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.
History
The network's first station, WCIQ on Mount Cheaha, began broadcasting in January 1955. When WBIQ in Birmingham came online four months later, APT became the first operational educational TV network in the United States.
In 1976, the FCC revoked AETC's licenses for alleged racial discrimination but the licenses were re-instated shortly thereafter.
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. The current number of affiliates have been in operation since 1968.
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
