KERA TV

Channels

KERA 13.1

13.1 serves at the primary channel for KERA TV. KERA TV on channel 13.1 carries children's programming from 6am to 6pm weekdays, and airs adult programming in the evenings, including PBS programs such as PBS NewsHour, Nature, American Experience and Frontline.

KERA Kids 24/7

KERA Kids 24/7 on channel 13.2 provides educational programming to children in North Texas all day, every day. Launched in January 2017, the channel airs a lineup of children’s programs, including Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, Odd Squad and 'Wild Kratts.' The channel reaches 350,000 kids each week, representing the second-largest children’s audience among public broadcasting stations in the United States.

KERA Create

KERA Create is a commercial-free channel dedicated exclusively to the best of public television's how-to shows in cooking, arts and crafts, gardening, home improvement and travel.

Programming

As a PBS member station, KERA broadcasts non-commercial, educational television programming distributed by PBS. PBS programs broadcast on KERA include NOVA, PBS NewsHour, Frontline, Masterpiece, Nature and Antiques Roadshow.

Children's Programming

KERA is among the top three most-watched public television stations for children's programming, and is among the largest preschool learning environments in the region. KERA's commercial-free, curriculum-based educational shows reach over 350,000 North Texas children each week, totaling more than 3,400 hours of educational programs each year. For many North Texas children, KERA is the first learning environment they will experience before kindergarten.

Original Programs

KERA has long contributed original programming to the nationwide PBS system, including documentaries such as JFK: Breaking the News and the national Emmy Award-nominated Matisse and Picasso. KERA also produced the PBS documentary series The U.S. - Mexican War, which aired between 1995 and 2006. Other programs that have been distributed statewide and nationally include The Texas Debates, CEO and The Can Cliburn: 50 Years of Gold.

CEO

CEO with Lee Cullum features interviews with chief executives from the corporate and not-for-profit sectors. The show explores what it takes to make a company successful in today's global marketplace, asking questions about leadership style and ethics. This original monthly series of interviews with North Texas business leaders airs on both KERA TV and KERA FM. Past episodes of CEO are available to watch online on KERA's website. Guests on CEO have included Charlie Vogt of Imagine Communications, Mico Rodriguez of Mesero Restaurant Group and Dennis Knautz of Acme Brick. Additional past CEO episodes are archived on KERA's website.

Frame of Mind

Frame of Mind offers a collection of locally produced films, documentaries and video shorts in a series showcasing Texas-made, independent films. Frame of Mind is a co-production of KERA's Art&Seek and the Video Association of Dallas.

Other KERA Productions:

Additional past productions are archived on KERA's website.

PBS

As a PBS member station, KERA broadcasts non-commercial, educational television programming distributed by PBS. PBS programs broadcast on KERA include NOVA, PBS NewsHour, Frontline, Masterpiece, Nature and Antiques Roadshow.

Education And Community Engagement

KERA has several digital resources available for use by schools and organizations serving children and families. The "Ready for Life" website at readyforlife.kera.org provides resources for parents, teachers and caregivers to prepare young children to live healthy and socially rich lives. The multimedia initiative offers training modules on temperament, attachment and socialization, early literacy and nutrition and fitness; a 60-minute documentary; books; and Spanish-language materials.

KERA offers further resources for kids to "watch, learn and play" at kids.kera.org.

In March-April 2016, KERA partnered with the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Fort Worth and the Blue Zones Project on the Cyberchase Step It Up! program, designed to inspire kids and educators to find opportunities to work more steps in their regular day while learning about math.

In June 2016, KERA hosted and sponsored an event at the Trinity River Audubon Center (TRAC) for 120 under-served and immigrant children. Participants engaged in educational activities centered around the Trinity River.

KERA issues an annual a '''Summer Learning Challenge''' for families and nonprofits across North Texas. Participants complete a series of online PBS-related activities and challenges. Families are encouraged to read books and prepare recipes together and take part in KERA recommended summer activities.

KERA also hosts various screenings related to television programs and focused on community engagement. In fall 2016, KERA hosted two screenings of the documentary Willie Velásquez: Your Vote is Your Voice. In March 2016, KERA partnered with the Texas Rangers Baseball Foundation to present two screenings of Jackie Robinson, the film directed by Ken Burns honoring the life and contributions of baseball great.

KERA Passport

KERA Passport is a video on-demand service that offers extended access to video content for members. Introduced in 2106, KERA Passport allows members to save shows to a watchlist, explore archival gems and watch favorite programs on-demand. KERA Passport is made available to all KERA members who contribute $60 or more annually or at least $5 ongoing monthly to the public television station.

Tellyspotting

Tellyspotting is a British television blog that shares new and upcoming programs, UK television news and clippings from around the web. Many of the shows mentioned on Tellyspotting air on KERA TV, including Victoria and Sherlock from PBS Masterpiece.

History

The station began its life as a broadcasting arm of the Dallas Independent School District and was developed by local nonprofit Area Education Television Foundation, Inc. (which later evolved into North Texas Public Broadcasting), in cooperation with the district. The district paid the station to carry instructional telecourses that it would produce for broadcast on channel 13. Southern Methodist University originally applied for the channel 13 allocation in the late 1950s, but had trouble raising enough funds for its start up costs. DISD superintendent W. T. White announced in October 1958 that it was expected to sign on the air by the beginning of the 1959-60 school year, with programming to include Spanish language instructional programming for area elementary school students. The foundation had difficulty in meeting its fundraising goals to start broadcasting; by May 1959, the foundation was said to be $265,000 short of its $890,000 target to cover the proposed station's first two years of broadcasting.

The station's early operation benefited frequently through help from the commercial broadcasters in the Metroplex. Its original license application had received permission by the Federal Communications Commission to broadcast from Fair Park (on land donated to the station by the Dallas city government), but in 1960 it applied to be permitted to broadcast from studios on Harry Hines Boulevard that were set to be vacated by ABC affiliate WFAA-TV (channel 8), which was building new studio facilities at Young and Houston Streets to accommodate the operations of WFAA-AM-FM-TV as well as those of local newspaper The Dallas Morning News (ironically, WFAA-FM once held the KERA-FM calls now used by channel 13's radio sister); the building on Harry Hines, which the Dallas Independent School District purchased for $400,000, had been used by WFAA from its sign-on (as KBTV) in 1949.

The station signed on the air on September 14, 1960. It temporarily operated from studios at the Davis Building in downtown Dallas, behind the original WFAA building, in two portable buildings that were made to resemble a schoolhouse; it migrated its operations to the Harry Hines Boulevard facility in April 1961. It used the original WFAA-TV transmitting facility until it moved its transmitter to a tower at Cedar Hill that is shared with KTVT (channel 11); the station's transmitter only covered Dallas and surrounding suburbs, until a new transmitter was installed on August 31, 1970 that expanded KERA's signal coverage into Fort Worth. In 1974, it became the first television station in the United States to broadcast episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus, and is often credited with introducing the program to American audiences.

The station's parent North Texas Public Broadcasting signed on a secondary PBS member station in the market, KDTN (channel 2), on September 1, 1988. It used the station primarily to run educational and instructional programming that had previously filled much of the station's daytime schedule. It then shifted to offering primarily entertainment programming from PBS and other public television distributors. It sold KDTN to religious broadcaster Daystar – which bought it in order to get a better signal in the market, selling its original flagship KMPX (channel 29, now an Estrella TV owned-and-operated station) in turn – in 2004. However, through a special arrangement, it announced plans to continue its digital programming on KDTN's digital signal, in order to free up bandwidth on its main digital signal to allow the station to upgrade to high definition broadcasts. However, it has not needed additional subchannel bandwidth from KDTN as it operates only one additional subchannel service outside of its main signal.

News Operation

On February 16, 1970, KERA became one of the earliest educational television stations to establish a news department, and began to air a 6pm newscast titled Newsroom, which was based on a similar program that aired on PBS's San Francisco member station KQED. In October 1976, the program was relaunched as a primetime newscast at 9:00 p.m., predating the move of then-independent station KTVT (channel 11, now a CBS owned-and-operated station)'s late evening newscast to the 9:00 p.m. timeslot in August 1990. It moved its evening newscast two hours earlier to 7pm on January 31, 1977, and renamed the program as 13 Report the following month. It shut down its news department on September 21, 1977.

Notable former on-air staff

Wichita Falls

Prior to the sign-on of the station's Wichita Falls translator, it had a unique arrangement to distribute its programming to the area, which was one of the few areas of Texas (and the United States, as a whole) without a PBS station of its own. A group headed by longtime State Representative Ray Farabee launched KIDZ-TV on UHF channel 24 in 1973; it maintained a full-power license, but operated at an effective radiated power of only 2.82 kilowatts. Before the expansion of cable television into the area, the goals were simple; among them, to make the popular children's program Sesame Street available to Wichita Falls (at the time, it was standard for PBS to offer programs to commercial stations in areas without their own PBS stations, but for whatever reasons none of the three stations in the Wichita Falls-Lawton market were interested). The local group had planned to apply for and build a translator. At the time, translators were only allowed to use signals picked up off the air, and its signal was marginal at best in that part of North Texas.

KIDZ-TV shared tower space with Wichita Falls CBS affiliate KAUZ-TV (channel 6). It rebroadcast KERA during all of the hours that KAUZ was on the air, roughly between 6:00 a.m. and midnight. This meant that some specials that aired on weekends were cut off early when the KAUZ engineers (who tended channel 24 as a public service) went home.

By the late 1970s, FCC rules regarding translators were changed to allow the microwave feed to be used to feed the translator class of station. KERA was therefore able to build its own translator in Wichita Falls, also on channel 24, as K24AD. The translator provided a better picture, and could operate during all of the hours that KERA was on the air. It moved to UHF channel 44 in 2005 and changed its callsign to K44GS. In September 2009, the FCC granted the station a construction permit to convert its signal to digital; the permit remained valid until September 2012 (the current occupant of channel 24, K24HH-D, is unrelated to K24AD or the earlier KIDZ-TV).

Tyler

In October 2009, North Texas Public Broadcasting applied to the FCC for a translator license in Tyler. It requested a license for the station to operate on UHF channel 25. The application was dismissed in March 2011. Two additional ones are still pending for UHF channels 35 and 44, but no apparent actions have been taken on these to date.

Digital channels

The station's digital channel is multiplexed:

Analog-to-digital conversion

KERA-TV signed on its digital signal on UHF channel 14 in 2003. The station shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 13, on June 12, 2009, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 14, using PSIP to display KERA-TV's virtual channel as 13 on digital television receivers.