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WCVE (WCVE-TV since WCVE-FM was added in 1988) is a public television station licensed to Richmond, Virginia. It broadcasts on televisions channel 23 and is owned by Commonwealth Public Broadcasting Company. The station is an affiliate of the PBS, of which WCVE-TV became a charter member. The station signed on for the first time on September 14, 1964. It is considered "the mothership" for a group of public radio and television stations in Virginia. Offices are at 23 Sesame Street in Bon Air, a suburb of Richmond.

History

The community-owned public broadcasting company was established in 1961 by Thomas Boushall (Chairman of the Richmond School Board and an officer of the Bank of Virginia) and a group of concerned citizens to employ television for educational purposes. The patron saints of public broadcasting in central Virginia were Boushall, E. Claiborne Robins Sr., Mary Ann Franklin, and Benjamin W. Spiller. Mrs. Franklin first approached Boushall and Henry I. Willett, then Superintendent of Richmond City Schools, with the idea of establishing an educational television station. Boushall and Franklin then recruited Spiller, who was hired in December 1963 and began working for them in January 1964.

A native of Tulia, Texas, Mr. Spiller had been was working as an engineer for an ABC TV network station in Lafayette, Louisiana. Beginning in January 1964, he worked to construct and establish the new public television station. In the 27 years that followed, Mr. Spiller spearheaded the establishment of three additional public television stations in central and northern Virginia, saved a financially troubled station, and stepped in to prevent public radio from disappearing from Richmond.

WVCE's sister station, WCVW-TV (channel 57) signed on in 1967 after Spiller successfully petitioned the FCC to grant a license for a second public television station, Richmond became the first community in Virginia to have dual stations, and only the eighth in the nation to do so, doubling the amount of instructional programming provided to schools in central Virginia. Almost forty years later, both WVCE and WCVW are still in operation.

In 1974, Commonwealth Public Broadcasting took over WNVT-TV, a Fairfax public TV station on the verge of financial insolvency, in order to protect instructional television and educational services for schools in northern Virginia. In 1981, he oversaw the establishment of a second Northern Virginia station, WNVC-TV. Today, those two stations continue to provide services to schools as well as international programming tailored to the needs of the Washington, DC area’s culturally diverse population.

When Union Theological Seminary & Presbyterian School of Christian Education announced its plans to give up its public radio license for WRFK, which had assumed a fine music format from WFMV, Spiller ensured that public radio would remain alive and well in Richmond and in 1988, WCVE-FM radio went on the air as a National Public Radio (NPR) affiliate. The following year, under Spiller’s leadership, the company established Charlottesville's only community-licensed PBS station, WHTJ-TV.

Benjamin Spiller’s final contribution to the growth and development of public broadcasting in central Virginia occurred just before his retirement, with the addition of a 25,000 square foot (2,300 m²) TV and radio studio-office complex in 1991.

See also

• WCVE-FM
• Benjamin W. Spiller (1926-2004)

Sources

• Fisher, Mark D. (2005) A Brief History of WFMV: Virginia's first stereophonic good music station, Richmond Radio Group on Yahoo; Richmond, VA

External links

• WCVE-TV official webpage
• WCVE-FM information
• "An Hour With the Guitar" information

• Television stations in Virginia
• Richmond, Virginia
• PBS member stations