KBTC-TV (channel 28) is a
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 eart ...
licensed to
Tacoma, Washington
Tacoma ( ) is the county seat of Pierce County, Washington, United States. A port city, it is situated along Washington's Puget Sound, southwest of Seattle, northeast of the state capital, Olympia, and northwest of Mount Rainier National Pa ...
, United States, serving the
Seattle
Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...
area as a member of
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 ...
. Owned by
Bates Technical College
Bates Technical College is a public technical college located in Tacoma, Washington, US. The college offers two-year Associate of Applied Science degrees, academic certificates, and industry certifications. Bates is accredited by the Northwest Com ...
. KBTC-TV maintains studios and transmitter facilities separately in Tacoma, with studios on South 19th Street and the transmitter on North 35th Street. KBTC-TV is also broadcast on KCKA (channel 19) in
Centralia
Centralia may refer to:
Places Australia
*Central Australia, sometimes called "Centralia"
Canada
* Centralia, Ontario
** RCAF Station Centralia, a former Royal Canadian Air Force training base
** Centralia (Essery Field) Aerodrome
United State ...
, serving areas to the south and west of the Tacoma transmitter, and three other translators, one of them in central Seattle.
KBTC-TV is the secondary PBS member for the Seattle–Tacoma market. Through PBS' Program Differentiation Plan, KBTC-TV carries only 25% of the programming broadcast by PBS. The market's primary PBS member,
KCTS-TV
KCTS-TV (channel 9) is a PBS member television station in Seattle, Washington, United States, owned by Cascade Public Media. Its studios are located at the northeast corner of Seattle Center adjacent to the Space Needle, and its transmitter i ...
(channel 9) in Seattle, carries the remaining 75%. In addition to reaching a local over-the-air audience, KBTC-TV is available on
Comcast Cable
Cable may refer to:
Mechanical
* Nautical cable, an assembly of three or more ropes woven against the weave of the ropes, rendering it virtually waterproof
* Wire rope, a type of rope that consists of several strands of metal wire laid into a hel ...
in Seattle,
Bellevue Bellevue means "beautiful view" in French. It may refer to:
Placenames
Australia
* Bellevue, Western Australia
* Bellevue Hill, New South Wales
* Bellevue, Queensland
* Bellevue, Glebe, an historic house in Sydney, New South Wales
Canada ...
,
Everett, and in many areas of southwestern Washington.
KBTC-TV was established by
Tacoma Public Schools
Tacoma School District No. 10, commonly called Tacoma Public Schools, is a school district headquartered in Tacoma, Washington, United States. Composed of 35 elementary schools, 11 middle schools, 10 high schools, and 4 early learning centers. It ...
as KTPS on UHF channel 62 in 1961. A major facility upgrade in the early 1980s moved the station down the UHF dial to channel 28 and increased its broadcast area by adding a translator station. KTPS became KBTC after Bates Technical College was split from the school system in 1991.
History
The station signed on the air September 25, 1961, as KTPS, owned by the
Tacoma Public Schools
Tacoma School District No. 10, commonly called Tacoma Public Schools, is a school district headquartered in Tacoma, Washington, United States. Composed of 35 elementary schools, 11 middle schools, 10 high schools, and 4 early learning centers. It ...
(licensed under the district's official name, "Tacoma School District No. 10"). Broadcasting on channel 62 from studios at the Vocational Technical Institute in Tacoma, the station broadcast with 21,400 watts and provided instructional programming to the schools in the district as well as evening 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 ...
. In 1967, KTPS boosted its power to 337,000 watts, making it the most powerful UHF station in the Northwest, and received money to begin producing local programs in color in 1974. The station, like all NET stations, joined its successor network, PBS upon its start on October 5, 1970.
In 1980, when Kelly Broadcasting settled with a citizens' group to return
KCPQ
KCPQ (channel 13) is a television station licensed to Tacoma, Washington, United States, broadcasting the Fox network to the Seattle area. It is owned and operated by the network's Fox Television Stations division alongside MyNetworkTV outlet ...
(channel 13) to commercial status, one of the beneficiaries was KTPS. Since Kelly intended to move KCPQ's transmitter to
Gold Mountain in
Bremerton
Bremerton is a city in Kitsap County, Washington. The population was 37,729 at the 2010 census and an estimated 41,405 in 2019, making it the largest city on the Kitsap Peninsula. Bremerton is home to Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and the Bremer ...
(thus increasing its signal range), it donated its previous transmitter tower near
Ruston to KTPS.
The station was also beginning a new quest to move down the dial to a lower channel number than 62 in order to use more signal at less cost. It originally filed for Tacoma's channel 20 but bowed out in a settlement agreement with another applicant, who won the construction permit; that station would eventually become
TBN O&O KTBW-TV. The station was instead approved to move to channel 28 from the former KCPQ tower, having bought a UHF transmitter from
Nebraska Educational Television; the technical upgrade came just as KTPS's original tower was blown down in a windstorm in February 1982 and the station was operating at severely reduced power in the interim period.
The move from channel 62 to 28 took place in September 1982; shortly after on October 2, the station launched a full-power satellite southward in Centralia, KCKA on channel 15, thus increasing the station's reach in Western Washington. In 1986, the station registered in the Nielsen ratings for the first time in its 25-year history; the next year, an upgraded transmitter expanded the station's signal range again, being receiveable now as far north as
Everett.
In 1991, the
Washington State Legislature split technical colleges like Bates Technical College, where KTPS was housed, from the school districts with which they were affiliated. As a result, KTPS' license was transferred to Bates Technical College, who changed the callsign to KBTC on October 12, 1992. When
KSTW
KSTW (channel 11) is a television station licensed to Tacoma, Washington, United States, serving the Seattle area as an affiliate of The CW. Owned by the CBS News and Stations group, the station maintains studios on East Madison Street in Seat ...
announced it would move to a new studio in Renton, it put its old studios in Tacoma up for sale. Bates made a move to purchase the studios to gain additional studio and production space. The legislature approved the financing necessary to make the purchase in March 2000, and KBTC moved in in late 2001. In 2016, Bates converted the facility into a campus, the Central/Mohler Campus, by opening a second building, the Advanced Technology Center.
KBTC's programming became digital-only on June 12, 2009. However, KBTC-TV continued its analog signal as part of the
FCC
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 jurisdictio ...
's "Nightlight" program, running a DTV transition guide.
On November 1, 2009, KBTC began broadcasting in
1080i
1080i (also known as Full HD or BT.709) is a combination of frame resolution and scan type. 1080i is used in high-definition television (HDTV) and high-definition video. The number "1080" refers to the number of horizontal lines on the scre ...
HD on 28.1, with
MHz Worldview
MHz Networks is an American public broadcaster that specializes in international television programming.
Washington, D.C., broadcast operations
MHz (pronounced "M-H-Z") Networks began as a project of the Commonwealth Public Broadcasting Corpora ...
appearing on subchannel 28.2. A
documentary channel was broadcast on 28.3 and
Create on 28.4, but was soon removed due to the increased bandwidth required for the HD broadcast on 28.1.
On May 15, 2010, K24IC-D began broadcasting in 1080i HD from
Mount Constitution
Mount Constitution is a mountain on Orcas Island, the highest point in the San Juan Islands and the second highest mountain on an ocean island in the contiguous 48 states. Only Devils Peak in the Channel Islands of California is higher.
A sto ...
. On December 6, 2010, KBTC added
TVW on subchannel 28.3.
On June 19, 2012, KBTC added a low power, 1 kW transmitter on channel 16 to serve Seattle.
On January 28, 2016, KBTC added
NHK World
NHK World-Japan (formerly and also known simply as NHK World) is the international arm of the Japanese state-controlled public broadcaster NHK. Its services are aimed at the overseas market, similar to those offered by other national public-ser ...
on subchannel 28.2. MHz Worldview was shifted to 28.3, and TVW moved to 28.4.
On November 7, 2017, K24IC-D suffered a prolonged transmitter outage due to a hardware failure. The transmitter resumed operation on November 11.
On September 26, 2019, KBTC moved its low-power Seattle translator to channel 28.
With the conversion of MHz Worldview into a subscription-based streaming service, the 28.3 subchannel switched to
First Nations Experience
First Nations Experience (FNX) is a non-profit television network in San Bernardino, California, owned by the San Bernardino Community College District. The network, created by Executive Director Charles Fox, is broadcast from the KVCR-TV studios ...
on February 28, 2020.
Programming
As the Seattle market's secondary PBS station, KBTC generally carries network programming on a delay of several days to week, and runs a more non-traditional PBS schedule than
KCTS
KCTS-TV (channel 9) is a PBS member television station in Seattle, Washington, United States, owned by Cascade Public Media. Its studios are located at the northeast corner of Seattle Center adjacent to the Space Needle, and its transmitter is ...
. More traditionally, it runs
PBS Kids programming from the late morning into the early evening.
Local production
KBTC's local production efforts revolve around the weekly public affairs program ''Northwest Now'', which features interviews with newsmakers, election night coverage, and
electronic news-gathering
Electronic news-gathering (ENG) or electronic journalism (EJ) is usage of electronic video and audio technologies by reporters to gather and present news instead of using film cameras. The term was coined during the rise of videotape techn ...
pieces shot in the field. In addition to regular Emmy nominations, the program has won several Telly and Society of Professional Journalists Awards.
''Full Focus'' is a half-hour documentary-style show that looks at some of the people, places, and historical events that have helped shape Western Washington. While ''Full Focus'' is no longer in regular production, episodes produced by KBTC Managing Editor Tom Layson, Oregon-based producer Forrest Burger, and former KBTC filmmaker Daniel Kopec are available on the station's website.
News programming
KBTC and ''Business Examiner'' produced a local program called the ''South Sound Business Report''. The program first aired on April 20, 2010, on Seattle's
CW owned and operated station KSTW
KSTW (channel 11) is a television station licensed to Tacoma, Washington, United States, serving the Seattle area as an affiliate of The CW. Owned by the CBS News and Stations group, the station maintains studios on East Madison Street in Seat ...
(channel 11). The ''SSBR'' has since ceased production.
Technical information
Subchannels
The stations' digital signals are
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 ...
:
Translators
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kbtc-Tv
BTC-TV
PBS member stations
First Nations Experience affiliates
Television channels and stations established in 1961
1961 establishments in Washington (state)
Mass media in Tacoma, Washington