KTSC (TV)

On June 16, 1965, Southern Colorado State College applied with the Federal Communications Commission to build a new noncommercial television station on Pueblo's reserved channel 8. However, the original proposal of a lower-power station that would primarily have covered the immediate Pueblo area—despite the cooperation of KOAA-TV, which donated a surplus tower and transmitter—was dashed by changes in federal regulations and in funding procedures that were key to construction. As a result, the application was amended to specify a transmitter site on Baculite Mesa—which KOAA agreed to share with the college—before being granted on June 26, 1969.[3] This modification was key to increasing the service area of the proposed station.[4]

KTSC debuted on February 3, 1971,[5] four months after the college's other broadcast service, KTSC-FM (which began in October 1970).[4] However, some viewers in Colorado Springs and Manitou Springs were inadequately serviced by the Baculite Mesa transmitter. As a result, in 1977, KTSC sought federal funds to build new translators to serve those communities,[6] and channel 21 for Colorado Springs and channel 7 in Manitou Springs were activated the next year.[7] In advance of the launch of a full-power channel 21 station in 1985, KTSC's Colorado Springs translator moved to channel 53 and relocated to Cheyenne Mountain in 1982,[8] and the channel was changed again to 15 in 1990.[9]

The Buell Communication Center (left) on the CSU Pueblo campus

In 1984, architect Temple Hoyne Buell donated a former Safeway supermarket building in the Midtown Shopping Center to KTSC, which had operated from studios on the campus of what was then known as the University of Southern Colorado since its startup.[10] The station also ordered new technical equipment, which was moved into the new facility over the course of 1985.[11] However, by August 1985, unforeseen construction and technical challenges had led KTSC to scrap the Midtown Shopping Center project; Buell instead donated $700,000 to a capital campaign for a new on-campus home for channel 8,[12] which was completed in 1986 and named the Buell Communications Center.[13] The Buell Foundation, set up after Temple Buell's death, later made a $6 million gift to RMPBS which led to the naming of its Buell Public Media Center in Denver.[14]

Colorado Springs, part of KTSC's coverage area, was unusual in that it received translators of three different public TV stations: KTSC, KRMA, and KBDI-TV. KRMA began broadcasting to Colorado Springs on a channel 63 translator in 1989.[15] By 1995, with cuts proposed to public broadcasting, feasibility proposals on a combination of the three outlets were being drafted.[16] Two years later, merger talks between KTSC and KRMA deepened,[17] and in 1998, the two agreed to combine, spurred by the potential for major capital expenditures required to convert to digital television.[18] In the second half of 1999, KTSC's schedule was gradually adjusted to match KRMA's.[19] The outright sale of the station was completed in 2000,[20] having been slowed by fallout from a scrapped 1992 proposal to switch technical facilities with KOAA-TV, which would have allowed the latter station to improve its facilities in a way it could not while remaining on channel 5.[21]

Despite the conversion, KTSC continued to retain some programming oriented toward Southern Colorado that was produced from Pueblo. CSU Pueblo and RMPBS retain a formal affiliation agreement by which university students are trained in the Buell Communication Center and involved in the production of regional programming,[22] which by 2012 amounted to about 300 hours a year.[23] The quiz show Matchwits, featuring teams of high school students, continued with Rocky Mountain PBS—being expanded to statewide distribution in 2012—until coming to an end in 2018 as the network shifted its education focus to younger age groups.[24]