KAKM

KAKM is a Public television station in Anchorage, Alaska, broadcasting locally on digital channel 8 as a PBS member station. The station is owned by Alaska Public Telecommunications, Inc., and was the only PBS station in Alaska that was not part of AlaskaOne during its existence. Its program is transmitted from Knik TV Mast, and its studios are located at the Elmo Sackett Broadcast Center on the campus of Alaska Pacific University. The call letters were chosen to represent the 3 major geographic areas served by the station Anchorage, Kenai, and Matanuska.

History

The station first started regular transmissions on May 7, 1975. Previously, PBS programming had been offered to Anchorage stations on per-program basis. (For example, Sesame Street was carried on KTVA, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood on KIMO (now KYUR), and The Electric Company on KENI-TV (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.