In 1955 legislation was passed authorizing a public television system in Tennessee owned and operated by the Tennessee State Board of Education. The stations were to serve the school populations in their areas first, before all other considerations. The first (of four) state-owned educational television stations established, WSJK (Channel 2) began broadcasting on March 15, 1967. WSJK stands for Sneedville, Johnson City, and Knoxville. It was located in South Stadium Hall in the old band room until it moved to the Communications and University Extension Building in 1969, to a space specifically designed for its broadcasts. It provided full or partial coverage in 25 counties, covering 43 East Tennessee school systems—and some schools in Kentucky, Virginia, and North Carolina. The station initially operated from 8:10 a.m. until 10:30 p.m., with the bulk of the programming directed to grades 1–12 and evening programming directed toward adult audiences through use of tapes of operas, plays, personalities and other features of interest to college students and the general public. The FCC had already allocated Channel 15 to Knoxville for noncommercial use, and plans to activate it as a satellite of WSJK were being formulated as early as 1972.
In 1981 the state legislature passed a law that allowed the state board of education to transfer its four stations to community organizations. WSJK was the first to complete the separation, in 1983—operational control was transferred to the East Tennessee Public Communications Corporation. Eventually, the state discontinued even token financial support of all ETV after the stations were transferred to community ownership. Without state support and state requirement to serve schools first, WSJK affiliated with the Public Broadcasting System (PBS). Its board also decided to activate Channel 15 as WKOP, the PBS station for Knoxville, with WSJK reoriented to serve the Tri-Cities (although providing “rimshot” coverage of Knoxville over the air). WKOP began broadcasting on August 15, 1990. In 2002 WSJK was renamed WETP-TV, and both stations began using the brand ETP-TV.
WSJK remained on the campus of the university until 1993, when it moved to the former Blue Cross-Blue Shield Building on East Magnolia Avenue. Dr. Dwight Teeter, dean of the College of Communications, and Ms. Sammie Lynn Puett, vice president of public relations, negotiated the distribution of vacated space between the college and units reporting to Vice President Puett.