KPBT-TV (channel 36) branded on-air as Basin PBS, 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 eart ...

licensed to

Odessa, Texas Odessa is a city in and the county seat of Ector County, Texas, United States. It is located primarily in Ector County, although a small section of the city extends into Midland County. Odessa's population was 114,428 at the 2020 census, ma ...

, United States, serving the Permian Basin area. Owned by Permian Basin Public Telecommunications, Inc., the station maintains studios at the Historic Ritz Theatre in downtown Midland, and a transmitter near Gardendale.

History

The station signed on March 24, 1986 as KOCV-TV. Between 1970 and 1986, PBS programming had to be sold to the Odessa–Midland

market Market is a term used to describe concepts such as: *Market (economics), system in which parties engage in transactions according to supply and demand *Market economy *Marketplace, a physical marketplace or public market Geography *Märket, an ...

's commercial stations on a per program basis (although the full PBS schedule was viewable in the northwestern portion of the market via

Portales, New Mexico Portales is a city in and the county seat of Roosevelt County, New Mexico, United States. Its population was 12,280 at the 2010 census. Portales is located near the larger city of Clovis, and Cannon Air Force Base, a major contributor to the ...

-based KENW). The station was formerly owned by

Odessa College Odessa College is a public junior college in Odessa, Texas. The college serves the people of Ector County and the Permian Basin. It was established in 1946 and enrolle8,024 studentsin Fall 2021 and 7,679 students in Spring 2022 in its universi ...

(callsign meaning: "Odessa College Voice") and later by the

Ector County Independent School District Ector County Independent School District (ECISD) is a public school district based in Odessa, Texas, United States. In addition to the majority of Odessa (the portions in Ector County), the district also serves the communities of West Odessa, ...

. Former First Lady Laura Bush was one of the station's 500 original members. The station changed its calls to KPBT-TV in 2006, following transfer to community ownership.

Technical information

Subchannels

The station's digital 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 - a ...

Analog-to-digital conversion

KPBT-TV shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 36, on February 17, 2009, the original target date in which full-power television in the United States were to transition from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate (which was later pushed back to June 12, 2009). The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 38. Through the use of

PSIP The Program and System Information Protocol (PSIP) is the MPEG (a video and audio industry group) and privately defined program-specific information originally defined by General Instrument for the DigiCipher 2 system and later extended for the AT ...

, digital television receivers display the station's

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 via digits on a receiver's ...

as its former UHF analog channel 36.

References

External links

* Television channels and stations established in 1986 1986 establishments in Texas PBT-TV {{Texas-tv-station-stub