KHNE
KHNE, on air as KHNE-TV, is a public television station licensed to Hastings, Nebraska, in the United States. It broadcasts on virtual channel 29 and is a satellite station of Nebraska Public Media, the state network of public radio and television stations operated by the Nebraska Educational Telecommunications Commission. KHNE rebroadcasts the programming of flagship station KUON-TV in Lincoln to central Nebraska, serving the Hastings side of the Lincoln-Hastings-Kearney television market, which also reaches into several counties of north-central Kansas. The station has been part of the statewide network since November 1968, when Nebraska was building one of the most extensive educational television systems in the country, and its call sign follows the network pattern in which the second letter identifies the community and the final letters stand for Nebraska.
Overview and Technical Details
KHNE's city of licence is Hastings, a city in Adams County in south-central Nebraska. Its virtual channel is 29, retained from its analogue UHF channel, while its digital signal is broadcast on UHF channel 28. In the Nebraska Public Media station table, KHNE is listed with Federal Communications Commission facility identification 47987, an effective radiated power of 200 kilowatts, and a height above average terrain of 366 metres, about 1,201 feet. Its transmitter coordinates are 40 degrees 46 minutes 20 seconds north latitude and 98 degrees 5 minutes 21 seconds west longitude. The station's call sign meaning is given as Hastings, Nebraska. KHNE also has an associated translator, K23AA in Beatrice, listed in channel guides for the market as repeating its signal, extending the Hastings station's footprint to the southeast. Hastings itself is one of the principal cities of its market, and local listings identify KHNE as the PBS outlet licensed to the city.
Sign-On in November 1968
KHNE first aired on November 18, 1968. It was one of the later stations in the first great expansion of the Nebraska network: the statewide system launched in 1965 with KLNE-TV in Lexington, followed a month later by KYNE-TV in Omaha, and six stations signed on between 1966 and 1968, KHNE among them, with KRNE-TV in Merriman following in December 1968. By the time KHNE appeared, the network's flagship, KUON-TV in Lincoln, had been broadcasting since November 1, 1954, and Nebraska's educational broadcasters had a clear plan for statewide coverage. KHNE's role from the beginning was that of a satellite: it duplicated the programming of KUON so that households and schools in the Hastings, Grand Island, and Kearney area could receive the state educational service directly over the air rather than relying on the more distant Lincoln signal.
Building a Statewide Educational Network
The system KHNE joined grew from groundwork laid in the 1950s and early 1960s. The University of Nebraska obtained an educational channel allocation for Lincoln in 1951, and KUON-TV came into being after commercial broadcaster John Fetzer, consolidating Lincoln's commercial stations, donated the channel 12 licence to the university. KUON signed on November 1, 1954, initially sharing studio space with KOLN-TV, moved to its own studios in the Temple Building on the university campus in 1957, and was operated in trust until the licence was granted to the university's Board of Regents. In 1961, five VHF and three UHF channels were allocated for educational use in Nebraska, described as the largest set ever approved for educational use in a single state. The Nebraska legislature approved a statewide network under the Nebraska Educational Telecommunications Commission in 1963, on the model of Alabama Educational Television, with KUON remaining under university ownership while serving as flagship. KHNE was built under that framework, owned by the commission rather than the university, like the network's other satellite stations.
Service to Central Nebraska and Northern Kansas
KHNE's service area is the central portion of Nebraska covered by the Lincoln-Hastings-Kearney market, together with several counties in north-central Kansas. Nebraska Public Media is available on nearly all cable systems in Nebraska, and selected cable systems in the Kansas counties of Jewell, Phillips, Republic, and Smith carry Hastings' KHNE in addition to Smoky Hills PBS, because those counties belong to the Hastings and Kearney side of the market. That cross-border reach gives the Hastings station a role in two states' public television provision. Within Nebraska, the network's combined stations reach almost the entire state and parts of Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, South Dakota, and Wyoming. For over-the-air viewers around Hastings, KHNE is the local transmitter for that statewide service, and Hastings media listings describe the city as a principal city of the market that the station helps to serve.
Programming Relayed by KHNE
As a satellite, KHNE carries the Nebraska Public Media television schedule in full. The network is a PBS member, a relationship dating from October 1970, when the stations moved from National Educational Television to the newly created Public Broadcasting Service, and it also distributes programmes from American Public Television. Nebraska productions have at times achieved national prominence: a Corporation for Public Broadcasting study of school use of television and video found Reading Rainbow, co-produced by the Nebraska network and WNED-TV in Buffalo until 2006, to be the most used and viewed children's television programme in American schools during the 1990-91 school year. The network's headquarters and main production base is the Terry M. Carpenter and Jack G. McBride Nebraska Public Media Center on North 33rd Street on the East Campus of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, opened as the network centre in 1972 and named for the state senator who sponsored its funding legislation and for Jack McBride, the network's founding general manager for 43 years. Programming produced or assembled there reaches Hastings viewers through KHNE without local interruption, since KHNE does not originate its own schedule.
Digital Television and Subchannels
Digital broadcasting multiplied the services available through KHNE's transmitter. The network's multiplex is the same across its stations: the first subchannel carries PBS programming in high definition, the second carries the World channel, the third carries Create, the fourth carries PBS Kids, and a fifth carries First Nations Experience. Hastings viewers therefore receive KHNE as channels 29.1 through 29.5. KHNE shut down its analogue signal over UHF channel 29 on February 17, 2009, the original date set for the national transition of full-power stations, which was later postponed to June 12, 2009. Its digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 28, and through PSIP, digital receivers display the station's virtual channel as 29, preserving the number Hastings audiences had used since 1968.
A Network Identity: From Nebraska ETV to Nebraska Public Media
The name carried by KHNE has changed with its network. On June 8, 1975, the statewide stations formally adopted the Nebraska ETV Network name with a new unifying logo, a red stylised abstract N formed from two trapezoids. Months later NBC unveiled a strikingly similar N logo, and the dispute ended in an out-of-court settlement in which NBC donated a colour mobile unit and other equipment worth more than 800,000 dollars, plus 55,000 dollars toward a new logo, while keeping its mark; Nebraska adopted a replacement geometric lowercase n in May 1976. In January 2005 the television network and Nebraska Public Radio were united under the single name Nebraska Educational Telecommunications, and in May 2021 the organisation changed its name to Nebraska Public Media to represent its full range of services. KHNE has carried each of these identities in turn, since a satellite station presents the network brand rather than a local one.
Ownership and Governance
KHNE is owned by the Nebraska Educational Telecommunications Commission, the state body that operates Nebraska Public Media and owns eight of the network's nine full-power television stations. The exception is flagship KUON-TV, which is owned by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln but operated by the commission under a long-standing agreement. All of the network's television stations have call signs beginning with K and ending in NE, the postal abbreviation for Nebraska, except KUON, whose letters refer to the University of Nebraska. KHNE fits the pattern, its second letter H standing for Hastings. The network is headquartered in Lincoln and maintains a satellite studio in Omaha, used mainly when the Omaha station breaks away for programming of specific local interest; KHNE has no comparable local opt-out and functions purely as a relay within the state system.
KHNE Today
Today KHNE continues to broadcast Nebraska Public Media to Hastings and central Nebraska on virtual channel 29, with five digital subchannels offering PBS, World, Create, PBS Kids, and First Nations Experience programming. On cable it reaches viewers across Nebraska and into the Kansas counties attached to its market, and its translator at Beatrice extends its over-the-air footprint. More than half a century after its sign-on on November 18, 1968, the station's purpose is unchanged from the one set out when Nebraska allocated more educational channels than any state before it and resolved in 1963 to build a commission-run statewide network: to make a single, centrally produced educational and cultural television service available in every part of the state, with KHNE as the transmitter that fulfils that promise for the Hastings area.
