KPBS (channel 15) 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 ...

San Diego, California San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United Stat ...

, United States. Owned by

San Diego State University San Diego State University (SDSU) is a public research university in San Diego, California. Founded in 1897 as San Diego Normal School, it is the third-oldest university and southernmost in the 23-member California State University (CSU) system ...

as part of KPBS Public Media, it is a sister station to

NPR National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...

member KPBS-FM (89.5). The two outlets share studios at the Copley Communications Center on Campanile Drive on the SDSU campus. The TV station's transmitter is located on

San Miguel Mountain San Miguel Mountain is a mountain located in Chula Vista, California. It is 2,567' high, and is the 84th highest peak in San Diego County San Diego County (), officially the County of San Diego, is a county in the southwestern corner of the ...

in southwestern San Diego County. The only time KPBS' over-the-air channel 15 placement is mentioned at all is during the rare times the station signs on or off.

History

In 1960, San Diego State College (now San Diego State University) applied for a license from 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 jurisdicti ...

(FCC) to operate a non-commercial educational television station to serve San Diego. The station first signed on the air on June 12, 1967, as KEBS-TV. The station was originally a member of

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 ...

(NET) before becoming a member of PBS when it launched on October 6, 1970, at which time the station changed its call letters to KPBS-TV. Despite the calls, which mimic the callsign schemes used by stations owned by ABC,

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...

and

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

and

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, largest city in the U.S. state, state of California and the List of United States cities by population, sec ...

, it is not an owned-and-operated station (nor is similarly-named WPBS in

Watertown, New York Watertown is a city in, and the county seat of, Jefferson County, New York, United States. It is approximately south of the Thousand Islands, along the Black River about east of where it flows into Lake Ontario. The city is bordered by th ...

), as PBS cannot own or operate any of its member stations or regional member networks due to the service's local and non-profit nature. The KPBS callsign reflects the station's affiliation and programming, but not any special status within PBS. On January 1, 2011, when Los Angeles' longtime PBS station KCET ended its membership, KPBS began to be carried on cable providers in the Bakersfield market, alongside fellow PBS stations

KVCR-DT KVCR-DT (channel 24) is a PBS member television station in San Bernardino, California, United States. It is owned by the San Bernardino Community College District alongside NPR member KVCR (91.9 FM). The two stations share studios at the San Be ...

San Bernardino San Bernardino (; Spanish for "Saint Bernardino") is a city and county seat of San Bernardino County, California, United States. Located in the Inland Empire region of Southern California, the city had a population of 222,101 in the 2020 cen ...

and KVPT in

Fresno Fresno () is a major city in the San Joaquin Valley of California, United States. It is the county seat of Fresno County and the largest city in the greater Central Valley region. It covers about and had a population of 542,107 in 2020, maki ...

. It is also one of three PBS member stations that serve the

Palm Springs Palm Springs (Cahuilla: ''Séc-he'') is a desert resort city in Riverside County, California, United States, within the Colorado Desert's Coachella Valley. The city covers approximately , making it the largest city in Riverside County by land ...

market, alongside KVCR-DT and KOCE-TV in

Huntington Beach Huntington Beach is a seaside city in Orange County, California, Orange County in Southern California, located southeast of Downtown Los Angeles. The city is named after American businessman Henry E. Huntington. The population was 198,711 duri ...

(which succeeded KCET as Los Angeles' primary PBS member station). As with most other PBS members, KPBS carries nationally distributed programs from PBS,

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 indepe ...

(APT) and other distributors. KPBS started broadcasting digital television on November 21, 2001. On June 12, 2009, the station turned off its analog signal over UHF channel 15 in accordance with the federal mandate for transitioning television broadcast from analog to digital. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 30. On March 26, 2019 the digital signal has been moved to UHF channel 19 as a result of

spectrum reallocation The 2016 United States wireless spectrum auction, officially known as Auction 1001, allocated approximately 100 MHz of the United States Ultra High Frequency (UHF) spectrum formerly allocated to UHF television in the 600 MHz band. The spe ...

. 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 15.

Programming

A typical lineup on the main KPBS channel includes

children's programming Children's television series (or children's television shows) are television programs designed for children, normally scheduled for broadcast during the morning and afternoon when children are awake. They can sometimes run during the early eveni ...

from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. News programs include ''

Nightly Business Report ''Nightly Business Report'' was an American business news magazine television program that aired on public television stations from January 22, 1979 to December 27, 2019, for most of that time syndicated by American Public Television. Interna ...

'', ''

BBC World News BBC World News is an international English-language pay television network, operated under the ''BBC Global News Limited'' division of the BBC, which is a public corporation of the UK government's Department for Digital, Culture, Media and ...

'', ''KPBS Evening Edition'' and ''

PBS NewsHour ''PBS NewsHour'' is an American evening television news program broadcast on over 350 PBS member stations. It airs seven nights a week, and is known for its in-depth coverage of issues and current events. Anchored by Judy Woodruff, the pro ...

''. The evening hours are taken by documentaries, travel videos, episodes of '' Frontline'' and

drama series In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super-ge ...

. The KPBS2 channel offers various news and analytical programs, like '' Amanpour on PBS'', '' NHK Newsline'', '' DW News'' and ''BBC World News America'', as well as the same news programs as on the main channel but several hours apart. This channel also offers multitude of documentary and travel films. Often, a film shown in the morning is repeated in the afternoon the same day. The KPBS Create channel is dedicated to home improvement, gardening, cooking and other hobbies and crafts. The KPBS Kids broadcasts children's programming 24 hours a day, in addition to 11 hours of the children's programming on the main channel.

News programming

KPBS produces a nightly half-hour news program on weeknights titled ''KPBS Evening Edition'', a self-contained television newscast that is an extension of the ''Midday Edition'' newscast aired by its radio sister. KPBS' news department is editorially independent from the station's management, San Diego State University and corporate underwriters and donors. The station's investigative reports are conducted in collaboration with the nonprofit newsgathering organization Investigative Newsource, which shares a newsroom with KPBS television and radio at the Campinale Drive studios. The station collaborates on breaking news coverage and shares news video with the local ABC affiliate KGTV (channel 10). In addition, KPBS broadcasts news programs from affiliates and other networks like ''PBS NewsHour'' provided by PBS, ''NHK Newsline'' and ''DW News'' provided by

World In its most general sense, the term "world" refers to the totality of entities, to the whole of reality or to everything that is. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the worl ...

, as well as ''BBC World News America'' provided by

BBC America BBC America is an American basic cable network that is jointly owned by BBC Studios and AMC Networks. The channel primarily airs sci-fi and action series and films, as well as selected programs from the BBC (such as its nature documentary seri ...

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 ...

: The initial lineup consisted of two multiplexed channels: the main high definition channel in 720p and the standard definition channel in 480i, the latter used for DTV simulcast of the analog channel 15. In 2006, an SD sub-channel was added, carrying content from Create. That same year, the main HD channel was switched from 720p to 1080i. Later that year, KPBS dropped the simulcast of analog channel 15 and implemented statistical multiplexing. In 2007, KPBS replaced Create with

V-me V-me (, a pun on ''veme'', "watch me") is an American Spanish-language television network, formerly carried as an over-the-air public broadcasting network in association with public television stations created for the United States Hispanic mar ...

, a 24/7 Spanish-language public television channel. By the middle of the 2010s, KPBS experienced budgetary constraints and erosion of viewership. The locally produced current affairs show ''Full Focus'' attracted less than one percent of the potential audience. One of the ways to increase viewership was to increase the number of subchannels as other public TV stations had done. In January 2017, V-me ended its multicast service for public television, transitioning to commercial cable. KPBS, along with many other PBS affiliates, replaced V-me with the PBS Kids multicast channel. KPBS relaunched Create subchannel and added one more subchannel, KPBS2. John Decker, director of programming at KPBS in San Diego, explained that multicasts such as PBS Kids, Create, World and locally developed programming "give public TV an opportunity to increase value and thus loyalty among viewers" as well as "allow KPBS to expand its universe." Simultaneously with the 2017 lineup change, KPBS switched its HD format from 1080i to 720p and changed aspect ratio of SD channels from 4:3 to 16:9. Image quality degradation, caused by sharing of available bandwidth over four multiplexed channels, was noticed by viewers.

References

External links

www.kpbs.org/tv
- KPBS official website {{DEFAULTSORT:Kpbs (Tv) PBS member stations Television channels and stations established in 1967 San Diego State University

1967 establishments in California