Eight, Arizona Pbs history

The offer jumpstarted plans to build an educational television station in Phoenix and prompted the Arizona Board of Regents to authorize expenditures for the transmitter and additional equipment in January 1960.

By 1966, KAET broadcast 50 hours a week of programs.

It converted to color, first with network shows, with a grant for a color broadcast chain in 1967; the station's lobbying for color conversion was aided when the staff delivered a color television set to university president G. Homer Durham.

In 1973, KAET moved from its original home in the Engineering Center to another location on the Tempe campus, the newly built Stauffer Hall communications building.

Statewide expansion began in 1980 when translators on Mount Francis and Mingus Mountain, followed the next year by another on Mount Elden, were activated.

In June 1999, KAET was issued a permit to construct digital television facilities on UHF channel 29.

KAET-DT went on the air in April 2001 and was licensed on June 12, 2001, becoming the fifth licensed digital television station in the state.

Known for years as "Channel 8", the station began using "Arizona PBS" as a secondary brand in 2005.

The first round came in late October 2008, when the station, having missed its fundraising targets by hundreds of thousands of dollars, had to lay off six workers.

The financial crisis also delayed KAET's move from its longtime home on the Tempe campus to its new headquarters in downtown Phoenix; the move was completed at the end of 2009.

Previously under the supervision of the ASU public affairs office, though with a close association with the Cronkite School, operational control of the station was transferred to Cronkite itself in 2014.