East Tennessee PBS is the community-licensed PBS member station for Knoxville and the Tri-Cities, operating WETP-TV and WKOP-TV since 1967 with local work in workforce development, health, lifelong learning and Tennessee life and heritage.
East Tennessee PBS is the public television service for Knoxville and the Tri-Cities region of East Tennessee, operating WETP-TV (channel 2, licensed to Sneedville and transmitting from Short Mountain near Mooresburg) and WKOP-TV (channel 15, from Sharp's Ridge in North Knoxville). It is owned by the East Tennessee Public Communications Corporation, a community licensee, with studios and offices on East Magnolia Avenue in downtown Knoxville. Each station's subchannels carry PBS, PBS Kids, Create and World.
The station signed on March 20, 1967, as WSJK-TV, a Tennessee Department of Education station created to extend educational television beyond Memphis and Nashville, with early studios hosted by the University of Tennessee. It passed to community ownership in 1983 under the Tennessee Educational Television Network Act, added WKOP-TV in 1990 to improve Knoxville coverage, became WETP-TV in 2003 and adopted the East Tennessee PBS name in 2010.
East Tennessee PBS exists to serve the needs of East Tennessee as a community partner affecting positive change by educating, entertaining and challenging minds. It organizes its local work around four priorities: workforce development (Jobs Explained, Job Pop!), health and wellness (Health Matters, produced with The University of Tennessee Medical Center), education and lifelong learning (PBS Kids, Scholars' Bowl) and Tennessee life, history and heritage (Tennessee Life, Black in Appalachia). Its leadership includes a president and CEO, a chief engineer, a chief development and marketing officer and a director of production, and the station posts openings on its employment page.
