Arizona PBS

About Arizona PBS

Arizona PBS is the PBS member television station for the Phoenix market, licensed as KAET (channel 8) and owned by Arizona State University. It signed on January 30, 1961, as an affiliate of National Educational Television, beginning from a small trailer on the ASU campus with a staff of five and broadcasts from 4 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. The call letters stand for Arizona Educational Television. Operational control was transferred from ASU's public affairs office to the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication in 2014.

For years the station was known simply as "Channel 8"; it began using "Arizona PBS" as a secondary brand in 2005, relaunched as "Eight, Arizona PBS" in 2006, and dropped that styling in 2015 in favor of simply "Arizona PBS." It is consistently one of the most-viewed PBS stations per capita in the nation, with more than 1.3 million viewers a week reached through its signal, a network of 13 translators, cable and satellite systems across the state.

The station produces several of its programs in-house, including the current-events shows Arizona Horizon and Horizonte, and Arizona Collection documentaries about the state's people and history. Cronkite journalism students produce a weeknight newscast on the station, and since 2019 the Cronkite School has hosted the western bureau of the PBS NewsHour. Its studios are at the Cronkite School's facility in downtown Phoenix, with its transmitter on South Mountain.