In February 1984, Bitterroot Valley Public Television Inc. incorporated and applied to the
National Telecommunications and Information Administration for federal funding to build a low-power public TV station to serve the
Bitterroot Valley, including
Darby,
Grantsdale,
Corvallis, and
Victor. Backers of the proposal had been doing local origination programming on a local cable system. By 1985, the group had a construction permit for channel 21 at
Darby and planned a studio in
Hamilton. Local staffing was minimized by the association with the Rural Television System, a Nevada-based group. In early 1988, most of the grant money was released to the group, allowing for the purchase of the final equipment necessary to start BVTV from a studio at Corvallis. The site at the local electric cooperative also contained a satellite dish to downlink PBS signals. Construction was complete by the end of July, and BVTV was broadcasting from channel 21 by the next month. It formed part of a new wave of rural Montana stations alongside
SKC TV at
Salish Kootenai College. In 1989, the station began airing regular local programming on Saturday nights, including a public affairs show and a program of student broadcasts from four local high schools. The Darby transmitter served the southern half of the Bitterroot Valley. On December 24, 1989, the Corvallis transmitter opened on channel 67, increasing the station's potential audience from 7,000 to 20,000 people. At the time, BVTV's operating costs increased while the station was already in debt. The third transmitter, channel 29 in
Florence, opened in 1994, providing coverage to communities such as
Eagle Watch,
Burnt Fork, and parts of
Stevensville. The expansion to Florence included a studio allowing the high school there to originate programming for BVTV. In the mid-1990s, the electric cooperative expanded into the former studio space, limiting BVTV's ability to do live broadcasts or fundraising. At the same time, the incipient
Montana PBS network expanded into the region with the launch of KUFM-TV at
Missoula. KUFM-TV, with its higher-power
VHF signal, posed a threat to the viability of the lower-power Bitterroot station. BVTV was not broadcast on the local cable system, which offered KUFM-TV and
KSPS-TV in
Spokane, Washington. This limited its potential audience and donor base. BVTV never converted to digital. The channel 67 transmitter, K67EC, was deleted at the end of 2011, having never submitted an application to move when channel 67 was removed from television use. Channels 21 and 29, K21AN and K29DA, failed to file renewals of their
broadcast licenses in 2014 and were thus deleted. ==References==