Public television station looking for new home

Valerie Miller

Friday, May 12, 2000 | 10:38 a.m.

Southern Nevada's public television station, KLVX Channel 10, will soon need a new home -- somewhere.

The station, which must convert to digital technology by May 2003, is trying to find a location for the new studios it will need to make the conversion.

The Clark County School Board, which holds the license for the station, listened Thursday to possible solutions.

The public television station has been courted by UNLV, the Community College of Southern Nevada and the proposed Nevada State College in Henderson, Channel 10's Tom Axtell, a member of the School Board's Technology Committee, said Thursday at a committee meeting.

Another possibility in the list of locations for the studio is a 10-acre parcel of vacant county-owned land at the corner of Flamingo Road and McLeod Drive. That site is just northeast of the school district's education center at 2832 E. Flamingo Road. The current Channel 10 studio is located at 4210 Channel 10 Drive, near Flamingo and Eastern Avenue.

The site near the school district would allow for even closer cooperation between the two facilities, Axtell said. The cost to build at the corner is estimated at $14 million. The land could be acquired through a land trade between the county and the district, Axtell said.

"The school district has told me they don't have the money to pay for the new studio, so we should try to raise it in the private sector," Axtell said. "But if we shared facilities with the community college or Nevada State College and helped train their students, the Legislature might help fund it."

Both schools have proposed sharing facilities with the station, which in either case could lower the station's cost to around $11 million, Axtell explained.

"If we shared facilities with one of them, then they (the state college or community college) wouldn't have to build a (digital) television studio to train students, and we wouldn't have to build a digital education facility," he said.

UNLV's offer to Channel 10 would not involve the sharing of facilities for the training of students because the station would have to buy the land at a reduced rate at the university's planned research park in Summerlin.

"UNLV's proposal would be the most expensive because we would have to buy the land and we couldn't get any state funds," Axtell said.

CCSN has hopes of attracting Channel 10 to its Cheyenne campus in North Las Vegas to work in cooperation with its proposed technology training center.

Nevada State College President Richard Moore, the former CCSN president, has also sought to lure the public television station to the site of the proposed college in Henderson. Moore has suggested it be part of the school's proposed "Great Library" and digital center.

School Board member Lois Tarkanian brought up Henderson's desire to break away from the school district to form its own district. She said that tends to make the state college's proposal less appealing. She said she favors the site near the education center.

Valerie Milller is a reporter for the Sun. She can be reached at (702) 259-2319 or by e-mail at valerie@lasvegassun.com