. The
South Carolina General Assembly in 1958 authorized a study to see if instructional television could assist the state's public schools.
Dreher High School in Columbia, South Carolina lent its library to be the study's studio. The first courses (a
French course taught by Madame Lucille Turney-High and a
geometry course taught by Cornelia Turnbull) were transmitted on September 8, 1958, via
closed-circuit television. Following the study's success, the South Carolina Educational Television Commission (ETV) was created as a state agency, on July 1, 1960. By 1962 ETV extended closed-circuit, classroom television service to most South Carolina counties. In 1963, the Commission launched the first open-circuit (broadcast) educational station in South Carolina, WNTV in
Greenville. One year later, WITV in
Charleston signed on. Two years later, WRLK-TV in Columbia, made its debut. The network grew to eleven television transmitters covering all of the state. After years of receiving
NET and PBS programs on
tape delay, it entered PBS' satellite network in 1978. In 2000, SCETV broadcast the first digital television program in the state. Since 2003, the state network identifies on-air as simply "ETV." South Carolina Educational Radio (
public radio) began in 1972, when WEPR in
Clemson signed on the air with maximum power of 100,000 watts (WEPR later moved its
city of license to Greenville). The network eventually expanded to eight radio transmitters (five 100 kW and three 30 kW transmitters). The
South Carolina Educational Radio Network was renamed ETV Radio in 2003. "ETV" was viewed as a general brand name for both radio and television. In 2015, the radio network was called
South Carolina Public Radio. R. Lynn Kalmbach was selected as the network's project director in 1958 and led it until his death in 1965. Henry J. Cauthen became ETV's president and general manager and served in numerous leadership roles developing American public broadcasting, including chair of the
Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). Cauthen retired in 1997. Paul Amos served as ETV's third president from 1998 until his death in 2000. Maurice "Moss" Bresnahan was ETV's president and CEO from 2001 to 2008. David Crouch served as interim president in 2009. Linda O'Bryon was president from 2010 to 2017. Anthony Padgett is the current president and CEO.
Digital TV era Despite the
DTV Delay Act national transition extension to June 12, 2009, SCETV discontinued the analog signals of its 11 full-power stations February 18, 2009. Each station's post-transition digital allocations and the FCC Repack Plan (2017) are as follows: On April 13, 2017, the FCC identified SCETV will be compensated $43.2 million to have WRET-TV go off-the-air as part of the
Spectrum auction. WRET will relinquish RF 43 and go into a channel sharing arrangement with WNTV, starting on January 23, 2018. On August 30, 2017,
PBS Kids was added on new subchannel .4 and online. On October 31, 2017, SCETV submitted an application to change the digital terrestrial signal of WITV from channel 7 (VHF) to channel 24 (UHF); the changeover was scheduled to take place between May and July 2020. ==Commission==