KUED 7.4 will air Create after Jan 1st

[tardiscaptain]

From the Des News.

www.deseretnews.com/article/865694432/Pull-out-your-paints-2018-brings-new-DIY-channel-to-KUED.html

Interesting highlight. This will max out the number of sub-channels for KUED.

[CAwasinNJ]

It's not strictly speaking true that this will max out the number of subchannels KUED can carry. There are about 19Mbps that are available for programming. How that gets split up depends on the broadcaster's choices. They could theoretically have 19 1Mbps signals, though that would look pretty much unwatchable. Here is the approximate bandwidth KUED is using the way things stand now:

7.1 (main/HD) 8.5
7.2 (World/SD) 3-3.5
7.3 (PBS Kids/SD) 3-3.5

Assuming Create is an SD signal (likely I would say) and it was given the same 3-3.5Mbps bandwidth World and Kids are, then that would bring them up to about the max. However, if they cut down a little on the bandwidth each is using they could add another signal at the expense of lower quality on all the signals. I'll also point out that they have room on the KUEN 9 signal (which they also own), especially if they get rid of the non-PBS subchannels (which I don't understand at all.)

As usual, the devil is in the details.

All that being said, Create will be a welcome readdition to the lineup. I used to watch it on KBYU sometimes.

[Terry]

KUEN 9 is indeed co-owned with KUED 7 (by the State Board of Regents if I'm not mistaken). Before the State was allowed to buy channel 9 (from KVOG I think) they were required to sign an agreement to never carry any PBS programming. I think that agreement is still in effect.

[David]

TV channel 9 has a long and storied history in the Ogden area. The station that is now KUEN began back in 1984 when Weber State was granted a construction permit by the FCC for a full power educational TV station. Weber State had difficulties getting the station (then assigned the call letters KWBR) on the air, so in March 1986 the construction permit was assigned to the Utah State Board of Regents and became KULC. Before KUEN began broadcasting on channel 9 in 1986, the frequency had previously been assigned to KVOG-TV from Dec. 1960 through August 1962, and I believe it was an independent station then. In November 1962, Arch Webb sold KVOG to the Ogden City School District, and it became an educational TV station with the call KOET-TV (which likely stood for "Ogden Educational Television"). KOET went dark sometime in 1974, and the channel was then vacant until Weber State applied for its construction permit in 1984. To this day, KUEN is still licensed to Ogden even though it broadcasts from the Eccles Broadcast Center along with KUED from their transmitter on Farnsworth Peak.

The original channel 9 (KVOG/KOET-TV) studio building next door to the KOGN (a/k/a KVOG) radio station on Gibson Avenue in Ogden is still standing, although it looked vacant and abandoned last time I drove past the building a couple months ago. It obviously hasn't been used for TV broadcasting since the early 1970's, although I think KSVN radio had their studios located in the building for a few years. And while I've never seen any PBS programming on KUEN, many of the programs I've seen on channel 9 were produced by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) between the mid 1980's and mid 2000's. Of course, CPB is the parent company of PBS, so I guess as long as KUEN doesn't air any programs produced by PBS, they're still in compliance with the agreement not to carry any PBS programming.  

[CAwasinNJ]

CPB is not the parent company of PBS. It's a quasi-Federal agency that funds public programming.

www.cpb.org/aboutcpb

CPB is a major force behind PBS programming of course. I'm not sure PBS itself actually produces any programming. As far as I know they are only a distribution system and the programming is actually produced by the member stations (WNET, WGBH, WETA, etc.)

The information about 9 not being allowed to broadcast PBS programming makes sense. There were already 2 PBS stations at the time (right?) and adding a third would have been even more problematic than 2 is now. A bigger issue probably was that at the time the deregulation that allowed the same entity to own more than one station in the same band hadn't happened yet. There would have needed to be a waiver to allow 7 and 9 to be co-owned, though given the circumstances that probably wasn't too hard. Such a waiver isn't necessary anymore and with the pending loss of KBYU-TV as a secondary PBS affiliate I wonder if that will be reexamined.

[David]

FYI: Create is now live on 7.4--it just showed up when I did a re-scan about 5 minutes ago. Looks like KUED decided not to wait until January 1st after all.

By the way, is anyone else seeing the Deseret News beehive logo in the upper left hand corner of their browser's tab on this thread, or is it just appearing because of the browser I'm using (Google Chrome)? I've never noticed any kind of a logo on my browser tab when viewing threads on this board before now.