WHUT-TV, virtual channel 32 (UHF digital channel 33), is the secondary Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) member television station licensed to the American capital city of Washington, D.C. The station is owned by Howard University, a historically black college, and is sister to commercial urban contemporary radio station WHUR-FM (96.3). WHUT-TV's studios are located on the Howard University campus, and its transmitter is located in the Tenleytown neighborhood in the northwest quadrant of Washington. WHUT airs a variety of standard PBS programming, as well as programs produced by Howard University, and international programs focusing on regions such as the Caribbean and Africa. History On June 25, 1974, Howard University was granted a construction permit to build a new television station on channel 32 in Washington, D.C. It was more than six years before the station signed on November 17, 1980. WHMM-TV (whose call letters stood for Howard University Mass Media) turned Howard, owner of the only radio station owned by an HBCU at the time, into the owner of the first Black-owned public television station. At the outset, the station suffered from some problems with its antenna and the need to train staff on the job. It also faced issues carving out an identity for itself and its mission, with standard PBS fare airing during much of the day; in 1983, its budget was one-third that of WETA-TV. However, within its first decade, it produced 1,000 Howard graduates trained in television production. The long-running Evening Exchange public affairs program, which debuted with the station, became a station staple; it was hosted by Kojo Nnamdi between 1985 and 2011. Budget cuts at Howard in the late 1980s and 1990s prompted staff cuts in operations. Even as the station tried to significantly step up fundraising, its treatment as another academic department, requiring a different style of management, often hurt WHMM-TV. Staff levels were cut from 90 in 1988 to 65 five years later, when a blue-ribbon panel was convened by PBS to discuss the station's problems; that year, it had to suspend production of Evening Exchange for four months because it had lost revenue from the rights to produce D.C. Lottery drawings. In 1996, the station stopped running pledge drives when they became too expensive for the funds they raised—and would not try again until eight years later. The call letters were changed to the present WHUT-TV in 1998 to increase channel 32's