Penn State hosted a conference on April 20, 1952, at Nittany Lion Inn where the federal government announced its decision to set aside bandwidth to support non-commercial educational television stations.

The 539-foot (164 m) tower was built on Rattlesnake Mountain to comply with the FCC "legal triangle" that required 170 miles (274 km) to separate co-channels.

Because the Wagner Annex studio was not yet completed, video playback machines, film and slide chains, and audio tape equipment were installed at the transmitter site in conjunction with a "mobile recording unit".

"The establishment of the station," said Dr. Eric Walker, then-president of the university, "will enable Penn State to expand its educational services".

The first day's lineup included Saludos Amigos, Primary Concepts in Math, Focus on Fitness, and 12 other programs between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. Froke, a former journalism instructor and radio-television newsman, said in a 1965 Altoona Mirror interview, "Television can combine all the channels of communication—sight, sound, and motion—to give the greatest impact on the student".

[citation needed] During the first WPSX-TV broadcast school year, the classroom TV service reached approximately 250,000 students in 22 counties.

On December 10, 1965, engineering, production, and programming staff were all based at the Wagner studios for the first time and remained there until a new digital broadcast facility was dedicated on September 8, 2005, as the Outreach Building in Innovation Park.

WPSX-TV set up its first national satellite conference from Penn State in 1980 for the faculty in Nuclear Engineering, which extended access to education for adult, part-time learners.

WPSX-TV and a group of cable operators also helped set up PENNARAMA, a 24-hour channel that offered credit courses and other educational programs.

Initial tests showed that while a large UHF channel 15 transmitter at the location of WPSU's original low-VHF broadcast tower would encounter localized problems with terrain shielding that interfere with UHF reception in State College, and that relocation of the main transmitter would have interfered with the station's ability to serve the other two communities, the addition of a 50 kW, precisely-synchronized digital transmitter operating in State College itself on the same frequency as the main UHF 15 signal could provide a viable improvement to digital reception.