KET's Star Channels, the network's interactive distance learning services that were launched in 1988, predated the advent of digital over-the-air television broadcasting of any kind by eleven years, and they were only available to schools, colleges, universities, and libraries throughout the state through satellite technology.

[4] The services were so successful in education centers, that the network earned the Innovations Award from the Ford Foundation for the star channels in 1991.

A 1986 Lexington Herald-Leader interview with network founder and executive director O. Leonard Press revealed the plans to launch this satellite-based service.

[14] KET's second, third, and fourth subchannels, which were launched in May 2002, were the first ever digital subchannels in most, if not all, of Kentucky's media market's (e.g. Paducah, Evansville (Indiana), Bowling Green, Louisville, Cincinnati (Ohio), Lexington, and Huntington (West Virginia) markets), as most commercial outlets typically never began to launch digital signals or multicast services until the mid-2000s.

KET ED and the PBS HD programming block were simulcast on both the DT3 and DT4 subchannels of all 15 of the network's primary transmitters for the remainder of that year.

[26] Also in 2009, the Kentucky Channel began broadcasting over WKMJ-DT2/Louisville; it would move to that station's third subchannel upon WKMJ's conversion to the ATSC 3.0 (NextGen TV) format in 2022.

The channel also airs select archived episodes of original series such as Bywords, Distinguished Kentuckian, Run That By Me Again, and From The Ground Up, among others.

Lexington CBS affiliate WKYT-TV even produced a documentary about former University of Kentucky basketball coach Adolph Rupp that is seldom rebroadcast on the channel as well.

Outside of KET's archives and independent production companies, some documentaries and short programs on the channel are also produced by the mass media divisions of some Kentucky colleges and universities.

A few out-of-state cable television systems also carry the Kentucky Channel, along with the flagship KET service, especially those who are based out-of-state, but also serves certain Kentucky communities along its boundaries, including the cable systems of Cincinnati Bell and the Lafayette, Tennessee-based North Central Telephone Cooperative.