Alabama Public Television
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Alabama Public Television is a network of educational television stations serving the US state of Alabama. The stations are licensed by the Alabama Educational Television Commission which was created by the Alabama state legislature in 1953. The broadcast signals of the nine stations combine to provide complete geographic coverage of the state.
The network produces its own news and public affairs programming and broadcasts content produced by the state's universities for online education and course credit as well. All nine stations are affiliates of PBS.
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History
The network's first station, with the transmitter atop Mount Cheaha, began broadcasting in January 1955 as WTIQ (now WCIQ) for Talladega, though the city of license was Munford. When WBIQ in Birmingham came online four months later, APT became the first operational educational TV network in the United States. WAIQ in Andalusia (now WDIQ in Dozier) went on the air in August 1956, bringing APT to south Alabama for the first time before being reassigned to Montgomery in December 1962. WAIQ was the first APT station to broadcast a digital signal as Channel 14 in 2003, but it was later changed to Channel 27 on account of Montgomery station WSFA. Mobile station WALA donated its former transmitter in Spanish Fort to APT in 1964, ensuring that WEIQ brings the network to Mobile and Baldwin county residents in November. WEIQ's power was increased during the 1980s.
In 1976, the FCC revoked AETC's licenses for not airing NET programs pertaining to the Vietnam War or the black community, but the licenses were re-instated shortly thereafter. APT airing these types of programs would have put the network's future in jeopardy, so they followed orders by state officials during the 1960s and 1970s.
In August 2004, APT began datacasting on its digital broadcast signals to distribute digital multimedia content to ten elementary and secondary schools in a pilot program.
Stations
Alabama Public Television has nine affiliates, three of which were operational when APT began broadcasts in 1955. Each call sign ends with the letters "IQ", meaning "intelligence quotient". The current number of affiliates have been in operation since 1971.
- WAIQ 26 (27) - Montgomery (December 18th 1962)
- WBIQ 10 (53) - Birmingham (April 28th 1955)
- WCIQ 7 (56) - Mount Cheaha (January 7th 1955)
- WDIQ 2 (11) - Dozier (August 18th 1956)
- WEIQ 42 (41) - Mobile (November 6th 1964)
- WFIQ 36 (22) - Florence (August 16th 1967)
- WGIQ 43 (44) - Louisville (September 9th 1968)
- WHIQ 25 (24) - Huntsville (November 1965)
- WIIQ 41 (19) - Demopolis (September 13th 1971)
The channel given is both the actual analog TV (NTSC) channel and the virtual digital TV (ATSC) channel, with the actual DTV channel in parentheses. On all stations, HDTV is on subchannel 1, and SDTV is on subchannel 2. The year the station commenced broadcasting is in parentheses.
The network's offices and Network Operations Center are in Birmingham, but a studio is operated in Montgomery. The AETC also licenses one radio station, WLRH-FM 89.3 FM, in Huntsville, Alabama.
See also
External link
- Alabama Public Television (http://www.aptv.org/)