WDSE (channel 8) in Duluth, Minnesota, and WRPT (channel 31) in Hibbing, Minnesota, collectively branded PBS North, are PBS member television stations serving northeast Minnesota and northwest Wisconsin. Owned by the Duluth–Superior Area Educational Television Corporation, WDSE shares common ownership with adult album alternative radio station WDSE-FM (103.3). The two outlets share studios at the Sax Brothers Memorial Communications Center on the campus of the University of Minnesota Duluth on Niagara Court in the east side of Duluth; the television station's transmitter is located west of downtown Duluth in Hilltop Park.
WRPT operates as a full-time satellite of WDSE; this station's transmitter is located at Maple Hill Park south of Hibbing. WRPT covers areas of Minnesota's Iron Range (including Grand Rapids, Virginia and Chisholm) that receive a marginal to non-existent over-the-air signal from WDSE, although there is significant overlap between the two stations' contours otherwise. WRPT is a straight simulcast of WDSE; on-air references to WRPT are limited to Federal Communications Commission (FCC)–mandated hourly station identifications during programming. Aside from the transmitter, WRPT does not maintain any physical presence locally in Hibbing.
History
WDSE first went on the air on September 13, 1964, as the second educational station in Minnesota. The founding general manager was George Beck, former principal of