KUAT-TV
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KUAT-TV (channel 6) 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
Tucson, Arizona , "(at the) base of the black ill , nicknames = "The Old Pueblo", "Optics Valley", "America's biggest small town" , image_map = , mapsize = 260px , map_caption = Interactive map ...
, United States. It is the television station of the
University of Arizona The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a public land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it was the first university in the Arizona Territory. T ...
(UA) and broadcasts from studios in the Modern Languages Building on the UA campus. Two high-power transmitters broadcast its programming: KUAT-TV itself on Mount Bigelow and KUAS-TV (channel 27) on
Tumamoc Hill Tumamoc Hill ( ood, Cemamagĭ Doʼag) is a butte located immediately west of "A" Mountain and downtown Tucson, Arizona. It is home to many radio, television, and public safety transmitters. The 860-acre ecological reserve and U.S. National Histo ...
, west of downtown Tucson, which provides coverage to northwest Tucson and communities west of
Mount Lemmon Mount Lemmon, with a summit elevation of , is the highest point in the Santa Catalina Mountains. It is located in the Coronado National Forest north of Tucson, Arizona, United States. Mount Lemmon was named for botanist Sara Plummer Lemmon, who ...
that are shielded from the Mount Bigelow transmitter. There is also a
translator Translation is the communication of the Meaning (linguistic), meaning of a #Source and target languages, source-language text by means of an Dynamic and formal equivalence, equivalent #Source and target languages, target-language text. The ...
in Duncan. KUAT-TV and the UA's radio stations,
KUAT-FM KUAT-FM is a radio station in Tucson, Arizona, United States. One of two radio services operated by the University of Arizona (UA) through its Arizona Public Media arm, it broadcasts a classical format throughout Southern Arizona. Studios are in t ...
and
KUAZ KUAZ and KUAZ-FM are public radio stations in Tucson, Arizona, owned by the University of Arizona. KUAZ transmits on 1550 kHz on the AM dial, and KUAZ-FM is at 89.1 MHz on the FM dial. The stations simulcast a radio format of news and informa ...
, are grouped under the unified brand of
Arizona Public Media Arizona Public Media (AZPM) is the public broadcasting service of the University of Arizona, providing radio and television service and regional news coverage in southern and southeastern Arizona from its studios in Tucson. AZPM encompasses two ...
(AZPM). KUAT-TV is the oldest public television station in the state, beginning broadcasts in 1959. In addition to airing national PBS and public television programming, it produces several local shows focusing on southern Arizona life and issues.


History

Tucson had been allocated noncommercial educational channel 6 in 1952, but it was not until 1958 that the UA prepared an application to build a television station to use it. It proposed to initially broadcast two hours a night, five nights a week. The university had already remodeled Herring Hall to house radio and television studios, with the latter occupying a space once used as part of a gymnasium and auditorium. Filed on April 3, the application and permit were granted on July 16, sending $40,000 of
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monies the university's way to begin construction. After the university rejected the first two bids for the job as too high and re-bid the task out, the tower was erected in November to support the antenna for the new station; while that happened, the university made its first telecast—a closed-circuit event in which a pharmacology class watched a demonstration of blood pressure techniques. The first test pattern went out on February 6, and KUAT launched on March 8, 1959, as the first public television station in Arizona. It was an affiliate of
National Educational Television National Educational Television (NET) was an American non-commercial educational, educational terrestrial television, broadcast television network owned by the Ford Foundation and later co-owned by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. It o ...
(NET), forerunner to PBS, from 1959 through 1970, when PBS replaced NET. In addition to university programs, the
Tucson Unified School District Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) is the largest school district of Tucson, Arizona, in terms of enrollment. Dr. Gabriel Trujillo is the superintendent, appointed on September 12, 2017 by the Governing Board. As of 2016, TUSD had more than ...
was part of its operation, with a weekly show summarizing school activities. That fall, the first daytime educational broadcasts were made, consisting of university classes. In 1964, the university prepared an expansion of the initial anemic facility, which had an effective radiated power of just 944 watts. The university applied to move its transmitter to Tumamoc Hill, which would increase coverage from a to a radius, and new studios were planned in the forthcoming Modern Languages Building. The
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approved the tower site, but the university decided to relocate its main transmitter to Mount Bigelow, already in use by the three commercial stations in town, after protests from the
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over the proximity of the mast to the
Tucson International Airport Tucson International Airport is a civil-military airport owned by the City of Tucson south of downtown Tucson, in Pima County, Arizona, United States. It is the second busiest airport in Arizona, after Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airp ...
. The new studios and transmitter would be color-capable. The Arizona Board of Regents approved the plans in April 1967, and color transmission from the new studios and transmitter began on October 1, 1968. In preparation, K71BQ, a channel 71 translator, was built at the Tumamoc Hill site to serve neighborhoods in northwest Tucson that are shaded from Mount Bigelow by terrain. A day before the color conversion, on September 30, 1968, the University of Arizona returned to radio for the first time since the 1920s after receiving the donation of KFIF (1550 AM), which became KUAT (and is now
KUAZ KUAZ and KUAZ-FM are public radio stations in Tucson, Arizona, owned by the University of Arizona. KUAZ transmits on 1550 kHz on the AM dial, and KUAZ-FM is at 89.1 MHz on the FM dial. The stations simulcast a radio format of news and informa ...
), from John Walton. In 1977, construction work began on a satellite dish in a vacant swimming pool south of the Bear Down Gymnasium, allowing the station to receive PBS programming via satellite. In the 1980s, KUAT upgraded its service to the northwest side. As early as 1982, plans existed to replace K71BQ with a higher-power translator on channel 27. This became reality as K27AT in December 1985. As channel 27 had been designated for noncommercial full-power use, the university filed to build out a full-power facility on channel 27 in 1985; this was completed as KUAS-TV in July 1988. In 1994, KUAT-TV launched the UA Channel, a public access channel featuring university content and lectures. After the university received a $671,000 grant, the two transmitters were converted to digital in 2002 and 2003, with KUAS-TV on Tumamoc Hill being switched first and becoming the first digital television service in Tucson. The Arizona Public Media umbrella name for KUAT radio and television was adopted in 2009. Steep budget cuts to higher education in Arizona strongly affected Arizona Public Media's budget during the
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, as 26 percent of it came from the university. ''Arizona Illustrated'', a formerly daily program, converted to being taped three times a week, alongside other cost-cutting measures. After providing $2.6 million in cash to AZPM in the 2013–2014 school year, the University of Arizona planned cuts for 2014–2015 of $400,000 and continued cuts until 2019. In 2021, the UA announced it was exploring the construction of a new $45 million complex for AZPM south of the campus at The Bridges, home to a UA tech park, having already raised 75 percent of the projected cost without launching a public campaign.


Local programming

In 1980, KUAT began producing ''Arizona Illustrated'', its flagship weekly newsmagazine on local public affairs issues, at a time when its local program production was seen as minimal outside of Tucson city council meetings. Initially aired daily, it evolved from a features show to a news and analysis program. University students handle most of the production of ''Arizona Illustrated'', providing them with valuable hands-on experience. No longer produced but still in reruns on some PBS stations is ''The Desert Speaks'', co-produced with the
Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum is a 98-acre (40 ha) zoo, aquarium, botanical garden, natural history museum, publisher, and art gallery founded in 1952. Located just west of Tucson, Arizona, it features two miles (3.2 km) of walking path ...
from 1990 to 2018. It was the successor to a previous program that aired on
KVOA KVOA (channel 4) is a television station in Tucson, Arizona, United States, affiliated with NBC and owned by Allen Media Broadcasting. The station's studios are located on West Elm Street north of downtown Tucson, and its primary transmitter is ...
and later
KOLD-TV KOLD-TV (channel 13) is a television station in Tucson, Arizona, United States, affiliated with CBS. It is owned by Gray Television, which provides certain services to Fox affiliate KMSB (channel 11) and MyNetworkTV affiliate KTTU (channel 18 ...
, which had been in production since 1953. In 2007, KUAT produced the documentary ''Phoenix Mars Mission: Ashes to Ice'', which became the first of the station's productions to air nationally on PBS.


Technical information


Subchannels

The stations' signals carry the same multiplex of subchannels: When KUAT and KUAS first began digital broadcasting, they did not carry all the same subchannels. Initially, four subchannels were broadcast during the day and then closed down to allow the transmission of one high-definition channel. With the dropping of PBS Kids in 2005, KUAT programmed its own children's channel, KUAT Kids. On 6.3,
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 ...
started broadcasting on November 30, 2007, while .1 and .2 were PBS in high and standard definition. On December 1, 2011, the station's affiliation with Create was dropped for an independent lifestyle channel branded Ready TV. On October 11, 2016, AZPM began broadcasting the same subchannels from both transmitters. V-me moved to cable only from 6.2, making way for PBS Kids from the Mount Bigelow transmitter, while the UA Channel became an online-only service. ReadyTV and World programming would share the same channel .3 and while PBS Kids would be on .2. In 2017, the third subchannel was changed again, this time to a new complementary service known as PBS 6 Plus.


Analog-to-digital transition

While Arizona Public Media had intended to shut off the analog signals of both KUAT-TV and KUAS-TV on June 12, 2009, the national digital transition date, KUAT-TV was removed from analog service 10 weeks earlier than expected on March 31 due to damage to the analog equipment on Mount Bigelow. The stations' digital signals remained on their pre-transition UHF channels 30 and 28, respectively, using
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 ...
s 6 and 27. The KUAS-TV transmitter was used as part of the
SAFER Act In cryptography, SAFER (Secure And Fast Encryption Routine) is the name of a family of block ciphers designed primarily by James Massey (one of the designers of IDEA) on behalf of Cylink Corporation. The early SAFER K and SAFER SK designs share ...
to broadcast transition information announcements.


References


External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Kuat-Tv University of Arizona Television channels and stations established in 1959 1959 establishments in Arizona UAT-TV