KHET (channel 11), branded as PBS Hawai'i, is a
PBS
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcasting, public broadcaster and Non-commercial activity, non-commercial, Terrestrial television, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly fu ...
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 ...
in
Honolulu
Honolulu (; ) is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Hawaii, which is in the Pacific Ocean. It is an unincorporated county seat of the consolidated City and County of Honolulu, situated along the southeast coast of the island ...
,
Hawaii
Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only stat ...
, United States, serving the
Hawaiian Islands
The Hawaiian Islands ( haw, Nā Mokupuni o Hawai‘i) are an archipelago of eight major islands, several atolls, and numerous smaller islets in the North Pacific Ocean, extending some from the island of Hawaii in the south to northernmost Kur ...
. Owned by the Hawaii Public Television Foundation, the station maintains studios on Sand Island Access Road in Honolulu, and its main transmitter is located on Palehua Ridge, north of
Makakilo.
The station's signal is relayed across the rest of the state outside
Oahu
Oahu () (Hawaiian language, Hawaiian: ''Oʻahu'' ()), also known as "The Gathering place#Island of Oʻahu as The Gathering Place, Gathering Place", is the third-largest of the Hawaiian Islands. It is home to roughly one million people—over t ...
and metropolitan Honolulu on full-powered
satellite
A satellite or artificial satellite is an object intentionally placed into orbit in outer space. Except for passive satellites, most satellites have an electricity generation system for equipment on board, such as solar panels or radioisotope ...
KMEB (virtual and VHF digital channel 10) in
Wailuku
Wailuku is a census-designated place (CDP) in and county seat of Maui County, Hawaii, United States. The population was 17,697 at the 2020 census.
Wailuku is located just west of Kahului, at the mouth of the Iao Valley. In the early 20th centur ...
on
Maui
The island of Maui (; Hawaiian: ) is the second-largest of the islands of the state of Hawaii at 727.2 square miles (1,883 km2) and is the 17th largest island in the United States. Maui is the largest of Maui County's four islands, which ...
(with transmitter at
Ulupalakua) and through a network of
low-powered translators
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transla ...
on the other Hawaiian Islands.
Station history
KHET signed on the air for the first time on April 15, 1966; KMEB followed on six months later on September 22 of that year. KHET is the second outlet in Honolulu to occupy the channel 11 dial position, the first being KONA-TV from 1952 to 1955, when it moved to channel 2 because the higher VHFs (2 to 6) offered more ERPs at the time; that station is now
KHON-TV
KHON-TV (channel 2) is a television station in Honolulu, Hawaii, United States, serving the Hawaiian Islands as an affiliate of Fox and The CW. It is owned by Nexstar Media Group alongside MyNetworkTV affiliate KHII-TV (channel 9). Both stati ...
. Had KONA not moved to channel 2, the channel would have remained a commercial allocation, as the FCC had intended to make channel 7 a non-commercial allocation for Honolulu in the first assignment, but the FCC relocated channel 7 to Wailuku in 1959 and made channel 11 a non-commercial allocation instead (the Wailuku allocation was intended to be on channel 8). Originally known on-air as "Hawaii Educational Television" (or "Hawaii ETV"), it rebranded as "Hawaii Public Television" in 1970 and then became "PBS Hawai'i" in 2003.
PBS Hawaii had remained one of the few remaining American television stations that continued to sign off during the overnight hours, years after most PBS member stations had transitioned to a 24-hour schedule; until July 14, 2019, its over-the-air broadcast signals transmitted from 5:00 a.m. to 12:00 a.m. daily, although beginning in 2001, PBS Hawaii maintained a separate 24-hour-a-day
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 ...
feed containing programming 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 ...
during the over-the-air signals’ overnight
dark
Darkness, the direct opposite of lightness, is defined as a lack of illumination, an absence of visible light, or a surface that absorbs light, such as black or brown.
Human vision is unable to distinguish colors in conditions of very low lu ...
period (from midnight–5:00 a.m.). On July 15, 2019, coinciding with the launch of its DT3 subchannel (affiliated with
PBS Kids 24/7), PBS Hawaii adopted a 24-hour schedule on its broadcast feed: on that date, the member network’s main channel added PBS Satellite Service overnight programming and its DT2 subchannel began offering an expanded schedule of PBS Kids programming in the former downtime.
Original materials from PBS Hawaii have also been contributed to the American Archive of Public Broadcasting.
Technical information
Subchannels
The stations' digital signals are multiplexed:
Analog-to-digital conversion
Both stations discontinued regular programming on their analog signals, respectively on January 15, 2009, the date in which full-power television stations in Hawai'i
transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts (almost five months earlier than the June 12 transition date for stations on the U.S. mainland):
* KHET discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over
VHF channel 11; the station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition
UHF channel 18 to VHF channel 11.
* KMEB discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over VHF channel 10; the station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition UHF channel 30 to VHF channel 10.
The station's digital transmitter operates at 9.5 kW (versus 148 kW for its analog signal).
Translators
PBS Hawai'i operates the following low-powered translator stations:
References
External links
*
PBS Hawaii in the American Archive of Public Broadcasting
{{DEFAULTSORT:Khet
HET
PBS member stations
Television channels and stations established in 1966
1966 establishments in Hawaii