 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, simultaneously) ...

of a concert by the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra. 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; stylized as 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 ...

. 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

and other programming services, including the

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

and

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 indepen ...

. WJCT also produces and broadcasts local news, public affairs programs, and documentaries. Subchannels include Create,

PBS Kids PBS Kids (stylized as PBS KIDS) is the branding used for nationally distributed children's programming carried by the U.S. public television network PBS. The brand encompasses a daytime block of children's programming carried daily by most PBS ...

, and

World The world is the totality of entities, the whole of reality, or everything that Existence, exists. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the world as unique, while others talk ...

. On April 6, 2009, as part of the television industry's conversion to digital broadcasting, WJCT commenced operation on digital channel 9, and its analog signal on channel 7 left the air for good.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 t ...

'', 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 in-band on-channel (IBOC) digital radio broadcast technology. HD radio generally simulcast, simulcasts an existing analog radio station in digital format with less noise and with additional text information. HD R ...

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 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