WCTE

WCTE is a PBS member television station serving the north central counties of Tennessee, the so-called "Upper Cumberland" region. The station is licensed to the Upper Cumberland Broadcast Council; studios are located on the campus of Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville, Tennessee, its city of license. Although Cookeville is located in the Nashville market, the station also serves the western fringe of the Knoxville market. It broadcasts digitally on UHF channel 22, the frequency where its analog signal was located.

History

WCTE first signed on the air on August 21, 1978. It was the last in a series of stations launched by the Tennessee Department of Education over an 12-year period, finally bringing public television to the last remaining part of the state that previously had little or no access to it. Some of the western parts of the viewing area could pick up the signal of Nashville's WDCN (now WNPT) when it broadcast on channel 2 from 1962 to 1973, but WDCN's move to the weaker channel 8 in 1973 left most of the territory without PBS service for five years.