Shoutout Fun Facts — #9
Week 9 from shoutouts made on our Twitter. Learn more about these stations.
Here we go away with another post about our fun facts from many public broadcasting stations across the country. This comes from Week 9 of @PubMediaFans on Twitter. Stick around, read and hopefully learn something new about your public broadcasting station.
Ninth Week Shoutouts (6–26/7–2)

- Monday, June 26th, 2017: WJCT-TV 7 and 89.9 WJCT-FM / Jacksonville
WJCT’s services are pretty impressive, especially for a market size like Jacksonville. The TV side of WJCT is known nationwide as the home station to a show focusing on travel and arts and crafts mixed together called Destination Craft with Jim West. The program is distributed by American Public Television (APT).
Locally in Jacksonville, WJCT carries up to four additional subchannels alongside PBS on 7.1:
- Channel 7.1 = PBS
- Channel 7.2 = Create
- Channel 7.3 = World
- Channel 7.4 = The Florida Channel (6:00 a.m. — 6:00 p.m. ET) and WJCT More! (6:00 p.m. — 6:00 a.m. ET and all day weekends; similar but different programming to 7.1)
- Channel 7.5 = PBS Kids
Next year, WJCT-TV 7 will celebrate 60 years of broadcasting public television to Florida’s First Coast region. It turns 59 this year on September 10th.
Now to the radio side of WJCT. The station went on-the-air in 1972, a year after NPR got going. Today, the station airs a mix of NPR News and talk as well as other programming including Jazz, Indie, Eceltric, Doo Wop music and more. Its original weekday local program is the hour-long weekday morning program after Morning Edition called First Coast Connect, hosted by Melissa Ross. The program is aired from 9:00 — 10:00 a.m. ET and is heard again on weeknights from 8:00 — 9:00 p.m. ET.
WJCT is also broadcast on HD Radio and takes advantage of the services by offering an all-classical music statio on 89.9 HD2 (Classical 89.9) and an interesting format for a public radio station on 89.9 HD3… Easy Listening. Relax Radio offers easy listening songs from decades’ worth of music including artists such as Frank Sinatra, The Beatles, Elvis Presley, Dean Martin, Michael Bublé and more. It’s available 24/7 on HD3 but as of last year, it added a overnight simulcast on 89.9 WJCT-FM from 12:00 Midnight — 5:00 a.m. ET. Classical 89.9 offers a two-hour simulcast on 89.9 FM on weekend mornings from 5:00 — 7:00 a.m. ET.

2. Tuesday, June 27th, 2017: KUED 7 / Salt Lake City
The flagship PBS affiliate for basically all of Utah, KUED promotes itself as Utah’s Best Storyteller. The station went on-air on January 9th, 1958 and was able to do so thanks to a $100K grant from guess who? The Ford Foundation (yes, the same Ford family who started the Ford Motor Company in 1903).
When the call letters meant Utah EDucation, you can tell that it aired mainly nothing but educational programming in its first 12 years until it became PBS in 1970 in which it added entertainment programming to it. Today, it still offers PBS on 7.1 as well as WORLD on 7.2 and PBS Kids on 7.3.
Due to Utah’s vast mountainous area, it has two full-power satellite stations to reach the rural areas of Utah: KUES Channel 19 in Richfield and KUEW Channel 18 in St. George, Utah. It also has a whopping 97 low-power digital translators that should make KUED available across the entire state.
KUED also has a sister station in KUEN Channel 9 which airs the instructional side of programming that used to air during KUED’s early days. Plus, it carries a simulcast of KUED’s sister radio station, 90.1 KUER-FM (NPR) on its 9.91 subchannel. KUED’s “rival” in public television in Utah is KBYU-TV 11 in Provo, owned by Brigham Young University (BYU) and home to BYU TV.

3. Wednesday, June 28th, 2017: New Hampshire Public Radio
NHPR is one the largest radio networks in the nation, considering that the state is not that big for one, doesn’t have too many N.H.-based news organizations for two and is the only radio source for state-wide news for three. It has a news staff of 21 and carries its programming across seven stations and six translators.
It currently airs two state-wide programs on weekdays: the call-in show The Exchange, hosted by Laura Knoy, at 9:00 a.m. ET, also heard at 7:00 p.m. ET and the midday interview show Word of Mouth, hosted by Virginia Prescott, at 2:00 p.m. ET and heard again at 9:00 p.m. ET. Ms. Prescott is also the host of two podcasts distributed by NHPR: the 10-Minute Writer’s Workshop (writers describing their writing process) and Civics 101 (how the American Government works).
It currently airs a mix of news and talk on weekdays and a mix of news, culture and music programming on weekends including NHPR’s own folk music program, The Folk Show, hosted by Kate McNally on Sundays from 7:00 — 10:00 p.m. ET.
They also offer a classical music service called ClassicalNH and is based off from one of their stations, 91.5 WCNH in Concord, N.H. Considering that it only broadcasts at 190 watts, its simulcast on the HD2 subchannel of flagship station 89.1 WEVO in Concord. For everyone else in the state, the service is only available online at NHPR.org

4. Thursday, June 29th, 2017: KCTS-TV 9 / Seattle — Tacoma — Everett
If you’ve seen Bill Nye The Science Guy before on PBS Kids, you may not have realized that the program was produced by KCTS Channel 9 in Seattle.
KCTS is the flagship PBS member station for the Seattle — Tacoma — Everett TV market, even though Tacoma has its own PBS affiliate, the secondary PBS affiliate for the market, KBTC Channel 28.
KCTS, just like KBTC, is one of the few PBS affiliates out there in the country that broadcasts PBS programming to the other side of the border in Canada. In fact, KCTS has a separate charity that it runs that helps fund KCTS from Canadian viewers, mainly from B.C.
It also has a full-power satellite station serving half of the Yakima/Tri-Cities market: KYVE Channel 47. It has been on-the-air since 1962 but only in the control of KCTS 9 since 1994 and has helped bring stability to the public television station. The other half of this market is served by NWPTV — Northwest Public Television (mainly through KTNW 31).
KCTS and KYVE carry PBS Kids (9.2/47.2) and Create (9.3/47.3) but also offers a cable-only channel called KCTS Plus in which it carries nothing but a simulcast of Classic Arts Showcase (CAS).

5. Friday, June 30th, 2017: WXEL-TV 42 / West Palm Beach — Boca Raton — Fort Pierce
WXEL 42 could be considered as the sister or one half to WPBT 2 in Miami. That’s because they are sister stations. Ironically enough, WPBT can reach the Palm Beaches but not necessarily the Treasure Coast so that’s were WXEL steps in.
In 1997, the station used to be owned by Barry University alongside 90.7 WXEL-FM (later WPBI-FM and now WFLV; K-Love Christian). The FM side was later sold in 2011 and then sold the TV side a year later in 2012 to a corporation created by WXEL.
By 2015, WXEL and WPBT’s owners merged together to form South Florida PBS. Both mainly air the same type of programming with few scheduling differences plus they both air the same subchannels… Create on DT2, The Florida Channel and World on DT3 and PBS Kids on DT4.
Unfortunately, WXEL’s signal doesn’t reach the Treasure Coast. So to fill that gap, WXEL has digital translator W31DC-D Channel 44 in Fort Pierce that does serve the Treasure Coast, mainly for portions of Martin and upwards to St. Lucie counties.

6. Saturday, July 1st, 2017: WMVS 10 and WMVT 36 / Milwaukee
WMVS 10 and WMVT 36, better known as Milwaukee PBS, is probably one of more impressive PBS member stations in the public broadcasting system.
Its one of the most-watched PBS member stations in the country. Plus, its the only PBS affiliates in the state of Wisconsin that is not served by Wisconsin Public Television (WPT), in which WMVS pre-dated it by 15 years (1957) and WMVT pre-dated it by 9 years (1963). WPT went on-air in 1972.
The stations recently participated in the 2016 FCC Spectrum Auction and sold the WMVT spectrum for under $85 million. If ATSC 3.0 comes to fruition, it will convert WMVS to an ATSC 3.0 so that some of WMVT’s subchannels could be merged into WMVS’. Only subchannels 36.4–36.6 will be discontinued.
Speaking of subchannels, WMVS and WMVT combine to broadcast up to ten different subchannels:
- Channel 10.1 = WMVS Milwaukee PBS 10 (HD)
- Channel 10.2 = WMVS Milwaukee PBS World
- Channel 10.3 = WMVS Milwaukee PBS Kids
- Channel 10.4 = WMVS Milwaukee PBS Weather (customized AccuWeather Channel)
- Channel 36.1 = WMVT Milwaukee PBS 36 (HD)
- Channel 36.2 = WMVS Milwaukee PBS 10 (SD)
- Channel 36.3 = WMVT Milwaukee PBS Create
- Channel 36.4 = WMVT Milwaukee PBS Classical (Audio from 98.7 WFMT in Chicago’s Beethoven Satellite Network)
- Channel 36.5 = WMVT Milwaukee PBS Jazz (Audio from 98.7 WFMT in Chicago’s Jazz Satellite Network)
- Channel 36.6 = WMVT Milwaukee PBS Traffic (WISDOT traffic cameras and audio from AM 1610 in Milwaukee)
Lots of them, right? 36.4, 36.5 and 36.6 would go away as part of the Spectrum requirements. By the way, Classical is available on WMVS 10.4’s second SAP audio channel while Jazz is on the third SAP audio channel.

7. Sunday, July 2nd, 2017: Michigan Radio
Michigan Radio is the largest public radio network in the state of Michigan, mainly because its three stations encompasses most cities in the South including Ann Arbor, Detroit, Lansing, Jackson, Flint and Grand Rapids. This network is composed of mainly news and talk from NPR and its local programs.
It’s also good that this serves Lansing because their own NPR News station, AM 870 WKAR, is a daytime-ONLY station, therefore unable to broadcast at night. Because of that, Michigan Radio is the ONLY 24-hour NPR News source for Lansing and is heard in that area through flagship station 91.7 FM WUOM in Ann Arbor/Detroit.
The other two stations that the network serves is 91.1 FM WFUM in Flint, serving Mid-Michigan and 104.1 FM WVGR in Grand Rapids, serving West Michigan. WVGR directly competes against another NPR member station in that area, 88.5 WGVU-FM in Allendale, which also serves Grand Rapids.
WUOM and WVGR became charter members of NPR in 1971, which allowed to air the inaugural All Things Considered episode back on May 4th. WFUM signed on-air in 1985, 14 years after the inaugural one, so it wasn’t able to carry that. And the only local program that the network carries is Stateside. The hour-long program that talks about Michigan issues airs weekdays at 3:00 p.m. and then again at 10:00 p.m.
Oh and unlike many NPR member stations, Michigan Radio carries a direct news service. That means that it doesn’t carry any Jazz or Folk or Classical music, nor does it carry any HD Radio subchannels to carry that music. The only “music” that it carries is the APM-distributed program A Prairie Home Companion, in which the network airs from 6:00 — 8:00 p.m. ET Saturdays and 12:00 Noon — 2:00 p.m. ET on Sundays.
So that’s the ninth week from @PubMediaFans. I hope you learned something new about your favorite public broadcasting station. If your favorite is not mention, don’t panic! There are more stations to cover and more shoutouts to give so stay tuned! We’ll do this all over again next time.

