PBS Wisconsin is the statewide PBS member network for Wisconsin outside Milwaukee, a service of the Educational Communications Board and UW-Madison, broadcasting on six stations from its Madison home in Wisconsin Public Media.
PBS Wisconsin is the statewide PBS member network serving Wisconsin outside the Milwaukee area. It is a service of the Wisconsin Educational Communications Board, a state agency, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where it is part of Wisconsin Public Media, the university division that also runs Wisconsin Public Radio. Its studios and offices are in Vilas Communications Hall on the UW-Madison campus in Madison.
The network dates to May 3, 1954, when WHA-TV in Madison signed on as Wisconsin's first educational television station. After the state legislature created the Educational Communications Board in 1971, the board added stations in Green Bay, Menomonie, La Crosse, Wausau and Park Falls during the 1970s. The service was known as Wisconsin Public Television from 1986 and took the PBS Wisconsin name in November 2019.
Today PBS Wisconsin broadcasts on six full-power stations, WHA-TV Madison, WPNE-TV Green Bay, WHLA-TV La Crosse, WHWC-TV Menomonie, WHRM-TV Wausau and WLEF-TV Park Falls, plus a network of translators, carrying PBS, the Wisconsin Channel, Create and PBS KIDS, and it streams its programs online. It reports more than 583,000 broadcast viewers a week. Its staff produce the news program Here & Now and other local journalism, election coverage under the Wisconsin Vote banner, the Made in Wisconsin slate of original programs, and free, standards-aligned classroom media from PBS Wisconsin Education, and they run community events such as the Great Wisconsin Quilt Show and the Garden and Green Living Expo. Friends of PBS Wisconsin, a legally separate nonprofit, raises funds for the network.
PBS Wisconsin hires for production and storytelling, news, education, events and engagement, fundraising, marketing and finance. Its staff are University of Wisconsin-Madison employees, so regular openings are posted on the UW-Madison jobs site and student positions at the UW-Madison Student Job Center.
