K31OL-D is a low-power television station on virtual channel 38 (RF channel 31) licensed to

Salinas, California Salinas (; Spanish for "Salt Marsh or Salt Flats") is a city in California and the county seat of Monterey County. With a population of 163,542 in the 2020 Census, Salinas is the most populous city in Monterey County. Salinas is an urban area lo ...

, United States. It is owned by the

Monterey County Monterey County ( ), officially the County of Monterey, is a county located on the Pacific coast in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, its population was 439,035. The county's largest city and county seat is Salinas. Montere ...

Office of Education. The main subchannel, MCAET TV, broadcasts programs of local interest and productions from the Media Center for Art, Education and Technology.

History

As a translator

The Monterey County Superintendent of Schools began building a network of translators in the early 1960s to rebroadcast public television from

KQED KQED may refer to: * KQED (TV), a PBS member station in San Francisco * KQED-FM KQED-FM (88.5 MHz) is a NPR-member radio station in San Francisco, California. Its parent organization is KQED Inc., which also owns its television partners, both ...

in San Francisco, with the first, channel 72 from Mount Toro, going on air in September 1964. The southernmost translator in the multi-county network, at Pismo Heights, went into service in 1966, and together with translators of

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

station

KCET KCET (channel 28) is a secondary PBS member television station in Los Angeles, California, United States. It is owned by the Public Media Group of Southern California alongside the market's primary PBS member, Huntington Beach–licensed KOCE-TV ...

as far north as Santa Maria, ensured educational television coverage up and down the California coast; the Monterey County network formed the largest educational television translator network in the United States at the time. In 1967, the Monterey County Superintendent of Schools filed an application with 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 jurisdiction ...

to build a new translator on channel 83. This was licensed as K83BU in March 1969. Two years later, the FCC approved K83BU to move from channel 83 to channel 56 as K56AA. By the mid-1970s, K83BU had switched its program source from KQED to

KTEH KTEH may refer to: * KTEH-LP, a low-power radio station (98.9 FM) licensed to serve Los Molinos, California, United States * KQEH KQEH, virtual channel 54 (ultra high frequency, UHF Digital terrestrial television, digital channel 30), branded o ...

in San Jose. By this time, the Monterey County superintendent of schools was beginning to pursue the concept of a full-service, higher-power television license, but it initially could not obtain the grant funding necessary to build the facility. A construction permit was issued for KHIJ in 1978, but the school board struggled to purchase needed equipment due to high inflation, and the passage of

Proposition 13 Proposition 13 (officially named the People's Initiative to Limit Property Taxation) is an amendment of the Constitution of California enacted during 1978, by means of the initiative process. The initiative was approved by California voters on J ...

killed the project. K56AA returned to being a KQED translator by 1991. By that point, the district had begun the provision of instructional programming, preempting KTEH's daytime programming on local cable systems.

MCAET TV

K56AA moved to channel 38 as K38JP in 2007, due to the removal of channels 52 to 69 from television use, and converted to digital as K38JP-D in 2010. Initially, Monterey County programming aired as subchannel 38.2, with subchannel 38.1 leased to ESNE TV, a sister to Spanish-language Catholic radio network

ESNE Radio ESNE Radio is a Spanish-language Catholic radio network based in the United States, owned by El Sembrador Ministries. Headquartered in Chatsworth, California, a suburb of Los Angeles, ESNE broadcasts on 14 stations in the United States, Mexico and ...

. The two services have since switched positions. In 2019, the station was repacked and moved to channel 31, retaining 38 as its virtual channel.

Subchannels

References

{{Monterey TV Low-power television stations in the United States 1969 establishments in California Television channels and stations established in 1969 Monterey County, California