The agreement provided improved technical facilities for both stations and gave WDCN a cash infusion that allowed it to build its present studios.

In October 1951, Vanderbilt University and the Nashville city school system requested that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) set aside a channel for future educational television, though they had no definitive plans to construct a station at the time.

In 1953, the Nashville Educational Television Foundation was formed as a community entity,[4] and in June 1954, a fundraising drive was initiated with the support of more than 100 local women's organizations.

[6] In 1955, when the Tennessee legislature provided a $50,000 experimental grant for educational television, the money went to the better-prepared group in Memphis, though the possibility was left open for Nashville to be next in line.

[11] In February 1960, the Middle Tennessee Radio and Television Council mounted a new effort to promote the establishment of channel 2.

[32] On the morning of September 10, 1962, high school teacher Jo Ann Ruhr presented the station's first regular program, a 30-minute biology class for high school sophomores; that night, channel 2 presented a preview of its programs for adults from National Educational Television.

[37][42] The founding general manager of WDCN-TV, Robert C. Glazier, departed Nashville in 1965 for a similar post at KETC in St. Louis, where he would receive double the salary.

In 1971, the Metro school board approved the establishment of the Nashville Public Television Council, which would provide the station with fundraising and development support.

[52] After receiving Metro school board approval, WSIX-TV and WDCN-TV jointly approached the FCC in March 1972 to petition for the proposed channel exchange.

[53][50] After accounting for delays in antenna delivery for the channel 8 facility and missing a September target, December 11 was fixed as the date for the swap.

This would be a key funding source as the station sought to build new facilities using that money, federal grants, and $1.3 million in bonds to be issued by Metro.

[46] The board of education approved plans in October 1974 to build the studio on the site of the former Central High School;[57] ground was broken in April 1975.

[65] The award-winning series South Africa Now, covering apartheid, was rejected by Ayers as "advocacy journalism at an intense level".

[66] Four years later, the station passed on Tales of the City, a series that brought some of the highest ratings in PBS history but depicted the gay community and also showed nudity and drug use.

[67] Live gavel-to-gavel coverage of Metro Council hearings occupied 46 hours a year and displaced PBS programs;[67] this service only migrated to a government-access cable channel in 1997 because WDCN needed to fulfill commitments to PBS underwriters for time slots for shows such as Nova and Frontline.

[68] The station had a nearly nonexistent profile as a producer of nationally distributed programs, with only a handful of cultural series ever being picked up by PBS.

[70] It commissioned a report from a consultant that recommended the station be split from the school board, stating that doing so would increase community support based on the experiences of other PBS members (KVPT, KRMA, and KTEH) that had done so successfully.

[71] The report found that donors often shied away from giving because they assumed the station received sufficient public support from Metro.

[74] [Independence from Metro] frees the station from the perception among some viewers that it has not really progressed and doesn’t do more cutting-edge programming for fear of offending people on the school board.

In March 1998, the Metro Board of Education voted to permit a split of WDCN in principle as long as the station could prove its financial viability as an independent entity by June 1999.

[77] He was replaced by former WGBH-TV employee Steve Bass, who charted a strategy to improve the station's coverage of arts and local affairs.

[69] Amid this changeover, WDCN began managing two educational access channels on local cable systems; this continued through 2003.

[78][79] The Board of Education officially approved the transfer of WDCN to the new entity, Nashville Public Television, on April 27, 1999.

[84] New programs focused on Nashville's music scene, such as a documentary on Hank Williams Sr., won national distribution from PBS,[85] while the station launched its digital signal in 2004.

[87] During Curley's tenure, the station began multicasting with a secondary channel, NPT2, which also featured coverage of the Tennessee House of Representatives.