PBS SoCal 50th Anniversary
KOCE-TV also known as PBS SoCal is proud to celebrate 50 years of service to more than 19 million people across six diverse Southern California counties.
For 5 decades our mission to serve the SoCal community has remained the same. PBS SoCal aims to help families thrive with early learning opportunities, delivers news and current events coverage that connects and informs the region, organizes events that bring the community together, and is your home for the entire PBS catalogue.
PBS SoCal is thrilled to celebrate 50 years of diversity, inclusion, and inspiration with stories, voices and perspectives that reflect the world around us.
A Look Back at 50 Years
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How Bill Alexander (a.k.a. "The Happy Painter") brought "The Magic of Oil Painting" to KOCE's audiences.
Here’s a blast from the past: the logs from our very first day on the air, including our first show (an episode of "The Electric Company").
Upon KOCE's 50th anniversary, here's a vintage video of a classic pledge break from the late 1990s.
According to our 1974 Viewer Guide, dramas have always been a priority in the programming of KOCE.
On May 1, 1974, KOCE broadcast Skylab 4: The Final Manned Mission — including an interview with the only astronaut to have led a strike, or as some call it, a mutiny, in space.
How was KOCE received when it was just a nascent station?Thanks to the L.A. Public Library’s digital archives, we didn’t have to search too far to find an…
In the year of the first KOCE broadcast — now 50 years ago — many buildings popped up around the Los Angeles area, including a landmark design by architect William Pereira.
In this clip from "The Changing Face of Television," a special that ran from the show Voter's Pipeline, host Matt Cooper asks what cable television will mean for the future of TV viewing.
![Santa Monica Cycle Path By Pierce, C.C. (Charles C.), 1861-1946 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](https://kcet.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/6ef6f79/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1024x576+0+120/resize/1536x864!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fkcet-brightspot.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com%2Flegacy%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2017%2F07%2FSanta_Monica_Cycle_Path_on_Washington_Boulevard_at_Western_Avenue_looking_west_Los_Angeles_June_1900_CHS-6413.jpg)
As PBS SoCal (formerly known as KOCE) celebrates its 50th anniversary, here's a look back at another milestone of 1972 — the opening of the South Bay Bike Trail — and what its place was in the history of bicycling in SoCal.