WKAR-TV (channel 23) 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 ...

licensed to

East Lansing, Michigan East Lansing is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan. Most of the city lies within Ingham County, Michigan, Ingham County with a smaller portion extending north into Clinton County, Michigan, Clinton County. At the 2020 United States Census, 2020 ...

, United States, serving the

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Lower Peninsula of Michigan The Lower Peninsula of Michigan – also known as Lower Michigan – is the larger, southern and less elevated of the two major landmasses that make up the U.S. state of Michigan; the other being the Upper Peninsula, which is separated by the ...

. The station is owned by

Michigan State University Michigan State University (Michigan State, MSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in East Lansing, Michigan. It was founded in 1855 as the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan, the fi ...

and operated as part of its Broadcasting Services Division. WKAR-TV's studios are located in the Communication Arts and Sciences Building, at the southeast corner of Wilson and Red Cedar Roads on the MSU campus in East Lansing. Its transmitter is located on Kinawa Road in Meridian Township, Michigan between East Lansing and Williamston.

History

WKAR-TV went on the air in January 1954, broadcasting on channel 60. It took its call letters from WKAR radio (which first went on the air in 1922 with the call letters being assigned randomly, and do not reflect Michigan's automotive heritage or the university's early agricultural roots). It is the second-oldest educational television station in the United States, and the oldest east of the

Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it f ...

. It was the third station on the air, but the second, in

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( KTHE), went dark not long after it began operations.

KUHT KUHT (channel 8) is a PBS member television station in Houston, Texas, United States. Owned by the University of Houston System, it is sister to NPR member station KUHF (88.7 FM). The two stations share studios and offices in the Melcher Ce ...

Houston Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 in ...

is the oldest. Despite MSU's long history in broadcasting, WKAR-TV struggled for viewers because television sets at that time were not required to have UHF tuning capability. Viewers needed an expensive converter to watch channel 60, and the picture was marginal at best even with one. With this in mind, MSU unsuccessfully tried to persuade 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 ...

(FCC) to re-designate channel 10, the only other VHF channel allocated to the Lansing area, for noncommercial use. Instead, the license went to Jackson Telecasters, a private company, which used it to start Lansing's

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 ...

affiliate,

WILX-TV WILX-TV (channel 10) is a television station licensed to Onondaga, Michigan, United States, serving as the NBC affiliate for the Lansing area. Owned by Gray Television, the station maintains studios on American Road (near I-96) in Lansing, and ...

. Eventually, MSU made an arrangement with Jackson Telecasters to share channel 10 with WILX. So in 1959, WKAR-TV changed its call sign to WMSB (for Michigan State Broadcasting) and moved to channel 10. The two broadcasters maintained separate studios and offices, with WMSB continuing to air from a

Quonset hut A Quonset hut is a lightweight prefabricated structure of corrugated galvanized steel having a semi cylindrical cross-section. The design was developed in the United States, based on the Nissen hut introduced by the British during World War I ...

on the MSU campus while WILX operated from

Jackson Jackson may refer to: People and fictional characters * Jackson (name), including a list of people and fictional characters with the surname or given name Places Australia * Jackson, Queensland, a town in the Maranoa Region * Jackson North, Qu ...

. However, they shared the same transmitting facilities in

Onondaga Onondaga may refer to: Native American/First Nations * Onondaga people, a Native American/First Nations people and one of the five founding nations of the Iroquois League * Onondaga (village), Onondaga settlement and traditional Iroquois capita ...

. WMSB occupied channel 10 for 30 percent of the broadcast day, but WILX had the remainder, including all of prime time. WMSB would often cede its time to WILX in case of breaking news, or if NBC aired

sports Sport pertains to any form of competitive physical activity or game that aims to use, maintain, or improve physical ability and skills while providing enjoyment to participants and, in some cases, entertainment to spectators. Sports can, th ...

or special events during WMSB's allocated time. In 1972, MSU resumed full-time broadcasting on channel 23 under its original call letters, WKAR-TV. This was made possible by the All Channels Act of 1961 (requiring all TV sets sold in the United States to receive UHF channels starting in 1964), the

Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 The Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 () issued the congressional corporate charter for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), a private nonprofit corporation funded by taxpayers to disburse grants to public broadcasters in the United ...

, and the subsequent development of PBS in 1969. The channel 23 dedication program was simulcast on both channels 10 (WMSB) and 23 (WKAR-TV), after which WMSB went silent and WILX began broadcasting on channel 10 full-time. At approximately 3:36 p.m. on August 21, 1978, a fire broke out at WKAR's transmitter site, knocking the station off the air for the next two months and causing $900,000 (in 1978 dollars) in damage.

WKAR-FM WKAR-FM is a public radio station in East Lansing, Michigan, United States; broadcasting on the FM dial at 90.5 MHz. It is owned by Michigan State University, and is sister station to the AM radio and television stations with the same call let ...

also went off the air at about 4 p.m. That station returned to the air by mid-September. While the transmitter was under repair, WJIM-TV (now

WLNS WLNS-TV (channel 6) is a television station in Lansing, Michigan, United States, affiliated with CBS. It is owned by Nexstar Media Group, which provides certain services to dual ABC/ CW+ affiliate WLAJ (channel 53) under a shared services ag ...

) aired some of WKAR's programming, such as ''

Sesame Street ''Sesame Street'' is an American educational children's television series that combines live-action, sketch comedy, animation and puppetry. It is produced by Sesame Workshop (known as the Children's Television Workshop until June 2000) a ...

''. The cause of the fire remains unknown. In 1981, WKAR-TV moved from the

it had occupied since the station began operating to the Communication Arts and Sciences Building. The

Breslin Student Events Center The Jack Breslin Student Events Center is a multi-purpose arena at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan. The arena opened in 1989, and is named for Jack Breslin, MSU alumnus, former athlete and administrator, who first began pus ...

occupies the former studio location today. By November 14, 2003, MSU Broadcasting Services was cablecasting two community TV channels, KAR2 and KAR3. WKAR-DT began broadcasting on Channel 55 on January 15, 2004. By November 4, 2007, WKAR Life and

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 ...

network, branded as WKAR World, were added to the digital and cable lineup as .3/KAR2 and .4/KAR3 respectively. On April 6, 2008 WKAR Life became WKAR Create. WKAR-TV shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 23, on January 13, 2009. The station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition UHF channel 55, which was among the high band UHF channels (52-69) that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition, to UHF channel 40, using

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 ...

to display WKAR-TV'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 23 on digital television receivers. On June 18, 2010, construction of a new broadcast tower for WKAR-TV and WKAR-FM was approved during a Michigan State University Board of Trustees meeting. The project was completed in August 2011. On September 10, 2012, WKAR-TV began transmission of its digital signal 24/7. On January 11, 2016, WKAR announced that it would partner with

WTVS WTVS (channel 56) is a PBS member television station in Detroit, Michigan, United States, owned by the Detroit Educational Television Foundation. Its main studios are located at the Riley Broadcast Center and HD Studios in Wixom, with an addit ...

in Detroit to launch a 24-hour children's television service to be carried by both stations. The station also confirmed that it will not participate in the FCC's spectrum incentive auction. On January 16, 2017, World was moved from the fourth subchannel to the second with PBS Kids replacing it on .4. WKAR-TV announced on April 28, 2018 that it had filed an application with the FCC to launch a temporary

ATSC 3.0 ATSC 3.0 is a major version of the ATSC standards for television broadcasting created by the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC). The standards are designed to offer support for newer technologies, including HEVC for video channels of u ...

broadcast on UHF channel 35 for the purpose of getting to understand ATSC 3.0 better, and recognizing that it could only operate the channel until stage 3 of the repack (which begins on April 13, 2019; nearby broadcaster

WAQP WAQP (channel 49) is a religious television station licensed to Saginaw, Michigan, United States, serving northeastern Michigan as an owned-and-operated station of Tri-State Christian Television (TCT). The station's transmitter is located near Che ...

Saginaw, Michigan Saginaw () is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the seat of Saginaw County. The city of Saginaw and Saginaw County are both in the area known as Mid-Michigan. Saginaw is adjacent to Saginaw Charter Township and considered part of Greater ...

would then be moving to UHF 36), at which point they would either apply to move the signal on UHF 35, or shut it down to prevent

adjacent-channel interference Adjacent-channel interference (ACI) is interference caused by extraneous power from a signal in an adjacent channel. ACI may be caused by inadequate filtering (such as incomplete filtering of unwanted modulation products in FM systems), improper t ...

to WAQP-TV. The broadcast began in September 2018.https://enterpriseefiling.fcc.gov/dataentry/api/download/attachment/25076f9162bbeb9d0163026a9fcd702c

Programming

WKAR has at times aired select programming for Michigan State University's student-produced television station MSU Telecasters. WKAR-TV serves as the flagship station for Michigan Public Broadcasting (MPB) television programs. Programs distributed statewide on a weekly or monthly basis include ''QuizBusters'', ''Off the Record'', ''BackStage Pass'' as well as specials like the

Governor of Michigan The governor of Michigan is the head of state, head of government, and chief executive of the U.S. state of Michigan. The current governor is Gretchen Whitmer, a member of the Democratic Party, who was inaugurated on January 1, 2019, as the stat ...

's annual "State of the State" address. WKAR-TV also held a yearly phone-in auction spanning over several days, where viewers could bid on items which were donated by local businesses and volunteers. When it was first held in 1977, it was the first of its kind in mid-Michigan. In 2007, citing a poorer economy, and the fact that they can raise more money by putting their resources into other developmental activities, the fundraising event ceased at the conclusion of the 30th WKAR-TV Auction.

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 ...

: WKAR-HD/23.1 broadcasts main PBS programs, with children's programming airing from 6:30 a.m. to noon, taking a break until 2 p.m., with the rest of PBS Kids running until 6 p.m. The channel also airs locally produced programs, along with programs from

APT Apt. is an abbreviation for apartment. Apt may also refer to: Places * Apt Cathedral, a former cathedral, and national monument of France, in the town of Apt in Provence * Apt, Vaucluse, a commune of the Vaucluse département of France * A ...

and other distributors. WKAR World/23.2 broadcasts programs from the

network, along with encores of PBS programs. WKAR Create/23.3 launched as WKAR Life as 2007; the name change occurring in 2008. The channel broadcasts programs from the Create network. WKAR PBS Kids/23.4 broadcasts

PBS Kids PBS Kids is the brand for most of the children's programming aired by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in the United States. Some public television children's programs are not produced by PBS member stations or transmitted by PBS. Instead, ...

programs from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., with the 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. schedule repeating until 6 a.m. WKAR Michigan Learning Channel/23.5 is a statewide partnership of Michigan's public TV stations offering educational programming for students from pre-K to 12th grade.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Wkar-Tv Michigan State University PBS member stations Television channels and stations established in 1954 1954 establishments in Michigan KAR-TV