Early Public Television in Region
After World War II, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign hosted the National Association of Educational Broadcasters for the establishment of broadcast allocations (AM/FM radio and TV channels) for non-commercial education programming. The outcomes from these meetings established the foundation for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting System.
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign established WILL-TV, Channel 12 which began operations on August 1, 1955 as an affiliate of the NET Network. On October 5, 1970, WILL-TV became a charter member station of the PBS-TV Network.
Iowa was a pioneer in early educational television broadcasting.
In 1933, Dr. E.B. Kurtz, electrical engineering professor at the University of Iowa established an experimental TV station W9XK, later W9XUI, providing twice a week video programming in cooperation with the university's AM radio station WSUI which provided the audio channel. This historical early television station and its educational broadcasts ceased in 1939. The concept of pure educational television which Dr. E.B. Kurtz and his Iowa colleagues pioneered was buried by the commercial television system which dominated development of the electronic media in the United States after World War II.
Thirty years later, Iowa Public Television was established and began broadcast operations on February 8, 1970 by renaming the earlier WSUI-TV as KIIN, Channel 12 at West Branch, Iowa to serve the eastern Iowa and Quad Cities markets (Davenport and Bettendorf in Iowa; Rock Island and Moline in Illinois). Iowa Public Television became a charter member of PBS that same year. Translators were placed in Fort Madison and Keokuk, Iowa to provide coverage in the southeastern corner of Iowa.
That same year, 1969, Bradley University and Peoria supporters led by Phil Weinberg, academic dean at Bradley University, began discussions for establishing an educational TV station, WTVP to serve the needs of the Peoria, Bloomington and Galesburg markets.
Dr. Weinberg's viewing of Sesame Street, produced by the Children's Television Workshop, since November 10, 1969 convinced him that the people (and children) in the Peoria community and region should have this quality of educational programming. Weinberg arranged for the program to play on WMBD-TV Channel 31, for six months, before it moved to the new WTVP station in June 1971. Broadcast operation studios and offices were at Jobst Hall on Bradley University's campus.
Commercial broadcast television networks (CBS, NBC, ABC) and their local affiliates in the west-central Illinois region provided some educational programming for children in the 1950s and 1960s, but this program content disappeared by 1970.
Read more about this topic: Network Knowledge
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