| San Jose/San Francisco, California | |
|---|---|
| Branding | KQED Plus |
| Channels | Digital: 50 (UHF) |
| Subchannels | 54.1 KQEH SD 54.2 KQED SD 54.3 KQED Life 54.4 KQED Kids 54.5 V-me |
| Affiliations | PBS V-me (DT5) |
| Owner | Northern California Public Broadcasting, Inc. |
| First air date | October 19, 1964 |
| Call letters' meaning | portmanteau of KQED and former KTEH call sign |
| Sister station(s) | KQED, KQET |
| Former callsigns | KTEH (1964–2011) |
| Former channel number(s) | Analog: 54 (UHF, 1964-2009) |
| Former affiliations | NET (1964-1970) |
| Transmitter power | 290 kW |
| Height | 662 m |
| Facility ID | 35663 |
| Website | www.kqed.org/tv |
KQEH is a public television station in San Jose, California, serving the San Francisco Bay Area as a PBS member station on channel 54. The station is owned by Northern California Public Broadcasting (NCPB) with sister-stations KQED in San Francisco and KQET in Watsonville, the latter mirroring KQED.
Until 2011, the station was known as KTEH. Before becoming part of NCPB, KTEH maintained a Technical Volunteer program. It allowed volunteers to learn how to operate cameras, audio, shading, directing, and more, while minimizing its costs. These volunteers made up the technical crews for all of their pledge drives and auction programming, as well as other occasional live broadcasts.
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The station began broadcasting as KTEH in 1964.
In the late 1990s, KTEH bought KCAH in Watsonville, which was founded in 1989 to serve as the PBS station for the Monterey/Salinas/Santa Cruz market.
In 2006, KQED and the KTEH Foundation agreed to merge to form Northern California Public Broadcasting.[1] As a result of the merger, KCAH changed its call letters to KQET on August 12, 2007. Subsequently, on October 1, 2007, KQET switched programming sources from KTEH to KQED. As of 2010, KTEH can be seen on KQET over on its second digital subchannel.
In December of 2010, the Board of Directors of Northern California Public Broadcasting changed the organization's name to KQED Inc. The station changed its call letters to KQEH and rebranded to "KQED Plus" on July 1, 2011, after research found that most viewers were unaware that KTEH was affiliated with KQED; other aspects of the station's operation, including programming and staff, are not affected by this change.[2]
The station's daytime hours on weekdays are dominated by children's programming, including Clifford the Big Red Dog, Sesame Street, and Arthur. Weeknights begin with news programming—the Nightly Business Report and BBC World News—followed by mostly United Kingdom-originating dramas and comedies (such as EastEnders and Are You Being Served?). Weeknight prime-time contains mainly documentaries (American Experience, Nature) and drama (Masterpiece Theater, Mystery!). During the weekend, mornings feature children's programming, middays and afternoons contain a mix of instructional (home and cooking), entertainment, travel, and cultural shows, and evenings present mostly British scripted shows. The current slogan for British programming on KQEH reflects this.
Starting in April 1981, KTEH started showing the British science-fantasy show Doctor Who, and continued to do so until January 2003. On April 10, 2007, KTEH resumed airing "Doctor Who" with the 2005 series starring Christopher Eccleston. KTEH has also aired another British sci-fi show, Red Dwarf. In 1998, KTEH aired the entire season of Red Dwarf VIII in one night. In doing so, many episodes were shown on KTEH before British television.[3][4]
KTEH was also the first to air Neon Genesis Evangelion (subtitled) in America, as well as Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki and Tenchi Universe (dubbed) TV series. These shows were later shown on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming block. Other anime that have aired on KTEH include, but were not limited to, Bubblegum Crisis, Dirty Pair Flash (subbed), All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku (subbed), Sakura Wars (subbed), Serial Experiments Lain (dubbed), City Hunter (dubbed), Please Save My Earth (dubbed), Key the Metal Idol [5] and Urusei Yatsura (subbed).[6]
KTEH has produced many television programs over the years, some of which have been nationally broadcast. Their current production schedule includes [7]:
KTEH was the production company for several other productions:[9]
The station's digital transmissions are on channel 50. The digital stream is multiplexed, with all sub-channels in 480i standard definition:
Digital channels
| Channel | Programming |
|---|---|
| 54.1 | Main KQEH programming / PBS |
| 54.2 | SD simulcast of KQED |
| 54.3 | KQED Life |
| 54.4 | KQED Kids |
| 54.5 | V-me |
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