WTVI (channel 42) is a PBS member television station in Charlotte, North Carolina, United States, owned by Central Piedmont Community College. The station's studios are located on Commonwealth Avenue in east Charlotte, and its transmitter is located in the unincorporated area of Newell in northeastern Mecklenburg County. It is one of three PBS stations serving the Charlotte metropolitan area and the only public television station in the Carolinas that is not part of either state's statewide network—PBS North Carolina and South Carolina Educational Television.
Though Charlotte had been allocated channel 42 for educational use in 1952, the city pursued educational broadcasting first through airtime on commercial stations and then through the facilities of Charlotte's commercial WUTV (channel 36), which were offered at no cost. However, the school system was ineligible for membership in National Educational Television if it operated using a commercial station, and the owners of WUTV began charging for airtime. In 1962, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools acquired the equipment of the failed WTVI in Fort Pierce, Florida, for use as the basis to start a local educational TV station. WTVI began broadcasting on August 27, 1965, providing daytime programs for schools and evening programs for the community. Its manager, Dona Lee Davenport, was the first woman to run an educational TV station.
In the late 1970s, WTVI began community fundraising but was stymied by strained relations between the school board and station supporters. The school board began exploring ways to transfer WTVI out of its control, including a merger with the statewide UNC-TV network in North Carolina, but any merger would have seen WTVI's local facility closed, which generated concerns about how such a setup would serve Charlotte interests. In 1981, the station was spun off as a community licensee, the Charlotte–Mecklenburg Public Broadcasting Authority, which received county support. Through the 1980s and 1990s, WTVI expanded its technical facilities and local programming, though it changed approaches as to how to distinguish its prime-time lineup from that of UNC-TV and South Carolina ETV. For five years, commercial station WBTV produced a 10 p.m. newscast for WTVI.
Under Elise Garner, who took over as general manager in 2003, WTVI initially succeeded with a highly differentiated lineup and scheduling practice of PBS shows, but over time it lost viewers and donors. The onset of the Great Recession caused shortfalls in viewer support and prompted Mecklenburg County to discontinue its funding support for WTVI. The station was nearly insolvent when it merged into Central Piedmont Community College (CPCC) in 2012. CPCC integrated its existing television operation and academic programs into WTVI, and the station's finances improved. In addition to airing national public television programs, WTVI produces local programming focusing on the Charlotte area.
History Construction and early years In 1952, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) allocated channel 42 in Charlotte, North Carolina, for use by an educational television station. In 1953, a group of civic leaders including a committee convened by the mayor of Charlotte resolved to seek financial and other support to put such a station on the air. Three years later, under superintendent Elmer Garinger, the Charlotte school system pushed to provide the city's schools with educational television in some form: a closed-circuit network, rebroadcasting of WUNC-TV of Chapel Hill into the Charlotte area, or the construction of channel 42. Another option was also available to the Charlotte schools. Charlotte's then-silent commercial station WQMC-TV (channel 36) offered its facilities for educational broadcasting. In 1957, programs from WUNC-TV began to become available in the Charlotte area, rebroadcast by WSOC-TV (channel 9). By 1959, both WSOC-TV and WBTV (channel 3) were making time available to broadcast WUNC-produced programs for Charlotte schools' benefit. When WBTV and WSOC-TV inadvertently cleared the same half-hour on their schedules in 1959, for a time leaving schools to choose one or the other program being made available, the idea of building a microwave transmission relay from Chapel Hill was floated. Channel 42 was a long-term plan at this point, impractical due to its cost but seen as the eventual answer. On July 1, 1960, the school systems of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County merged to form Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.
That year, a different plan came about when a group of local businessmen proposed putting channel 36 back on the air and donating its airtime for school use. The station, then bearing the call sign WUTV, intended to be on the air by September 1, 1960, but it debuted a year behind schedule in time for the 1961 fall semester, on September 5, 1961. In preparation, 25 junior and senior high schools in Charlotte were made capable of receiving WUTV's ultra high frequency (UHF) telecasts. The advent of WUTV doubled the number of programs from Chapel Hill that were available in Charlotte. The arrangement between the schools and WUTV's ownership, the Century Advertising Company, provided free use of the channel 36 facility during the day for three years. In 1962, the 75 elementary schools in the city were equipped, and the program of locally originated French-language classes was expanded. Outside of programs for schools, WUTV operated on a minimum schedule to keep its broadcast license, airing filmed travelogues in the evenings. It lacked facilities to produce live programming, so all material was pre-recorded or rebroadcast from WUNC. However, because WUTV operated on a commercial license, Charlotte–Mecklenburg schools could not become a member of National Educational Television (NET), a distributor of educational programming, using channel 36. The school board asked Century to enter into a share-time relationship much like that used at the time by WMSB at Michigan State University, in which Michigan State held its own license and a commercial group shared the channel, but Century did not agree to this. NET officials urged the school system to set up its own TV service. Dona Lee Davenport, a Charlotte teacher who became involved with local television, looked on at the WUNC programs and found they did not meet the needs of Charlotte–Mecklenburg schools.
On May 1, 1962, the Charlotte–Mecklenburg Board of Education agreed to buy the equipment and assets of WTVI (channel 19), a failed commercial UHF station in Fort Pierce, Florida. Its owner, Gene Dyer, spent half the year in Highlands, North Carolina. For $86,200, the school board purchased studio equipment and towers to hold an antenna and a microwave relay. Aside from a building and land, the school system now had the basis to pursue construction of its own station. Later that month, the new superintendent, A. Craig Phillips, was authorized and instructed to prepare an application for channel 42. This application was completed and filed in November, and on March 18, 1963, the FCC awarded the construction permit, which took the call sign WTVI. Davenport gave several meanings for the I, such as instruction. That same month, Century began charging for the airtime on WUTV; it billed $5,000 for the remainder of the 1962–63 school year and proposed a fee of more than $30,000 for the 1963–64 school year. The board of education opted to close out the year on channel 36 and not to renew. Further, there was a dispute between the city and the school board as to where to place the studios for channel 42, planned to be co-located with an education center. The school board forged ahead with a site near the Charlotte Coliseum. Tower erection and building construction were underway by November 1963 for the new station. Though the building was complete by August 1964, when the station was slated for a debut later that year, the launch of channel 42 was postponed several times due to late arrival of equipment. Station manager Davenport was injured in a car accident, further delaying operations.
WTVI made its first broadcast on August 27, 1965, opening with two hours of NET programming. Davenport became the first woman to run a public television station. Within six months, the station had 15 employees and was on the air 15 hours a day, including local programs for teachers. In 1968, WBTV donated its old black-and-white outside broadcasting unit to WTVI. Two years later, WSOC-TV donated color-capable film and slide equipment, allowing the station to begin broadcasting some programming in color. Early programs included the public affairs series Observations, featuring the reporters of The Charlotte Observer, and the 1972 series You're On, which opened channel 42's cameras to the public to express their views. WTVI was not the only source of public television programming in metro Charlotte. The University of North Carolina, owner of WUNC, extended its television service into a statewide network and opened WUNG-TV (channel 58), licensed to Concord, in September 1967. South Carolina Educational Television opened a translator at Rock Hill in January 1969 and replaced it with the high-power WNSC-TV (channel 30) in 1978. In 1970, NET was supplanted by PBS as the network for public broadcasting.
From school to community ownership The Friends of WTVI, a support and volunteer group for the station, was formed in February 1975 to support the station's public television operations. At the time, the station could not conduct on-air fundraising because North Carolina law prohibited tax-funded organizations, such as the Charlotte–Mecklenburg school board, from holding fund drives. To resolve this issue, the school board approved the creation of WTVI Inc., an affiliate charged with raising funds from the local community for the station's operation. The next year, WTVI raised funds in a drive to buy a new, color-capable outside broadcasting van. The advent of outside support coincided with competing funding priorities for the school board and the county, which trimmed their appropriations for channel 42. That year, Davenport was transferred from working for the school board to working for WTVI Inc. after six managers complained that WTVI had missed out on opportunities to obtain federal funds that would have improved its financial position. One major purpose of WTVI Inc., was to eventually become self-sufficient so that it might one day take over the station from the school board. At the time, the adoption of video tape recorders made educational stations less necessary at the school level than they once had been, and the number of public TV stations operated by school systems was dwindling. WMFE-TV in Orlando, Florida, which had similarly transitioned to a community licensee, had a budget twice as large as WTVI despite being in a smaller market.
In January 1979, the school board voted to study ways to spin off WTVI. At the same time, WTVI Inc. struggled to raise money on its own and suffered from image problems. The continued presence of Davenport contributed to poor relations between company and school board. Bob Wisehart of The Charlotte News noted that it "seems to function in a climate of paranoia", while Ron Alridge of The Charlotte Observer called it "too secretive and elitist" and pondered that the failure of WTVI Inc. might be the best outcome for the station. In May, WTVI Inc. fired Davenport, whom Alridge hailed for her efficiency in organizing the station and getting it to air but received poor marks for her handling of people and personnel issues. Upon her death in 2001, she was remembered for her ability to attract community support to the station in its infancy.