Product Code Database
KBYU-TV (channel 11) is a non-commercial educational independent television station licensed to Provo, Utah, United States, serving Salt Lake City and the state of Utah. The station is owned by Brigham Young University (BYU), an arm of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). KBYU-TV's studios are located on the BYU campus in Provo, and its transmitter is located on Farnsworth Peak in the Oquirrh Mountains, southwest of Salt Lake City.
KBYU-TV airs programming of interest to members of the LDS movement, including religious and instructional shows, as well as family-friendly entertainment programs, often with a moral lesson.
Channel 11's commercial existence was short-lived. The independent station struggled against larger outlets in Salt Lake City, facing the burden of having to buy an additional 18 hours of programming per day. In December 1959, Nissley sued General Electric, which provided and installed the transmitter, for more than $1 million, claiming negligent transmitter installation impaired KLOR's signal in the market's most lucrative portion, the Salt Lake Valley. Nissley claimed that the station's signal was sent over a desert area west of Provo, rather than areas closer to Salt Lake City. by this time, KLOR was also facing lawsuits from potential creditors, including program suppliers. KLOR went silent March 12, 1960, when a Voltage spike blew out a transformer. Beehive went into bankruptcy on July 1, 1960.
The station returned to the air with regular programs on November 15, 1965, though the station was already on the air during the daytime for broadcasts to schools in association with the Utah State Department of Public Instruction. Originally a member of National Educational Television (NET), it joined PBS when it largely replaced NET in 1970. For most of the next half-century, Salt Lake City was one of the smallest markets with two PBS member stations; its main competition was the University of Utah's KUED (channel 7). In 2010, KBYU-TV rebranded as "Eleven".
On July 2, 2018, the station ended its membership with PBS and began simulcasting BYU's co-owned specialty channel BYUtv on its primary subchannel. BYU Broadcasting managing director Michael Dunn noted that two-thirds of channel 11's schedule was identical to that of KUED, something that "makes no sense" in the current era of broadcasting. This leaves KUED as the sole PBS station for the Salt Lake City market and the state of Utah.
The only exception that KBYU-TV currently airs from the straight simulcast of BYU TV is the weekday student-produced half-hour newscast, Eleven News at Noon. As an educational station it does not carry advertising, and BYU TV itself does not carry advertising, instead carrying promotional spots for the network's programming during breaks (the national feed also carries KBYU-TV's hourly legal station identification).
KBYU-TV has produced some notable programs for national distribution. Ancestors, produced in conjunction with the LDS Church's Family History Library and PBS, was a highly successful series of videos on family genealogy. It was so well received that KBYU-TV produced a second series of videos, also entitled Ancestors, which proved to be even more successful. Small Fortunes: Microcredit and the Future of Poverty, produced in 2005, explored the business of Microcredit through eleven providers of the service. Another show produced by KBYU was Hooked on Aerobics, which was on the air for many years.
| +Subchannels of KBYU-TV ! Channel ! Res. ! Aspect ! Short name ! Programming |
KBYU-TV also utilizes the alternate audio tracks that can be activated through the second audio program function, both carried on the third alternate audio track: the station's main channel features an audio simulcast of KBYU-FM (89.1). Digital subchannel 11.2 featured an alternate audio feed of BYU Radio (which is commonly found streamed over the Internet), but was taken off-the-air on June 30, 2018, when BYU TV International ceased operations.
KBYU-TV shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 11, on June 12, 2009, the official date on which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 44, Congress delays digital TV switch until June; Utah sticks to original cutoff, Vince Horiuchi , Salt Lake Tribune, February 4, 2009. using virtual channel 11.
Since KBYU's former physical TV channel was in the 600 MHz band being sold off in the FCC's incentive auction, with channels 38 to 51 being eliminated, the station filed for a construction permit in September 2017 to move to physical channel 17 at the same location, power and height.
|
|
