WPSU Celebrating 70th Anniversary of Educational Television in U.S.

| April 22, 2022

CLARION, Pa. (EYT) – “We are central and northern Pennsylvania’s PBS and NPR member stations,” Don Bendel, Director of Business Support for WPSU, told members of the Clarion Rotary Club during the weekly meeting.

(Pictured above: Sarah Caterson, business support representative of WPSU, and Don Bendel explain the reach of WPSU radio and television in Pennsylvania to members of Clarion Rotary.)

Bendel and Caterson outlined the broad reach and programming that originated at State College, including the popular Our Town that will soon feature Clarion for the second time.

“We are coming up on the 70th anniversary of educational television in the United States,” Bendel said. “What maybe a lot of people don’t know is that it happened at Penn State on April 20, 1952. There was a conference at Penn State to set up educational television, and there were 242 channels that all came out of that conference.”

In addition to its radio and television programming from NPR and PBS, WPSU digital, 275,000 listeners tune in to the WPSU FM main digital stream each year, averaging 800 listeners per day. WPSU.Org has 1.6 million animal page views with 600,000 unique visitors. WPSU’s YouTube channel grew by 10,000 subscribers between January 1, 2020, and December 31, 2021. As of October 2021, 38,240 people subscribe to the channel.

“Our over-the-air-broadcast signal reaches about 24 counties on radio and TV in about 13 counties,” Bendel said. “We’re just about on the western-most edge of our coverage in Clarion County. From there, over to Williamsport down into Maryland into upstate New York and McKean County on cable systems.”

Add all of that to the ability to listen to WPSU radio, if you have a smart speaker at home, you can ask Alexa to play WPSU.

“With the PBS passport, anybody who becomes a member of WPSU TV at the $60 a year level, or $5 a month, has access to the PBS passport, which is kind of like Netflix for PBS. It includes all of the PBS programming and can be accessed on a tablet or smart TV or Roku device. You can watch that anytime you want,” Bendel added.

For over 20 years, WPSU has passionately produced the Our Town series, according to the PSU website, a show that captures the spirit of local communities from the perspective of the residents.

Our Town provides a special opportunity for community volunteers to share their town’s history by providing information on organizations, arts, schools, attractions, local folklore, places, history, and people.

WPSU spotlights and documents the character and culture for Clarion to share with the world.

This is the second time WPSU is producing an Our Town Clarion. The first was in December of 2001, Season Six, Episode Two.

“If some of you aren’t familiar, in Our Town, we come into your community and we ask that you be the storytellers,” Caterson explained. “It could be about anything, any kind of story, whether it’s history or just about your family or a business or whatever. It’s a lot of fun, and it’s a really nice way to compile the area’s history and sort of how things move forward.

“I know that we had more people sign up to do interviews earlier this month to tell their stories that day was more than we’ve ever had. We have a waiting list, which was remarkable. Some of the same people from Clarion who shared their stories will be joining us in State College to answer phones for support when it premiers.”

WPSU commits to completing the production, no matter how much support is raised before or after it airs.

Support for WPSU and PBS is vital to the continued operation of the programming, according to both the visiting members of the development team. It was a soft-sell approach to WPSU, but many businesses take advantage of the broad reach to promote their message. For more information, contact WPSU business support at business@wpsu.org or 814-863-5597.


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