History

WSRE-TV, the public television station for Northwest Florida and Southeast Alabama, began operations in 1967 under a license granted to the Escambia County School Board. From the beginning the station was operated and managed by Pensacola Junior College. During the public school hours of 8 am until 2 p.m. the programming was supported by the school board, broadcasting K-12 teacher produced videotaped programs as well as some live studio courses. At 2 p.m. the station would sign off until 5 p.m., when it would sign on again with National Educational Television (NET) the forerunner of our current Public Broadcasting Service. The evening programming was educational, but not formal instruction, and was aimed at an adult market.

In 1972 the school board transferred the station’s license to the college and withdrew its financial support. Consequently, PJC reduced the amount of daytime programming while continuing its evening broadcasts with the Public Broadcasting System (the name changed from National Educational Television in 1968). The college used the facilities during the daytime to expand the College of the Air (COTA) offerings. This was the time of the Vietnam war, and PJC cooperated with Naval Air Station/Pensacola to maintain tape libraries of courses on ships for active duty personnel enrolled at the college.

On the Pensacola campus the station supported closed circuit TV on three channels. Rooms 250, 251, and 252 were connected by cable to the station and used to deliver commercially produced courses for several programs of study, particularly Nursing. During this period the college also began offering college credit courses in TV production and announcing.

In 1978 the station switched from using land lines and microwave reception, which originated live form New York and DC, to using a C band downlink from the PBS satellite. From this point on through the next decade WSRE focused on expanding its PBS programming, needing to be on the air more hours. In part the shift in emphasis resulted from a decline in the COTA program and the deletion of the TV production courses. The station did continue to support instructional initiatives during this period to some degree, using the satellite downlink to bring telecourse capabilities to the campus in the mid-eighties.

The nineteen nineties has been a period of almost constant change for WSRE, bringing several firsts to Northwest Florida. In 1991 the WSRE-TV Foundation, Inc., a direct support organization of PJC, purchased a Ku band uplink truck, a level of technology rare among community college managed TV stations. This mobile uplink remains the only one in Pensacola and is utilized by NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, FPBS and other broadcasting networks and stations in addition to WSRE.

The most significant enhancement to WSRE since its beginning was the move in September of 1994 into the new seven million-dollar Kugelman Center for Telecommunications. The new state-of-the-art facility made WSRE the first digital television production studio in the area. Simultaneous with the move and because of PBS deadlines, the station switched to a Ku/digital band downlink and added a fixed uplink. The Kugelman Center, with its new and more technologically advanced equipment, offered capabilities beyond broadcasting as a PBS affiliated TV station. The Center can support multimedia and computers, allowing for a broader use of programming as an instructional tool. In addition to having three studios for productions the new equipment uses digital technology totally, from the cameras to the tape machines, improving the production quality. WSRE-TV through its automated/multi-channel facility provides programming services for open broadcast on Channel 23, cable distribution and wireless cable television distribution as well as satellite uplink programming and network services.

To take advantage of the new facilities and technology, the college reinstated the college credit TV production courses the spring semester following the move. At the same time the station became one of twenty sites in the country to offer MATHLINE, a program to assist middle school teachers experiment and collaborate in the use of new teaching methods in the classroom. Although MATHLINE is a non-broadcast course, it does utilize videotaped instruction along with complete computer assistance including e-mail and chat capabilities through the PBS FirstClass satellite computer interconnection. WSRE brought SIGHTLINE on-the-air with assistance from an annual grant from the Department of Education. SIGHTLINE is a reading service for the visually impaired that is broadcast over the SAP audio channel on Channel 23. Over 100 volunteers spend time reading the local newspapers and national publications and magazines for the benefit of the blind and handicapped.

WSRE continues to expand its involvement with instructional concerns of the college. Production staff became more involved with supporting the Distance Learning program, housed in the Kugelman Center since its opening. Allan Pizzato, the Director of the Center for Telecommunications and General Manager, and Kathy Schultz, Director of Distance learning, in partnership with Cox Communications brought LNE, where Learning Never Ends, on line in September of 1997. LNE provides PJC with an additional channel on Cox Communications Cable system in Escambia County for the enhancement of its educational/instructional telecourses. They also began to coordinate with the Santa Rosa Public School District to establish a microwave link to the public schools in that county in order to provide additional opportunities for televised classes to Santa Rosa County. A fixed satellite uplink to the Florida Department of Education transponder will also allow PJC to expand its role in assisting the production and delivery of instruction across the district.

WSRE has also expanded its role in assisting the production and delivery of instruction by becoming a PBS Ready to Learn station which will provide Programming and outreach activities for pre-school children, enhancing their ability to enter our local school system AReady to Learn@. In addition, WSRE is a National Teachers Training Institute station providing new instructional opportunities for K - 12 teachers within our two county area.

Pensacola Junior College, through its operation of WSRE-TV, brings a state-of-the-art telecommunications facility to the community with the primary goal of utilizing technology to enhance the delivery and content of educational and instructional information to students of all ages.