The Tokyo station was opened on January 10, 1959 as Japan's first television broadcasting station specializing in educational broadcasting, and the Osaka station was opened on April 1, 1959. Initially, it didn't broadcast all day, being interrupted for several hours during the day and test patterns were played. Tokyo opened on channel 1 from Tokyo Tower, which was just completed, and on April 6 of the same year, the general and educational channels that were broadcast on channel 3 from the transmission station in Chiyoda Ward (later Chiyoda Broadcasting Center) were replaced. Until then, channel 12 assigned for US military radar was used in Osaka. Even nationwide, there were relatively many areas where 12ch was assigned to analog broadcasting on educational television. Until Educational TV was made available nationwide, some programs for the schools were broadcast on NHK General TV in areas where only NHK General TV broadcast. Color broadcasting began around the same time as NHK General TV. According to the NHK Archives program guide search, there is a description in the program "Kacchan" for young children on September 10, 1960, when the main broadcast started, and after September 12, the programs "Science Class", "First grade of elementary school" and "I made it" for young children are broadcast in color in Tokyo. On October 5, 1959, Okaasan to Issho’s broadcast started. Okaasan to Issho broadcast as a children program to all places broadcasting NHK Educational TV. Most NHK-E stations converted to color on March 20, 1966. Okinawa started receiving the network in 1972, with the conversion of OHK into an
NHK unit following the
reversion agreement. Due to the influence of the first oil crisis, after January 16, 1974, 1 to 3 hours between 14:30 to 17:30 were used for an interruption, Both were considerably slower than NHK General TV and commercial broadcasters in Tokyo and Osaka. Teletext broadcasting (subtitled broadcasting) started later in 1999. However, with the launch of these services, the restrictions on the organization of educational television gradually decreased. As if to match this movement, some of the genres that had been broadcast comprehensively until then have been transferred to educational television as part of the genre organization, coupled with the start of the main broadcast of satellite television. The children's programs that were broadcast comprehensively disappeared in the Heisei era and were concentrated on educational television. News and information programs began to be organized during the general vacant time slots. On October 6, 2025, all NHK E stations outside of Tokyo ceased local origination and have been unified under the Tokyo station. Despite this, the callsigns are still used for legal identifications. ==Programs==