KVCR-DT

KVCR-DT (channel 24) is a PBS member television station in San Bernardino, California, United States. It is owned by the San Bernardino Community College District alongside NPR member KVCR (91.9 FM). The two stations share studios at the Media & Communications Building on the campus of San Bernardino Valley College on South Mt. Vernon Avenue in San Bernardino; KVCR-DT's transmitter is located atop Box Springs Mountain.

KVCR is Southern California's oldest operating public television station, beginning broadcasts in September 1962. As public stations signed on in the Los Angeles area, KVCR continued to provide local programming for the Inland Empire as well as telecourses from San Bernardino Valley College and instructional content for schools. The station had a limited broadcast range until it moved its transmitter to Box Springs Mountain in 1983.

In the 2000s, KVCR replaced KOCE as the public television station broadcast into the Coachella Valley, including Palm Springs; it continues to operate a translator and provide a dedicated subchannel, KVCR PBS Desert Cities, for this area. KVCR is also the founding station for the First Nations Experience network, which was started in 2010 with a gift from the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians. State government support in the early 2020s forestalled a cost-cutting plan which would have seen the KVCR stations switch from public media to student-run outlets. KVCR produces local programming for the Inland Empire.

In 1959, the board of trustees of San Bernardino Valley College gave approval for an exploratory study on activating ultra high frequency (UHF) channel 24, which had been allocated for educational television use by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 1952 but was never assigned; recent changes in state law had allowed the community college to set up and finance its own TV station. The college applied for a construction permit on August 12, 1960, even though trustees were at first hesitant about the concept. One trustee wanted to merely apply for the permit to keep the college's hold on the channel. The FCC granted the permit on July 6, 1961, but trustees initially rejected funds to build the station in a 3–2 vote. The chairman of the board of trustees, in casting the deciding vote, stated, "I personally believe it is not our function to take education beyond the campus, here."

Less than a month after that vote, with high community interest in the project, trustees changed their minds and unanimously voted to build out KVCR-TV, which would be the first educational television station in the state to be run by a junior college. It was seen as more cost-effective to broadcast on campus than to wire campus buildings for a closed-circuit system. Construction of the facility was complete by June 12, 1962, when the first test pattern was sent out, but the first program was not broadcast until September 11. That night, after 15 minutes, the station went off the air because a capacitor failed in the transmitter. KVCR-TV was the only educational station to broadcast in Southern California at the time of its creation. In addition to educational programs for schools and college telecourses, the station also presented educational programs from National Educational Television (NET), forerunner to PBS.

The station grew quickly. Originally broadcasting 10 to 15 hours a week, it doubled its output to 30 hours in 1963. By 1965, KVCR-TV was broadcasting daytime instructional television for 23 school districts in San Bernardino County, including on translators to rebroadcast its signal. KVCR-TV also served as an extension of the broadcasting program at Valley College. The station was entirely student-operated and by 1967 aired 10 to 15 hours a week of local programs, including a weekly public affairs program as well as a daily newscast during the school year. Even though National Educational Television began feeding programs on network lines to stations in 1967, KVCR-TV continued to receive all its NET and PBS programming through KCET in Los Angeles until it was directly connected to the network in June 1972.

With a small signal originating from the Valley College campus, the station's coverage was limited for most of the first 20 years of its history. In 1973, a translator was activated near the campus of the University of California, Riverside; this expanded KVCR-TV coverage to Riverside, which was blocked from the main San Bernardino signal by terrain. The university also had television production capabilities and could produce programs for air on the station. A volunteer support group for KVCR radio and television, Friends of KVCR, was formed in 1973; the next year, the station received a federal grant that allowed it to upgrade to all-color broadcasting. The transmitter had been previously modified to allow the station to pass through network programs in color, a fact station officials were not aware of until they were called by a viewer who complimented them on their color signal.

In 1980, KVCR-TV began planning for a major power increase and transmitter site relocation. This would replace the original facility, which used a transmitter 10 years older than KVCR-TV itself, with a site on higher terrain. Several sites, including Sunset Ridge (used by KHOF-TV), were analyzed, but planning soon focused on Box Springs Mountain near the University of California, Riverside campus. After receiving a $650,000 federal grant in December 1981 and awarding contracts for construction work in September 1982, the new facility came into use on December 5, 1983, adding an expected 1 million viewers to the station's coverage area. With the new coverage area, KVCR also began increasing its on- and off-air fundraising activities, hiring its first development director and campaigning for donations on the air. By 1997, when general manager Thomas Little retired after 20 years running KVCR radio and television, the stations had more than 12,700 paid members.