KUEN

KUEN (channel 9), known as UEN-TV, is an educational television station licensed to Ogden, Utah, United States, serving Salt Lake City and the state of Utah. The station is owned by the Utah Board of Higher Education and part of the Utah Education Network (UEN), which provides connectivity services to the state's K-12 and higher education systems. KUEN's studios are located at the Eccles Broadcast Center on the University of Utah campus; its transmitter is located at Farnsworth Peak in the Oquirrh Mountains, southwest of Salt Lake City, and is extended by dozens of broadcast translators across the state.

Channel 9, an educational channel since 1962, had been unused since 1973, when KOET was shut down by the Ogden school board. Weber State College obtained a construction permit to reactivate channel 9 in 1984, but it lacked funding to construct or operate the station. The permit was transferred to the Utah higher education system in 1985, and construction and operation of channel 9 was assigned to the University of Utah. The station began broadcasting on December 1, 1986, as KULC ("Utah's Learning Channel") with a selection of telecourses for college credit from institutions across the state.

In 1989, the Utah Education Network was formed to coordinate this activity and, ultimately, internet connectivity for public schools in Utah. KULC, along with the University of Utah's public broadcasting stations, moved into the Eccles Broadcast Center in 1993. As part of efforts to reinforce the brand of its parent, KULC changed its call sign to KUEN in 2004 and became known as UEN-TV. The station offers educational programming, secondary public television programming from independent producers, and a limited amount of local production.

Prior history of channel 9 in Ogden
Channel 9 in Ogden had originally been assigned as a commercial channel and went on the air as KVOG-TV on December 5, 1960. It operated as an independent station until the owner, Arch G. Webb, opted to exit the television business. The Ogden city school system, which had long planned educational television broadcasts, agreed to acquire KVOG-TV in January 1962. Upon acquiring KVOG-TV at a final cost of $155,500, the board changed the call letters to KOET, for "Ogden Educational Television", and converted the license to noncommercial operation.

As early as 1967, Ogden school officials wanted to sell KOET but found that the noncommercial designation of the channel hindered their efforts. James Lavenstein agreed to buy KOET with the intention of converting it back to a commercial station; the sale application stalled at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which denied it in 1970 because of the recent or discussed closure of other educational stations in northern Utah, such as Logan's short-lived KUSU-TV and the Weber County school system's KWCS-TV. Commercial broadcasters, resisting competition, said that a fourth commercial station in Salt Lake would hinder the development of UHF broadcasting. KOET and KWCS-TV merged operations in 1971, but after Weber County withdrew from the partnership in 1973, the station closed. Ogden school leaders regretted changing the channel to noncommercial use. KOET was deleted by the FCC in February 1975.

Weber State plans
Momentum for putting channel 9 to use again started with Weber State College in Ogden. By early 1982, it was preparing an application to the FCC for channel 9, which it hoped would be a laboratory for students learning broadcast journalism and a station providing local programming. Under an agreement with the Standard Corporation, parent of the Ogden Standard-Examiner and Salt Lake City TV station KUTV, Weber State would receive financial and facilities assistance. By November 1983, a second application had been received for the channel from Way of the Cross of Utah, a group based in Lexington, Kentucky.

Weber State received the construction permit in 1984; the college had already proposed building a transmitter on Mount Vision in the Oquirrh Mountains, southwest of Salt Lake City. In spite of corporate support and a federal grant, however, Weber State proved unable to raise the funds necessary to build channel 9. The federal grant required a local match, which was not feasible. One proposal that could have provided the funding came from KSTU (channel 20), which proposed swapping channels to move KSTU to channel 9 and the Weber State station to channel 20. However, channel swaps between public VHF and commercial UHF stations were controversial, leading college administrators to deny the offer. In addition, there was no source of funding for recurring expenses.

Construction and operation
As a result of Weber State's financial inability to build channel 9 and a desire to prevent the channel from being lost to the state, on May 18, 1985, the Utah State Board of Regents—the governing body for the state's higher education institutions—approved a plan to transfer the channel 9 construction permit to a consortium of institutions. Under the consortium, channel 9 would share facilities and space with KUED (channel 7), Utah's primary public television station, at the University of Utah.

KULC ("Utah's Learning Channel") began broadcasting on December 1, 1986. It originally broadcast for four hours a day on weekdays only before debuting a regular schedule in January 1987. The statewide microwave transmission system enabled institutions across the state to originate telecourses for KULC, including the University of Utah, Utah State University, Weber State College, Southern Utah State College, and Snow College. Course offerings ranged from the coursework for a pilot's license and electrical engineering to introductory American history and geology. The station's facilities in Gardner Hall on the University of Utah campus were described as "the size of a closet". The Utah Education Network was formed by the state in 1989 as a successor to the prior State Educational Telecom Operations Center (SETOC). Ground was broken on the larger Eccles Broadcast Center in 1989; KUED, KUER-FM, and KULC began broadcasting from the site in 1993. The station expanded its reach beyond the Wasatch Front with the installation of new translators in areas such as Richfield and St. George and Cedar City. Concomitant with this expansion, enrollment in KULC telecourses increased from 965 students in 1988 to 4,336 in 1993.

In 2000, KULC began 24-hour broadcasting, which allowed for overnight rebroadcasts of programs for K-12 schools as well as reairs of popular adult education programs. By this time, the station also aired children's programs and professional development programming for teachers, such as Critical Issues in School Reform and Principles for Principals. In 2001, an expansion was built to the Eccles Broadcast Center to accommodate the burgeoning Utah Education Network operation. The station changed call signs to KUEN on September 10, 2004, as part of a campaign to reinforce the UEN brand for its parent organization.

In 2020, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting ordered KUEN to repay more than $1.3 million in Community Service Grants it had received for the 2017–2018 and 2018–2019 fiscal years because the Utah Education Network had overstated its non-federal financial support by $11.5 million over the two-year period.

Funding
In the Utah Education and Telehealth Network operating structure, KUEN television and UETN's services to schools are combined. In fiscal year 2023, the Utah Education Network had revenue of $36 million, mostly from state appropriations and Corporation for Public Broadcasting grants, and expenses of $40.5 million.

Programming
UEN-TV's schedule consists primarily of college-credit telecourses and instructional and educational programs for a variety of audiences. Local productions include Art Connection, SciTech Now, and PDTV.

Subchannels
The station's signal is multiplexed:

Analog-to-digital conversion
KUEN shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 9, on June 12, 2009, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 36.

Translators
KUEN is rebroadcast on the following translators: