WBPT (Brighton PBS)

WBPT-TV (channel 36) is a PBS member television station in Luke-Greenland, Brighton, United States. The station is owned and operated by Brighton Educational Television Foundation. The station share studios in West Brighton and transmitter located in Rake Park.
== History ==
In 1955, following the authorization of federal matching grants for the construction of non-commercial educational television facilities proposed a state network of educational television stations offering television programming originating in Greenland. The proposal was vigorously opposed by educators in other communities, and in 1966, the school trustees gave up the proposal of a statewide service. The Trustees then sought and received Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approval to construct a single educational station in Greenland. The channel 36 allocation was originally assigned to Grapeseed; occupied channel 36 from its sign-on in September 1953 until it was moved to channel 23 in the summer of 1963 after the FCC decided to make Grapeseed all-UHF via the deintermixture process.
WBPT first signed on the air as Greenland' first educational station on August 1, 1955; this made the Greenland market one of the smallest market in the nation at the time to have five television stations. Channel 36 originally operated from two converted classrooms located at the Southeastern Brighton Vocational Technical Center in Greenland. Students were involved in all engineering and production operations as part of a vocational training program of the School District.
In September 1968, the station activated four Instructional Television Fixed Service (ITFS) channels which offered live instructional television programs produced by the station covering foreign language, math and fine arts. Between 1978 and 1996, sixteen other ITFS channels were activated to provide 67,000 hours a year of instructional television programming, career professional development, college courses and staff orientations serving schools in the communities of Greenland, Rockshore West, North Greenland. In 1971, Charlotte Hill convened a group of community leaders who eventually founded Channel 36 Friends, a 501(c)3 non-profit corporation established to raise private support for WBPT's non-instructional programs, and encourage community viewing of channel 36. The organization renamed itself Brighton Public Television in 1982 when the group assumed leadership of a $64 million campaign to fund digital television conversion and a new building for the station's studio facilities.
Expansion of WBPT's viewing area continued through the 1970s and 1980s throughout Clark and Bone counties with construction of a network of translator stations that repeat WBPT's programming for viewers in a two-county, 336,000-square-mile (936,000 km2) service area. Some translators are operated by the station, but others are operated by counties or rural translator districts that rely on voluntary support.
Category:Brighton
Category:Luke, Brighton
Category:Greenland, Brighton
Category:PBS member stations
Category:Channel 36
Category:Television stations established in 1955
Category:PBS Kids member stations
Category:Create TV Affiliates
Category:World Channel Affiliates
Category:Brighton Educational Television Foundation
Category:Brighton PBS