KAKM, virtual channel 7 (VHF digital channel 8), is a Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) member television station licensed to Anchorage, Alaska, United States. Owned by Alaska Public Media, it is sister to National Public Radio (NPR) member station KSKA (91.1 FM). The two outlets share studios at the Elmo Sackett Broadcast Center on the campus of Alaska Pacific University; KAKM's transmitter is located near Knik, Alaska.
KAKM was the only PBS station in Alaska that was not part of AlaskaOne during its existence. The call letters were chosen to represent the three major geographic areas served by the station: Anchorage, Kenai, and Matanuska.
KAKM operates a full-time satellite station, KTOO-TV (virtual channel 3, VHF digital channel 10), licensed to the capital city of Juneau. This station is owned by Capital Community Broadcasting as a sister to non-commercial FM radio stations KTOO (FM), KNLL, and KRNN, but is operated by Alaska Public Media. KTOO's transmitter is located in downtown Juneau. KTOO was formerly part of AlaskaOne, until its dissolution in 2012.
History[]
KAKM first started regular transmissions on May 7, 1975 at 7:07 p.m. Previously, PBS programming had been offered to Anchorage stations on per-program basis. (For example, Sesame Street was carried on KTVA [channel 11], Mister Rogers' Neighborhood on KIMO [channel 13, now KYUR], and The Electric Company on KENI-TV [channel 2, now KTUU-TV]).
KAKM became the flagship station of Alaska Public Television, the successor to AlaskaOne, replacing KUAC-TV in Fairbanks, on July 1, 2012. As a result, KTOO-TV became a full-time satellite of KAKM. The other AlaskaOne station, low-power television station KYUK-LD (channel 15) in Bethel, also rebroadcasts KAKM, but it broadcasts the Alaska Rural Communications Service on its second digital subchannel in place of Create.
In November 2011, AlaskaOne's corporate entity, Alaska Public Broadcasting Service, voted to transfer the network's operations from KUAC-TV to KAKM effective July 1, 2012. Claiming that this arrangement would do financial harm to KUAC, UAF announced on December 8 that KUAC-TV would leave AlaskaOne and revert to being a separate station at that time. On July 1, KUAC-TV officially relaunched as a separate station, while KTOO-TV and KYUK merged with KAKM to form Alaska Public Television.