About KBYU-TV

KBYU-TV

KBYU-TV is a non-commercial educational television station on channel 11, licensed to Provo, Utah, and serving Salt Lake City and the state of Utah. It is owned by Brigham Young University, the university sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and its studios are on the BYU campus in Provo. Its transmitter stands on Farnsworth Peak in the Oquirrh Mountains, southwest of Salt Lake City. For more than half a century KBYU-TV was one of Utah's two PBS member stations, known for national educational programming, programmes connected with the Latter-day Saint faith, and a distinctive nightly block of classic television. On July 2, 2018, it ended its PBS membership and became a full-time outlet for BYUtv, the university's own channel, a change that reshaped public television in Utah and clarified the station's identity as a university and faith broadcaster.

The commercial station that came first: KLOR-TV

Channel 11 in Provo was not originally intended to be educational. In October 1955 the Beehive Telecasting Corporation, owned by Samuel B. Nissley, applied to build a commercial station on channel 11, with studios in Orem and a transmitter on Lake Mountain. The permit was granted in December 1957, and ground was broken for studios two months later. The station signed on December 17, 1958, as KLOR-TV, Utah's first independent television station, promoting the fact that it began with full colour operations on its first day — a claim reflected in its call letters.

The commercial venture was short-lived. KLOR struggled against the larger Salt Lake City stations and carried the burden of filling roughly 18 hours of programming a day. In December 1959 Nissley sued General Electric, which had supplied and installed the transmitter, for more than $1 million, claiming negligent installation had impaired the station's signal in the Salt Lake Valley, the market's most valuable area, and directed it instead over desert country west of Provo. The station also faced lawsuits from creditors, including programme suppliers. KLOR went silent on March 12, 1960, after a power surge blew out a transformer, and Beehive entered bankruptcy on July 1, 1960.

Brigham Young University takes over

In March 1962 BYU applied to buy the KLOR licence, though not its Orem studios. The Federal Communications Commission approved the sale on September 25, 1962, on condition that channel 11 become non-commercial, and the KBYU-TV call sign took effect on October 15. In 1964 the university applied to move the studios to the Fine Arts Center on its Provo campus and the transmitter to Mount Vision in the Oquirrh Mountains. The old KLOR studios were sold to local businessmen, used for other offices and eventually demolished. Before its formal relaunch, the station was already broadcasting during the daytime to schools in association with the Utah State Department of Public Instruction, an early sign of the educational mission that would define it.

Return to the air and the PBS decades

KBYU-TV returned to the air with regular programmes on November 15, 1965. It was originally a member of National Educational Television, NET, and it joined PBS when PBS largely replaced NET in 1970. For most of the next half-century, Salt Lake City was one of the smallest television markets in the United States with two PBS member stations: KBYU-TV and KUED, channel 7, owned by the University of Utah. The two university stations divided the public television audience of the Wasatch Front and the state, with KBYU distinguished by its church and university ownership, its Provo base, and its willingness to schedule commercially syndicated classics alongside public television fare. In 2010 the station rebranded itself simply as "Eleven".

Programming before 2018

Before July 2018, KBYU-TV's schedule consisted of general PBS programming with an emphasis on children's, informational and entertainment shows, together with programmes related to the Latter-day Saint church. Unusually for a public station, it also offered a nightly block of classic television series — programmes of the kind normally bought for commercial syndication — which became a familiar part of its identity for older viewers. As an educational station it carried no advertising, a practice that continues under BYUtv, which uses breaks for promotional spots for its own programmes. The station also made use of alternate audio tracks: its main channel carried an audio simulcast of classical station KBYU-FM, and its subchannels carried BYU Radio services.

Programmes produced for national audiences

KBYU-TV produced several programmes that travelled well beyond Utah. Ancestors, made with the church's Family History Library and PBS, was a highly successful series about family genealogy; it was received so well that a second series under the same name followed and proved even more successful, reflecting both the church's emphasis on family history and the station's production capability. Small Fortunes: Microcredit and the Future of Poverty, produced in 2005, examined microcredit through eleven providers of the service around the world. An earlier long-running production, Hooked on Aerobics, remained on the air for many years. These productions showed that a university-owned station in Provo could originate content for national public television distribution, not merely relay it.

The 2018 decision: leaving PBS for BYUtv

In October 2017 BYU Broadcasting announced a fundamental change. Effective at the end of June 2018, KBYU-TV would give up its PBS affiliation and become an over-the-air outlet for BYUtv, while sister radio station KBYU-FM would abandon its classical music format. On July 2, 2018, the change took effect: the station ended its PBS membership and began simulcasting BYUtv on its primary channel. BYU Broadcasting's managing director Michael Dunn explained that about two-thirds of channel 11's schedule had been identical to KUED's, which, in his assessment, made little sense in the modern broadcasting environment. The decision left KUED as the sole PBS provider for the Salt Lake City market and for Utah, and it coincided with the closure of BYU Television International, the Spanish- and Portuguese-language channel, on June 30, 2018. One local exception survived the transition: the weekday student-produced half-hour newscast Eleven News at Noon continued as the station's own production within the BYUtv simulcast.

BYUtv programming today

As a BYUtv station, KBYU-TV airs programming of interest to members of the Latter-day Saint movement and to family audiences more broadly: religious and instructional programmes, family-friendly entertainment often built around a moral lesson, BYU sports and university events, and original series produced by BYU Broadcasting in Provo. The over-the-air signal gives that programming a reach in Utah that the national cable and streaming distribution of BYUtv cannot duplicate for viewers who rely on an antenna, and the station's hourly legal identification is also carried on the national feed. Its subchannels extend the university's audio services to television viewers: channel 11.2 carries BYU Radio and channel 11.3 carries a simulcast of KBYU-FM, branded Classical 89.

Technical history

KBYU-TV's digital path reflects cooperation among Utah broadcasters. The station was first allotted UHF channel 39 for digital service in 1997, but in 1999 its digital allotment changed to UHF channel 44 as part of a realignment coordinated by DTV Utah, a consortium of eight Salt Lake City market stations of which KBYU was a member. KBYU-DT began digital broadcasting on November 15, 2000 — thirty-five years to the day after the station's 1965 relaunch — and was licensed on January 23, 2003. The analog signal on VHF channel 11 shut down on June 12, 2009, the national transition date, with the digital signal continuing on channel 44 while displaying virtual channel 11. Because channel 44 lay in the 600 MHz band cleared by the FCC incentive auction, the station filed in September 2017 to move to physical channel 17 at the same Farnsworth Peak site, power and height, the facility it uses today, transmitting with 298 kW from a height above average terrain of about 1,257 metres.

Translators and statewide coverage

Utah's mountainous geography makes translators essential, and KBYU-TV operates an extensive network of them, extending its signal throughout Utah and into parts of northern Arizona, western Colorado, southern Idaho and eastern Nevada. Translator communities range from Logan, Price and Vernal in the north and east to Kanab, Panguitch and St. George-area communities in the south, and from small towns such as Antimony, Boulder, Caineville and Mexican Hat to cross-border locations including Preston and Soda Springs in Idaho, Malad, Cortez in Colorado and Overton in Nevada. Few American television stations maintain a relay network of this breadth, and it reflects both the station's statewide educational remit and the settlement pattern of the region it serves.

Sister services and legacy

KBYU-TV sits within a wider BYU Broadcasting operation that includes KBYU-FM, BYU Radio and internet radio services, and within a changed corporate landscape in which Bonneville International's KSL-TV and its sister radio stations are listed among its sister outlets through the church's media holdings. Its legacy is double-sided. As a PBS station for 48 years it brought national educational programming to Utah, produced respected series of its own and proved that a religiously affiliated university could run a mainstream public television service. Since 2018 it has been something more specific: the broadcast flagship of a university building its own media brand. That shift, debated when it was announced, settled the long duplication between Provo and Salt Lake City's public stations and gave BYUtv a permanent place on the Utah dial at channel 11.