KCET
KCET is a secondary PBS member television station in Los Angeles, California, United States. It is owned by the Public Media Group of Southern California alongside the market's primary PBS member, Huntington Beach–licensed KOCE-TV. The two stations share studios at The Pointe in Burbank; KCET's transmitter is located atop Mount Wilson in the San Gabriel Mountains.
History
Background of educational television in Southern California
KCET was the second attempt at establishing an educational station in the Los Angeles area: KTHE, operated by the University of Southern California, had previously broadcast on channel 28, beginning on September 22, 1953. It was the second educational television station in the United States, signing on six months and four days after KUHT in Houston, but ceased broadcasting after only nine months on the air because its primary benefactor, the Hancock Foundation, determined that the station was too much of a financial drain on its resources.Station history
Early history, as an NET station
KCET—the call letters of which stand for either California Educational Television, Committee for Educational Television, Community Educational Television, or Cultural and Educational Television—first signed on the air on September 28, 1964, as an affiliate of National Educational Television. The station was originally licensed to the non-profit group Community Television of Southern California. Part of the station's initial funding came from four of Los Angeles's commercial stations–KNXT, KNBC, KTTV and KCOP –along with grants from the Ford Foundation and the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare. KCET initially broadcast in black and white from Monday through Friday. James Loper, a co-founder of CTSC, served as the station's director of education from 1964 to 1966 and then vice president and general manager from 1966 to 1971. Loper then served as president of KCET from 1971 to 1983. Creative Person—John Burton a 30-minute film biography of Glass artist and Philosopher John Burton was the first color film commissioned by KCET-TV in 1965. It won the first two Los Angeles area Emmys for KCET for John Burton, and for the production by George Van Valkenburg. Van Valkenburg also produced a one-hour documentary film titled Paris Air Show 1967 for KCET.KCET was originally located at 1313 North Vine Street in Hollywood, at what was the original Mutual-Don Lee Broadcasting System Building. The facility was also originally home to two of Los Angeles' first television stations—KTSL, and KFI/KHJ-TV near the eastern end of Hollywood.
Prior to applying for and receiving a construction permit to build the new channel 28, CTSC attempted to acquire one of Los Angeles's seven existing VHF commercial stations. In 1968, Community Television of Southern California emerged as a potential buyer of KTLA's channel 5 license from then-owner Gene Autry, but could not raise the cash needed to make a serious offer. If CTSC succeeded in moving KCET to channel 5, the move would have mirrored a similar occurrence seven years earlier in the New York City area, where local broadcasters assisted a non-profit group in purchasing commercial independent VHF station WNTA-TV and converting it into non-commercial, educational WNDT.
As a PBS member station
On October 5, 1970, KCET became a charter member of the Public Broadcasting Service at the programming service's inception. For most of the next 40 years, it was the second most-watched PBS station in the country and occasionally produced programs distributed to PBS and to individual public television stations. The station served as Southern California's flagship PBS member station, with San Bernardino-licensed KVCR —which the San Bernardino Community College District signed on the air on September 11, 1962—as the service's original sole secondary outlet. KCET gained additional competitors when the Coast Community College District signed on Huntington Beach-licensed KOCE-TV on November 20, 1972, and the Los Angeles Unified School District signed on secondary Los Angeles member KLCS on November 5, 1973.In 1971, KCET purchased the former Monogram Pictures property at 1425 Fleming Street in a historic area of East Hollywood—which was used as a film and television studio from 1912 to 1970—to serve as the station's headquarters, an acquisition assisted in part by financial contributions from both the Ford Foundation and the Michael Connell Foundation. The building was renamed the Weingart Educational Telecommunications Center and housed KCET's master control, digital control rooms, ingest, and editing stations on the first floor, and engineering, and new media operations, and news and public affairs departments on the second floor.
In 1994, KCET and Store of Knowledge Inc., a Cerritos-based company, launched the KCET Store of Knowledge in Glendale as the first of many partnership stores with PBS affiliates. The store was a partnership between KCET, educational store Lakeshore Learning Materials, and the venture capital firm of Riordan, Lewis and Haden, which included former Los Angeles mayor Richard Riordan. The chain continued to operate until 2001. In 2004, as part of its image-reclaiming public relations after the Gulf oil spill, BP started granting KCET half the funding for preschool shows including A Place of Our Own and Los Ninos en Su Casa, a Spanish-language version. The other half of the $50 million grants for the show and supporting outreach programs came from First 5 California plus additional funding from an anonymous donor. The show won Peabody and local Emmy awards and was shown nationally over PBS. KCET renamed its production studio to BP Studios in thanks.
PBS included BP's and other grants for the two pre-school shows in its complex progressive dues structures, even though the grants came with the stipulation that they could not be used for administrative costs. The PBS dues for KCET had previously been $4.9 million but with the grants included the dues increased by 40% to close to $7 million. Other large funding sources that had previously been counted on were shrinking and thus could not be tapped to pay the dues. KCET's request that these specific grants, which were restricted to show production only, not be counted towards the dues owed was denied; PBS executives indicated that PBS stations were expected to anticipate their dues and increase their reserves to pay them, and therefore would not give special treatment to KCET. With the January 2010 half-year payment coming up, KCET offered to reduce their status to a secondary affiliation, reducing the dues owed to a total of $1.3 million. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting would pay $750,000 and a special campaign was to raise the rest. PBS rejected the offer, insisting the station remain as the primary affiliate.
As an independent public television station
On October 8, 2010, KCET announced that it could not reach an agreement to remain with PBS, and would end its partnership with PBS after 40 years to become an independent public television station—the second-largest such station in the United States in terms of market size, behind WNYE-TV in New York City—on January 1, 2011. KCET station management cited unresolvable financial and programming disputes among its major reasons for leaving PBS. After channel 28 left PBS, KOCE-TV replaced KCET as the area's primary PBS station. Prior to the new affiliation arrangement, KCET discussed plans to purchase KOCE-TV from its licensee, the Coast Community College District, but later opted not to place a bid for the station. A consortium involving Southern California's PBS stations—KCET, KOCE, secondary Los Angeles member KLCS and San Bernardino-licensed KVCR—was also proposed to be formed to unite various functions, certain programming, fundraising and marketing, to save money. However, KCET passed on the offer.On February 4, 2011, the Federal Communications Commission fined KCET $10,000 for failure to make its public file available for inspection by the general public. On March 30, 2011, the Los Angeles Times reported that in light of the sharp decrease in KCET's ratings and pledges following disaffiliation from PBS, it was in negotiations to sell the Hollywood studio to the Church of Scientology, with KCET relocating to a smaller site following the sale. The sale of the property, which was sold for $45 million, closed on April 25, 2011, with part of the proceeds going towards KCET's leasing of the studios until new facilities were found. KCET relocated in April 2012 to a new complex in a high-rise, state-of-the art building, The Pointe located in Burbank. The move left CW affiliate KTLA as the last remaining radio or television broadcaster in Los Angeles that maintains studio facilities in Hollywood, as other area stations had moved their operations to other L.A.-area neighborhoods and cities within the region. At the end of the 2011 fiscal year, contributions and grants to KCET decreased even further, down 41% from the previous year to $22.3 million.
In August 2011, KCET and Eyetronics Media & Studios agreed to partner on producing or acquiring Southern California-focused original series.