In 1953, the owners of AM radio station WVJS had a construction permit to bring a television station onto UHFchannel 14, broadcasting from Owensboro, Kentucky. WVJS surrendered the permit at some point in September 1953, due to economic feasibility as few people had UHF tuners to receive the station. In August 1961, WFIE in Evansville, Indiana, took over the channel 14 frequency after broadcasting on UHF channel 62 for several years. In the 1960s, Daviess County All Channel Cablevision held a construction permit for television station in the Owensboro area, WDCL on UHF channel 31. The permit expired and the launch of WDCL was canceled in 1969. In 1966, WVJS was granted another construction permit for WVJS-TV on UHF channel 19, but this attempt also failed and the permit was canceled in 1970.
network launched in September 1968. While the network's stations were strategically located to maximize coverage of Kentucky, Owensboro could only receive a low-quality KET signal from Madisonville-licensed WKMA-TV, which had a transmitter near St. Charles. This signal barely reached the southern outskirts of Owensboro, while the pre-existing NET/PBS member station WNIN-TV in Evansville provided a better signal. On March 1, 1979, to provide a better quality signal, KET launched WKOH Owensboro on UHF channel 31. WKOH became the network's fifteenth and last full-power television station, after WKPDPaducah was converted into a relay station in 1978. This made WKOH the sixteenth educational television station in Kentucky. WKOH's transmitter is located near Reed, in eastern Henderson County, along US 60, and produces the most powerful signal within the NET network.
Translators
From the 1980s until sometime before 1998, WKOH had repeated its analog signal over UHF channel 55 via translator W55AJ, licensed to Hawesville. W55AJ's signal covered much of Hancock and western Breckinridge Counties in Kentucky, and parts of Perry County, Indiana.
Digital television
The station's digital television companion signal, WKOH-DT, began broadcasting in May 2002, as with the other KET network stations.
Analog-to-digital conversion
On April 16, 2009, WKOH shut down its analog signal as part of the mandatory analog-to-digital television transition of 2009, as did the other KET network stations. WKOH's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 30. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as channel 31.
As part of KET's participation in the 2016–17 FCC Spectrum incentive auction, WKOH moved its digital signal to UHF channel 17 on October 18, 2019.
Programming
Station IDs
Despite its proximity to the Evansville media market, the station ID does not include the out-of-state city. Although Owensboro is the city of license for WKOH, its legal station ID originally identified itself as "Channel 31, WKOH, Owensboro/Henderson, Kentucky". Henderson is included in the legal ID since WKOH's transmitter is located on the Henderson County side of the Green River. This practice, of including the city of license and the closest city to the transmitter, is also used by KET stations WKLE and WKMU, and most Georgia Public Broadcasting television affiliates.
KET's statewide cable carriage in the Evansville market include several Charter/Spectrumcable systems in Owensboro, Henderson, Calhoun, the Hartford/Beaver Dam area, and in Newburgh, Rockport and the Cannelton/Tell City, Indiana, areas, the Vital Communications cable system in Whitesville, and Crystal Broadband Networks in the Hawesville/Lewisport, Kentucky, area. Both WKOH and WNIN-TV are uplinked to the satellite television systems of both DirecTV and Dish Network in the entire Evansville market, making the network also available in parts of southern Illinois within the Evansville and Paducah television markets via satellite television.
