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KET's Virginia Fox Talks About Kentucky's Digital Future
With the needs of her state's educational system as her guide, Virginia Fox, executive director and CEO of Kentucky Educational Television (KET), is running the 16 Kentucky PBS stations at full speed toward both HDTV and multicasting. DigitalTV caught up with her recently to discuss her organization's efforts.
DigitalTV: Where does Kentucky PBS stand with deployment of HDTV?
Fox: We have 16 transmitters and we are the biggest PBS network in the country and operating as a single licensee through the state of Kentucky. We were either the seventh or eighth station among the PBS stations to go HD. We took our Louisville transmitter first, the biggest market, and the one that we thought would be the most likely to have people go out and buy high definition TV sets early. But, before we put out a bid for 15 transmitters and built out a network of 16 transmitters, we realized that it was very different from building one. So the Louisville station has been digital for nearly two years now. And, we are doing experiments with data to the schools and NOAH Weather is on all of our towers - they lease tower space from us -- which is probably one of the most exciting things I've seen. But since the software costs about $250,000 we can't afford it so far. It is freeware to a home computer owner and they can go directly to it using us. It can alert them to approaching storms.
DigitalTV: What are the other services that you are deploying besides HDTV as part of your digital plan?
Fox: It is the other services that excite me. This is the first technology that has met our mission. We pass through what PBS gives us for evening home entertainment. And...