“New BYUTV Network Widens Reach of LDS, BYU Programs,” Ensign, Apr. 2000, 79
New BYUTV Network Widens Reach of LDS, BYU Programs
Brigham Young University has formed a new television network—BYUTV—that is offering programming to more than 3.4 million subscribers of the Dish Network, a satellite broadcasting service that carries programming from many sources.
BYUTV is part of the Dish Network’s 40-channel basic package, which reaches subscribers throughout the United States and parts of southern Canada.
“One of the ways we can extend the blessing of learning is through the reach of KBYU, and now BYUTV,” comments Elder Merrill J. Bateman of the Seventy, president of BYU. He notes that the new BYUTV network offers the opportunity to share campus devotionals and firesides and a wide variety of other educational and uplifting programs with the large, diverse Dish Network audience. “It’s very exciting to me, and I believe it will bless many lives.”
BYUTV broadcasts programming from both its parent station, KBYU, and from Church-owned Bonneville International, which produces the weekly Tabernacle Choir broadcast from Salt Lake City, family-oriented programs such as Family Times and Center Street, and general conference broadcasts. BYUTV does not have access to programs owned or distributed by the Public Broadcasting System and transmitted by KBYU, a PBS affiliate. But BYUTV will be able to broadcast some BYU sporting events that are not already under contract to the ESPN network through the Mountain West Conference.
BYUTV programming is “as diverse as what you might find on a university campus,” says John Reim, CEO for KBYU and BYUTV. “It will challenge you intellectually, but at the same time it supports the mission of the university and the values of the university.”
The new network has its own 24-hour programming schedule separate from KBYU. While BYUTV offers a wide variety of programming, he says, all of it is oriented toward high moral values. Future developments in digital broadcasting might make it possible to air up to four channels of such programming in the available bandwidth during parts of the day.
In its first few weeks of broadcasting, BYUTV had already received numerous e-mail communications and other messages expressing gratitude and support for the programming it offers.
Persons wanting information about schedules or other aspects of BYUTV can check www.byutv.org on the Internet or call 1-801-378-8450.