1996 - 1997
• FCC mandates that all television stations must convert to digital transmission by 2003.
• KQED Board of Directors Senior Management maps strategic plan for KQED, including a campaign to fund the digital conversion.
1998
• KQED launches the "Quiet Phase" of its Campaign for the Future, with an initial goal of $55 million.
• The Campaign for the Future secures its first leadership gift of $1 million in March. Three other $1 million and one $5 million commitments are then pledged.
• KQED Public Television launches documentary series, Bay Window, with major Campaign support from The James Irvine Foundation.
• KQED upgrades its infrastructure with a new, enhanced Web server; new digital phones system; new software applications for fundraising, accounting and underwriting departments; and converts the organization to a networked platform system.
1999
• The Campaign for the Future secures more than $23 million in pledges, including two additional $5 million commitments, during the "Quiet Phase."
2000
• Live audio streaming of KQED Public Radio is introduced on KQED.org
• KQED Public Television launches weekly series, Digital West, later renamed Springboard for national distribution.
• KQED begins broadcasting its digital television signal on KQED DT30, becoming the first public broadcaster to do so in Northern California.
• Pacific Time, KQED Public Radio's weekly series first airs. Hosted by award-winning journalist and broadcaster Nguyen Qui Duc, Pacific Time explores the ideas, trends and cultural patterns that now flow freely to and from North America and Asia.
• Having raised $45 million, KQED enters its "Public Phase" for the Campaign, with a revised goal of $70 million.
2001
• Bernard Osher agrees to serve as Campaign for the Future Chair.
• KQED is honored with its first national Emmy for Bay Window. The national Emmy for Community Service was awarded to the program, "No Turning Back."
• Forum with Michael Krasny begins archiving and making available its radio broadcasts on KQED.org; additional KQED Public Radio programs are then added to the archives.
• KQED's educational division, Education Network (EdNet) receives a Campaign grant to provide funds for workshops for Bay Area teachers and for a needs assessment program to oversee the important work that the Education Network provides to the community.
• In collaboration with San Francisco Opera's world premiere production of "Dead Man Walking", by Jake Heggie and Terrence McNally, KQED Public Television produces And Then One Night: The Making of 'Dead Man Walking'.
• Together with The San Francisco Symphony, KQED Public Television brings Sweeney Todd in Concert to public television stations throughout the national PBS system.
• The Campaign for the Future is awarded a $2 million Challenge Grant from The Kresge Foundation, the largest grant awarded to a public broadcasting station. The grant will only be made if KQED reaches $68 million by March 1, 2004.
2002
• Film director Spike Lee and actor/writer Roger Guenveur Smith bring the legacy of Huey P. Newton and the Black Panther Movement to public television with the KQED presentation A Huey P. Newton Story. This theatrical adaptation wins a prestigious George Foster Peabody Award in the same year.
• ChevronTexaco grants the Campaign funds to launch Bay Area Mosaic, a KQED EdNet workshops program for Bay Area teachers to learn how curriculum goals related to diversity can be met using educational television programs and accompanying lesson plans and activities.
• KQED Public Television receives first national primetime Emmy Award in the Outstanding Classical Music-Dance Program category the production of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
• KQED Public Radio honors the anniversary of September 11th by collaborating with other public radio stations to produce a week of special documentaries and reports, Understanding America After 9/11 (funded by the Koret Foundation).
• KQED Public Broadcasting relaunches Web site -- KQED.org -- as our third media platform joining KQED Public Television and Radio, ushering in a new digital age for the organization's online community, extending beyond radio and television broadcasts, offering Web-exclusive and television/radio supplemental content.
• Working once again with the San Francisco Opera, KQED Public Television, in co-production with WNET, brings Wendy Wasserstein's adaptation of Franz Lehár's operetta, The Merry Widow, to a national audience through distribution on Great Performances.
2003
• The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences recognized KQED with a 2003 News and Documentary Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Cultural and Artistic Programming for the production of And Then One Night.
• KQED Public Television, in partnership with the Bay Area Video Coalition, premiers Spark, a new weekly local arts program. SPARK offers viewers a chance to experience behind-the-scenes and backstage stories about creativity and the artistic process.
• KQED launches its second new weekly television series of the year, ImageMakers. Showcasing short narrative and documentary works by emerging directors and producers, each hour-long episode allows viewers to see, often for the first time, works by these artists. Imagemakers is funded by a gift from Maurice Kanbar.
• KQED purchases an additional radio station and begins broadcasting on 89.3 FM, KQEI North Highlands/Sacramento, significantly expanding KQED's reach.
• KQED proudly unveils our new state-of-the-art broadcast facilities for both our radio and television stations.
• KQED Public Television becomes the first Bay Area broadcaster to offer multiple digital channels, each with distinct quality programming, over the air on DTV 9.1-9.5 and on digital cable.
2004
• KQED's Board of Directors begins new strategic plan for the next five years.
• KQED celebrates our 50th anniversary.
• KQED reaches our $70 million goal, with over 11,000 members of the community providing gifts to the Campaign.
• The Campaign for the Future secures Kresge Challenge Grant.
support KQED
digital conversion fund
accomplishments
radio newsgathering
about KQED
