Participating Organizations

The West Virginia State Archives, now a part of the West Virginia Department of Tourism, is currently the repository for the legacy broadcast materials that have been produced by what is now West Virginia Public Broadcasting. The West Virginia State Archives has sister agencies as part of its structure which include The West Virginia State Museum, Arts and Humanities, the State Historic Preservation Office and West Virginia Public Broadcasting.

In 1970 renowned educational broadcaster Harry Brawley hosted the inaugural program on West Virginia Public Television, entitled What's it all About. As a longtime believer in educational broadcasting, Harry Brawley was an inspired choice, having used radio as a teaching tool in his classroom and pioneered a radio classroom of the air on WCHS Radio as early as 1945 in his position as a history teacher at Charleston High School. Surveying the political landscape of West Virginia he laid out the foundation for three public television stations. WWVU-TV, located in Morgantown, was hosted by West Virginia University; WMUL, located in Huntington, was hosted by Marshall University; while a third was situated in Beckley and was envisioned to have more of a community base. One of the documentaries in this collection is a program titled Making a Difference on Harry Brawley and the legacy of public broadcasting in West Virginia. Early in their history, all of these stations had strong ties to local schools and produced a number of programs that were created to serve the educational community such as Mathmagic, the Math Learning Hour and You Can GED It.

Over the years West Virginia Public Broadcasting has produced numerous programs covering the areas of history, culture and current affairs. As one might expect many of the programs have related to West Virginia's industrial and coal heritage such as In the Company's Hands and Even the Heavens Weep. WVPBS was also heavily involved in producing West Virginia, A Film History. Also notable was the documentary West Virginians in War about our state's contributions to our country in the form of military service. There have also been a number of magazine type programs showing current events such as Statewide or the current events program Under Fire, featuring state journalists and broadcasters commenting on current affairs.

Since the earliest programs West Virginia Public Broadcasting has consistently hosted a legislative informational program during the legislative session. While the name of this program has changed slightly, the mission of informing the public about legislative matters has not, and continues to this day. The three stations have always shared programming and cooperated on the legislative program and statewide broadcasts of note such as the annual State of the State Address and periodic debates in closely followed elections. The original call letters of the stations have been changed also from WWVU-TV to WNPB and WMUL-TV to WPBY while WSWP remained the same until it was brought under the WVPBS umbrella in the early 2,000's. The current WVPBS structure is a centralized model, which strives to provide relevant information and programming to the citizens of West Virginia.