Alaska Public Media plans to expand its television broadcast service of south Anchorage through a proposed acquisition of KTVA from Alaska-based service provider GCI Communication Corp.
The license transfer, pending with the FCC, will improve over–the-air reception of AKPM’s public TV service for up to 85,778 people, wrote AKPM GM Ed Ulman in an email, citing a coverage study by AKPM engineers. KTVA’s signal reaches further into southern Anchorage than AKPM’s KAKM, which originates from a tower near Goose Bay and is partially blocked by geography, he wrote in an email.
KAKM’s signal currently covers 137,022 people.
“Basically, we’re going to operate it as a giant repeater and provide all of our current services that are on our primary tower,” Ulman said. “But it’s going to allow us to reach a lot more households and penetrate that HD broadcast signal into their homes.”
KTVA previously operated as a CBS affiliate, according to Ulman.
AKPM will pay $200,000 for the station and convert it to a noncommercial educational license, according to the purchase agreement filed with the FCC. GCI and AKPM filed their proposed transfer agreement with the FCC Oct. 10, which is still pending. AKPM followed up with its NCE license application Nov. 27, which is also pending.
The agreement includes the KTVA license and transmission facilities, said Billy Wailand, GCI SVP of corporate development, in a statement to Current. GCI sold KTVA’s programming, intellectual property and engineering assets to Gray Media in 2020, Wailand said.
“We were thrilled to be able to reach an agreement, subject to required FCC approvals, with Alaska Public Media, which will put the license and facilities to good use for the community,” Wailand said.
Ulman expressed confidence that the license transfer will be finalized early next year.
AKPM plans to broadcast its primary and multicast channels on KTVA, including Create, PBS Kids and KTOO 360, a statewide public affairs service. The new station also provides a backup transmitter for AKPM’s broadcast service.
“We really do want to make sure that you can watch, listen or read our public content on a platform of your choosing,” Ulman said. “And by expanding with this broadcast footprint, we’re now making it possible for those that may not have the resources to have a high speed internet and stream [to] watch us free over the air more conveniently.”
Expanding broadcast coverage across the region is especially important, Ulman said. GCI, a telecom and cable services provider for Alaska, recently announced that it will stop providing cable services sometime in 2025, Ulman said. Expanding reach to viewers who will lose cable service was a consideration in decisions about the acquisition.
Plus, signals transmitted from two towers means AKPM wouldn’t go completely dark if bad weather knocks down the Goose Bay tower. In an extreme weather event like that, AKPM could still deliver potentially life-saving public safety information, Ulman said.
In Alaska, where temperatures below zero aren’t uncommon, Ulman values the backup capacity and resilience of broadcasting from two different towers, he said. “Obviously we work with all of our commercial broadcast partners to ensure that we have that type of redundancy … to provide life saving information or alerts. … With this service, we’re going to be able to do it more reliably for more folks, especially within the Anchorage-metro area.”
GCI first approached Ulman about the opportunity to acquire KTVA last November, Ulman wrote in an email. After staff discussed and explored the idea, leadership presented the proposal to AKPM’s board of directors. In March, the board authorized negotiations with GCI. AKPM and GCI signed the agreement Oct. 4, Ulman added.
The agreement aligns with AKPM’s five-year plan to expand service to new audiences, he said.
“What we need to do is maximize the minimal resources we have to ensure that we … serve the most citizens we can,” Ulman said. “That was really the driving force behind this decision. It was a big opportunity. We had the resources that we could put towards it. We could see over a time period of about five years not only recovering that, but actually providing a greater, deeper, more accessible service for more Alaskans.”