WCTE Upper Cumberland PBS is the community-licensed PBS member station in Cookeville, Tennessee, serving the 14-county Upper Cumberland region and Central Tennessee with PBS programming, local content and education services.
WCTE Upper Cumberland PBS, also branded WCTE Central TN PBS, is the PBS member station for the Upper Cumberland region of Tennessee. It is licensed to the Upper Cumberland Broadcast Council, a community nonprofit, and broadcasts on channel 22 from a transmitter northwest of Monterey, with studios on East Broad Street in downtown Cookeville. The station went on the air on August 21, 1978, as a Tennessee Department of Education station and passed to community ownership in 1984. Its over-the-air signal reaches much of Middle Tennessee and parts of south-central Kentucky, and its subchannels carry PBS, World, Create and PBS Kids.
WCTE's mission is to use public media to inspire lifelong learning and to give voice to Central Tennessee. Its strategic plan commits the station to local multi-platform storytelling, curriculum-based content for children ages two to eight, workforce and career education with regional partners, and visibility in each of the 14 counties of the Upper Cumberland. The station emphasizes local-interest programming alongside the PBS schedule, its video portal and the Passport service.
The station's staff of about 14 covers production, business development, events, engineering, information technology and administration. It posts full-time and part-time openings on its employment page and runs a Talent Enhancement Program of internships for college students in television production, business development, event planning, broadcast engineering and IT.
