KBHE
KBHE, on air as KBHE-TV, is a public television station in Rapid City, South Dakota, in the United States. It broadcasts on virtual channel 9 and is a member station of PBS as part of South Dakota Public Broadcasting, or SDPB, the statewide public television and radio network operated under the South Dakota Board of Directors for Educational Telecommunications. KBHE serves Rapid City and the Black Hills region of western South Dakota, a role reflected in its call sign, which the network explains as referring to the Black Hills. Alongside its Sioux Falls and Vermillion counterparts, it is one of the oldest stations in the SDPB system, created in 1967 as part of the first expansion of educational television beyond the network's flagship, and it remains the public television outlet for South Dakota's second-largest city and its surrounding hills and plains communities.
Overview and Technical Details
KBHE's city of licence is Rapid City. It broadcasts digitally on UHF channel 26 while receivers display its virtual channel as 9, the number it used in the analogue era. In the SDPB station table, KBHE is listed with Federal Communications Commission facility identification 61068, an effective radiated power of 76.3 kilowatts, and a height above average terrain of 191.7 metres, about 629 feet. Its transmitter coordinates are 44 degrees 3 minutes 6.5 seconds north latitude and 103 degrees 14 minutes 38.9 seconds west longitude, in the hills above Rapid City. The station's signal is extended by translators listed as translating KBHE-TV, including K15IZ-D in Edgemont and K36NX-D in Pringle, which carry the Rapid City service to communities in the southern Black Hills and Fall River County area. KBHE also has a radio namesake, KBHE-FM on 89.3 in Rapid City, part of SDPB Radio, and the television tower's site on Skyline Drive in Rapid City has long been a shared broadcasting location in the city.
Creation in 1967
KBHE was created as a direct result of state legislative action. SDPB's historical account records that in 1967 the South Dakota Legislature provided matching funds for a federal grant that enabled a transmitter relocation and major power increase for flagship KUSD-TV in Vermillion and the creation of two more stations: KBHE in Rapid City, in late 1967, and KESD near Brookings in early 1968. In the network's station table, KBHE's first air date is given as September 13, 1967. The legislature at the same time created a board of directors to oversee the network's growth, and gave its first executive director, Martin Busch, and chief engineer, Jim Prusha, a specific mandate: construct a system of television stations such that every school across South Dakota would have access to in-school instructional television programmes. KBHE was one of the first products of that mandate, giving western South Dakota its own educational television transmitter rather than leaving the Black Hills to depend on the distant Vermillion signal.
Early Role in the Black Hills
KBHE's importance in Rapid City's broadcasting landscape can be seen in the market's commercial history. Through parts of the 1970s, after one commercial competitor lost its licence and before a new commercial station opened in July 1976, accounts of Rapid City television note that for several months KOTA-TV had only PBS station KBHE-TV as a competitor in the market. That detail illustrates how central the channel 9 signal was to viewing in the Black Hills in the station's first decade. The station's Skyline Drive tower also became part of the infrastructure of other local broadcasters: South Dakota School of Mines and Technology's student radio station KTEQ began transmitting in 1971 from KBHE's television tower on Skyline Drive, at ten watts, before later moving and increasing power. For Rapid City, KBHE was thus both a programme service and a physical landmark of the city's broadcast development.
The Network Around KBHE
KBHE belongs to a network whose roots reach back to educational radio experiments at the University of South Dakota in 1919 and a full licence in 1922. Television began on July 5, 1961, when KUSD-TV signed on as the state's first educational television station. The network's name changed from South Dakota ETV to South Dakota Public Television in 1970, the year PBS replaced National Educational Television as the national service. In 1985 South Dakota Public Television merged with South Dakota Public Radio to form South Dakota Public Broadcasting, and the station licences, originally held by individual universities, were consolidated under the state educational telecommunications board in the 1980s. SDPB is operated by the South Dakota Bureau of Information and Technology, an agency of state government, and is headquartered in the Al Neuharth Media Center at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion, with studios and offices on Main Street in Rapid City itself and on North Phillips Avenue in Sioux Falls. KBHE's Rapid City base therefore hosts one of the network's three physical centres, even though the television schedule it carries is the single statewide feed.
Programming Carried by KBHE
KBHE carries SDPB's combined schedule of PBS national programming and South Dakota productions. SDPB's original programmes include Dakota Life, a magazine show about South Dakota life; South Dakota Focus, a panel discussion programme; Statehouse, about the South Dakota State Legislature; Nature Adventures, about the state's wildlife, a subject with obvious relevance to Black Hills viewers; Images of the Past, about state history in photographs, film, and video; Kids' Quest, an educational series for students; On Call Television, about medical topics; A Falconer's Memoir, broadcast in 2000; and No Cover No Minimum, presenting live performances by South Dakota music acts. SDPB has also made instructional programmes such as By the People, For the People, about government in South Dakota, continuing the in-school mission for which KBHE was built in 1967. These programmes are produced by the network, principally at Vermillion, and reach the Black Hills through KBHE's channel 9 signal and its translators.
Digital Television and Subchannels
KBHE's digital signal carries the standard SDPB multiplex of six services. The first subchannel presents the main SDPB service with PBS programming, the second carries World, the third Create, the fourth PBS Kids, the fifth carries audio of the SDPB radio network, and the sixth carries audio of SDPB's classical music HD service. Rapid City viewers receive these as channels 9.1 through 9.6. KBHE shut down its analogue signal over VHF channel 9 on February 17, 2009, the original date for the national full-power transition, which was later postponed to June 12, 2009. Its digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 26, and through PSIP receivers display the virtual channel as 9, preserving the identity the station had held since 1967. In February 2017 SDPB began broadcasting its main radio network over the fifth subchannel of its television stations and classical music over the sixth, the arrangement KBHE carries today, making the television transmitter a supplementary carrier for public radio in the Black Hills.
Translators and Coverage
From Rapid City, KBHE serves the Black Hills and the surrounding plains of western South Dakota. The terrain of the Black Hills, with ridges and valleys that block line-of-sight signals, makes translator relays especially useful, and SDPB lists low-power translators rebroadcasting KBHE's programming with the same virtual channel numbers as the parent station. K15IZ-D serves Edgemont, at the southern edge of the hills, and K36NX-D serves Pringle, each translating KBHE-TV. Together with the main channel 9 signal, they carry the state network into smaller communities that the Rapid City transmitter alone cannot reach cleanly. Coverage of this kind is the modern form of the network's original construction programme, which between 1961 and 1978 added full-power stations until virtually the entire state had service, and which now relies on translators to fill the remaining gaps in difficult country like the southern hills.
Ownership and Operation
KBHE's licence is held by the South Dakota Board of Directors for Educational Telecommunications, and the station is operated as part of SDPB by the South Dakota Bureau of Information and Technology. SDPB holds the licences for all PBS and NPR member stations licensed in South Dakota except two, KRSD in Sioux Falls, run by Minnesota Public Radio, and KAUR, owned by Augustana University. Within that system KBHE is administered centrally, sharing management, fundraising, engineering policy, and programming with the other eight SDPB television stations: KUSD-TV in Vermillion, KESD-TV in Brookings, KTSD-TV in Pierre, KDSD-TV in Aberdeen, KPSD-TV in Eagle Butte, KQSD-TV in Lowry, KZSD-TV in Martin, and KCSD-TV in Sioux Falls. The Rapid City studios and offices on Main Street give the network a production and administrative presence in western South Dakota, balancing its headquarters in the southeast of the state at Vermillion.
KBHE Today
KBHE remains the PBS and SDPB station for Rapid City and the Black Hills, broadcasting on virtual channel 9 with six digital subchannels and translators reaching Edgemont and Pringle. Its call letters still announce its purpose, naming the Black Hills it has served since September 13, 1967, when legislative funding turned a single-station educational service in Vermillion into a network reaching both ends of South Dakota. For viewers in western South Dakota, channel 9 is the local face of a statewide public broadcaster whose schedule blends national PBS programmes with reporting, history, nature, music, and legislative coverage made in and about South Dakota, delivered from one of the oldest transmitters in the system.
