WKPD

WKPD is a non-commercial public television station that is licensed to and located in Paducah, Kentucky. The station is a broadcast relay station of the Kentucky Educational Television network (KET). As a KET satellite, the station is a PBS affiliate owned by the Kentucky Authority for Educational Television.

The station’s master control and internal operations are located at KET’s main studios at the O. Leonard Press Telecommunications Center in Lexington, Kentucky. WKPD transmits its signal on UHF channel 41 (virtual channel 29 via PSIP) from its transmitter located on Coleman Road off Kentucky Route 305 on the west side of Paducah, near the McCracken County Soccer Complex. ^[1]

History

As an independent staton

The station began its life on the air on May 31, 1971 as commercial independent station WDXR-TV. Local businessman E. Weeks McKinney-Smith, along with wife Lady Sarah McKinney Smith and George T. Bailey each owned 33.3% interest in the station, the first two of which also owned WDXR radio. ^[2] Lady Sarah McKinney Smith became the sole owner of WDXR, Inc. after E. Weeks died in February 1974.

A typical broadcast day on WDXR-TV as an independent station consisted of programming mainly consisted of public domain movies and/or cartoons, along with barter syndicated comedies and/or drama shows, as well as some religious programming. However, at one point, WDXR also aired a few newscasts of their own focusing on Western Kentucky’s Jackson Purchase region, competing with the news department of locally-based NBC affiliate WPSD-TV. Paducah Broadcasters, Inc. purchased both WDXR-TV and WDXR radio in December 1978.

As a KET satellite

WDXR-TV was acquired by the Kentucky Authority for Educational Television in 1981. In that year, it was converted into a relay station of the Kentucky Educational Television network, and it has been part of that statewide network ever since. WKPD was the fifteenth full-power station in Kentucky to become a KET satellite. Until that time, WSIU-TV in Carbondale, Illinois was the only source for a NET/PBS affiliate in the area. From October 1968 until WKPD’s format transition, WKMU-TV in Murray, Kentucky was the default KET satellite for the Purchase region, but it didn’t have complete signal coverage over the entire Purchase region. For all intents and purposes, WKPD’s conversion into a KET satellite expanded signal coverage for the Purchase region, and to provide a second option for PBS programming for far southern Illinois.

Coverage area

Although WKPD covers most of the same areas of the Purchase region as WKMU except for Fulton County, WKPD’s signal can also be received in areas of the region where WKMU couldn’t, such as parts of Ballard County, as well as areas of southernmost Illinois and parts of Mississippi County in southeast Missouri. Signal coverage of WKPD can go from Charleston, Missouri, and Cairo, Illinois, as far east as Eddyville, as far south as an area south Mayfield near WKMU’s tower, and as far north as northern Johnson and Pope Counties in Illinois. ^[3]

Cable carriage

The main channel of WKPD is available on DirecTV and Dish Network satellite television in the Paducah/Cape Girardeau market in its entirety, even the customers who live on the Illinois or Missouri sides of the market, including the Paducah market’s two other principal cities of Cape Girardeau, Missouri and Harrisburg, Illinois. All cable television providers in the Kentucky segment of the media market provide at least the main channel of the network. WSIU is mostly carried on cable in the Illinois and Missouri segments of the DMA.

Digital television

WKPD-TV shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 29 in compliance with the 2009 digital television transition. Although the mandatory deadline was June 12, 2009 after the DTV Delay Act moved down the deadline from February 17, the analog signal was shut down on April 16. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 41. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 29. ^{[4] [5]}

WKPD currently holds a construction permit to move its digital signal to UHF channel 23 as part of the network’s participation in the 2016-17 FCC Spectrum incentive auction.

Programming

References

External links

• KET
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WKPD
• BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on WKPD-TV