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| Programming | |
|---|---|
| Subchannels | |
| Affiliations | PBS |
| Ownership | |
| Owner | Arkansas Educational Television Commission |
| History | |
| Founded | December 4, 1961 |
First air date | December 4, 1966 |
Former names | Arkansas Educational Television Network (1966–2020) |
| NET (1966–1970) | |
| Links | |
| Website | www |
Arkansas PBS (sometimes shortened to AR PBS) is a state network of PBS member television stations serving the U.S. state of Arkansas. It is operated by the Arkansas Educational Television Commission, a statutory non-cabinet agency of the Arkansas government operated through the Arkansas Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, which holds the licenses for all of the public television stations based in the state. The commission is managed by an independent board of university and education officials, and gubernatorial appointees representing each of Arkansas's four congressional districts. Along with offering television programs supplied by PBS and various independent distributors, the network produces public affairs, cultural and documentary programming as well as sports events sanctioned by the Arkansas Activities Association (AAA).
The broadcast signals of the six full-power and five low-power translator stations that make up the Arkansas PBS network cover almost the entire state, as well as portions of the neighboring states of Mississippi, Tennessee, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, and Louisiana that have overlapping access to PBS programming through locally based public television stations; its programming is distributed via a thirteen-site microwave interconnection relay system around the state, which covers most of Arkansas, as well as parts of surrounding states.
Arkansas PBS also provides online education programs for classroom use and teacher professional development through ArkansasIDEAS (in collaboration with the Arkansas Department of Education), livestreams of state government and board proceedings and other government activities through the Arkansas Citizens Access Network (AR-CAN), and audio reading services for the blind and visually impaired through the Arkansas Information Reading Service for the Blind (AIRS); it also maintains the state's Warning, Alert and Response Network (WARN) infrastructure to disseminate emergency alerts to Arkansas residents. The main offices, production facilities and network operations of Arkansas PBS are based out of the R. Lee Reaves Center for Educational Telecommunications, located adjacent to the University of Central Arkansas in Conway.