WPSX-TV
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WPSU-TV (channel 3) is a
PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...
member
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licensed to
Clearfield, Pennsylvania Clearfield is a borough and the county seat of Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, United States. As of the 2020 census the population was 5,962 people, making it the second most populous community in Clearfield County, behind DuBois. The borough ...
, United States, serving West-Central Pennsylvania. Owned by the
Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsyl ...
as part of Penn State Public Media, it is
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to
NPR National Public Radio (NPR) is an American public broadcasting organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It serves as a national Radio syndication, syndicator to a network of more ...
member WPSU (91.5 FM) and
student radio Campus radio (also known as college radio, university radio or student radio) is a type of radio station that is run by the students of a college, university or other educational institution. Programming may be exclusively created or produced ...
station
WKPS WKPS (90.7 FM, The LION 90.7fm) is a college radio station owned by Penn State University in University Park, Pennsylvania. The station runs on a full-time, multi-format schedule featuring a wide variety of programming. LION 90.7fm transmi ...
("The Lion 90.7 FM"). The three stations share studios at Innovation Park on Penn State's University Park campus in
State College State College is a borough and home rule municipality in Centre County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is a college town, home to the University Park campus of The Pennsylvania State University. State College is the largest designated borou ...
. WPSU-TV's primary transmitter is located north of Clearfield in Lawrence Township, with a secondary transmitter in
Pine Grove Mills, Pennsylvania Pine Grove Mills is an unincorporated community, village, and census-designated place (CDP) in Ferguson Township, Centre County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is part of the State College, Pennsylvania Metropolitan Statistical Area. The pop ...
.


History

Penn State has a long history of using new media to extend access to education. It was the first American institution of higher education to offer agricultural correspondence courses in 1892. When radio became popular in the 1920s, the institution tried broadcasting courses and was the first U.S. university to experiment with closed-circuit television delivery in the 1940s. 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 A non-commercial educational station (NCE station) is a radio station or television station that does not accept on-air advertisements (television advertisement, TV ads or radio advertisement, radio ads), as defined in the United States by the Fed ...
television stations. This conference led to the creation of national educational television broadcasting and later to the creation of PBS. After
Congress A congress is a formal meeting of the representatives of different countries, constituent states, organizations, trade unions, political parties, or other groups. The term originated in Late Middle English to denote an encounter (meeting of ...
passed the Educational Facilities Act on May 1, 1962, which provided federal funding for the construction of educational television stations, Penn State was granted a transmitter construction permit in September 1964 and became the first educational television station in Pennsylvania to be licensed to a university, and the 101st such station in the U.S. Construction of the tower and transmitter site began on Penfield Mountain, north of Clearfield. The tower was built on Rattlesnake Mountain to comply with the FCC "legal triangle" that required 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 "X" in the original
call sign In broadcasting and radio communications, a call sign (also known as a call name or call letters—and historically as a call signal—or abbreviated as a call) is a unique identifier for a transmitter station. A call sign can be formally as ...
WPSX-TV denoted the station's role as part of Penn State's
Continuing Education Continuing education is the education undertaken after initial education for either personal or professional reasons. The term is used mainly in the United States and Canada. Recognized forms of post-secondary learning activities within the d ...
program, also known as the Penn State Extension. "The establishment of the station," said Dr. Eric Walker, then-president of the university, "will enable Penn State to expand its educational services". WPSX-TV was led by Marlow Froke, director of the Division of Broadcasting at Penn State, as a unit of Continuing Education. On March 1, 1965, under his leadership in cooperation with the newly-formed Allegheny Educational Broadcast Council (AEBC) advisory board, WPSX-TV broadcast to 124 elementary and secondary schools across Pennsylvania to supplement the curriculum and provide in-service training for teachers. 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 The ''Altoona Mirror'' is a daily newspaper located in Altoona, Pennsylvania. It is the hometown newspaper for Altoona, all of Blair County, Pennsylvania, Blair County, and parts of surrounding counties. History The newspaper was founded on Jun ...
'' interview, "Television can combine all the channels of communication—sight, sound, and motion—to give the greatest impact on the student". During the first WPSX-TV broadcast school year, the classroom TV service reached approximately 250,000 students in 22 counties. Evening programs of culture, public affairs, and adult education were added on June 7, 1965, in a Monday-to-Friday, 7–11 p.m. schedule. Saturday and Sunday programming was not added until nearly two years later. Once the microwave link that carried the broadcast signal to Wagner was completed, WPSX-TV began moving its broadcast and studio operations to its new facility. 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 drew upon Penn State's faculty and staff to develop original programming for the new evening lineup. ''Art History 10'', which was hosted by assistant professor of art history Carl Barnes and covered painting, architecture, and sculpture, was the first University credit course to be produced for broadcast in late 1965. Public affairs programs covered national, state, and University issues. In 1969, P. J. O'Connell produced ''The Year Behind, the Year Ahead'', reporting on the events that led to the student sit-in protest on Old Main Lawn. O'Connell and co-producer Kimberlie Kranich went on the create the ''Rural American Documentary Project'' (later renamed ''Pennsylvania Parade'') with more than 150 titles that captured the life, joys, and struggles of rural Pennsylvanians, including ''Notes on an Appalachia County: Visiting with Darlene'', ''Notes on an American Business'', and ''Profiles of Rural Religion: Go and I'll Be With You''. In the midst of this growth, the public television movement gained traction, which signified the creation of the
Corporation for Public Broadcasting The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB; stylized as cpb) is an American publicly funded non-profit corporation, created in 1967 to promote and help support public broadcasting. The corporation's mission is to ensure universal access to ...
(CPB) in 1967 and two years later PBS to manage the programming of public television national interconnections. In the 1970s, the station joined a statewide community service project, broadcasting programs that focused on community issues and organizing community meetings in the viewing area. Children's shows were developed with the College of Education. A popular weekly current affairs program ''What's in the News'' went national. The shift of PBS stations to satellite communication brought several innovations to WPSX-TV. In 1978, WPSX-TV joined the Appalachian Educational Satellite Project (AESP) which delivered teacher education courses, nursing courses, and other educational resources to isolated communities in the Appalachian chain. 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. Meanwhile, the radio station WDFM was renamed WPSU-FM in August 1984. It broadcast student programming, classical music, and news. In 1986, it started to air NPR programs such as ''
All Things Considered ''All Things Considered'' (''ATC'') is the flagship news program on the American network National Public Radio (NPR). It was the first news program on NPR, premiering on May 3, 1971. It is broadcast live on NPR affiliated stations in the United ...
'' (June 1986) and ''
Morning Edition ''Morning Edition'' is an American radio news program produced and distributed by NPR. It airs weekday mornings (Monday through Friday) and runs for two hours, and many stations repeat one or both hours. The show feeds live from 5:00 to 9:00 a ...
'' (fall 1987). In 1994, WPSU-FM joined WPSX-TV to become Penn State Public Broadcasting. WPSX-TV began 24-hour broadcast schedules in 1998. With the advent of
digital television broadcasting Digital terrestrial television (DTTV, DTT, or DTTB) is a technology for terrestrial television, in which television stations broadcast television content in a digital format. Digital terrestrial television is a major technological advancement ov ...
, WPSX-TV became an innovator of distributed transmission of digital television signals. In 2003, experiments conducted by WPSX-TV helped develop FCC standards for implementation of the distributed transmission systems, and its digital channel was used to experiment with the format. On October 15, 2005, WPSX-TV was re-called as WPSU-TV. The following summer, both WPSU-TV and WPSU-FM began broadcasting from new facilities at the Outreach Building in Innovation Park, State College.


List of WPSU-TV's original programs


Current


''As Long as We Dance: New Faces of a Traditional American Indian Powwow''

''Centre County Report''

''Conversations from Penn State''

''Conversations Live''

''Courtside with Coquese''

''The Geospatial Revolution''

''Higher Education in Focus''
* ''Music from Penn State''
''Our Town'' series
* ''Penn State Basketball: In the Paint Presented by
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''
''Telling Amy's Story''

''Water Blues Green Solutions''

''Weather World''

''Why We Dance: The Story of THON''


Former

* ''Center Court with Rene Portland'' * ''Children and Autism: Time is Brain'' * ''Dirt Track Memories'' * ''Fred Waring's U.S. Chorus'' * ''Grange Fair: An American Tradition'' * ''Great Teachers: Making a Difference'' * ''Houses of Worship'' * ''Huddle Up Nittany Lion Fans'' * ''Legendary Lighthouses'' (1998, Driftwood Productions) * ''A Look at
Autism Autism, also known as autism spectrum disorder (ASD), is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by differences or difficulties in social communication and interaction, a preference for predictability and routine, sensory processing d ...
'' * ''Making the Blue Band'' * ''Our Town: The Kids' Cut'' * ''Outdoor Pennsylvania'' * ''PA Energy'' * ''Penn State: Access Granted'' * ''The Pennsylvania Game'' (1986–2003) * ''Pennsylvania Inside Out'' * ''Raise the Song: The History of Penn State'' * ''
Scholastic Scrimmage ''Scholastic Scrimmage'' is a high school quiz bowl game show that was launched in 1975. It airs on WLVT-TV, the PBS affiliate for the Lehigh Valley in eastern Pennsylvania and has been franchised to other Pennsylvania PBS Stations. The long-run ...
'' (until 2009) * ''Small Ball: A Little League Story'' * ''Surviving the Housing Crisis'' * ''Swift: Eyes Through Time'' * ''To the Best of My Knowledge'' * ''Tracks Across the Sky'' * ''Wednesday Quarterbacks/
Joe Paterno Joseph Vincent Paterno (; December 21, 1926 – January 22, 2012), sometimes referred to as JoePa, was an American college football player, athletic director, and coach. He was the head coach of the Penn State Nittany Lions football, Penn ...
's TV Quarterbacks'' (1965–?) * ''What Matters'' * ''What's in the News'' (1978–2004) * ''The WPSU-TV Alphabet Cooking Show'' * ''Your Health''


Technical information


Subchannels

The station's signal is
multiplexed In telecommunications and computer networking, multiplexing (sometimes contracted to muxing) is a method by which multiple analog or digital signals are combined into one signal over a shared medium. The aim is to share a scarce resource— ...
:


Analog-to-digital conversion

WPSU-TV shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 3, on April 22, 2009. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition
UHF Ultra high frequency (UHF) is the ITU designation for radio frequencies in the range between 300 megahertz (MHz) and 3 gigahertz (GHz), also known as the decimetre band as the wavelengths range from one meter to one tenth of a meter ...
channel 15, using
virtual channel In most telecommunications organizations, a virtual channel is a method of remapping the ''program number'' as used in H.222 Program Association Tables and Program Mapping Tables to a channel number that can be entered as digits on a receiver's ...
3.


Distributed transmission

WPSU-TV is an innovator of
distributed transmission In North American digital terrestrial television broadcasting, a distributed transmission system (DTS or DTx) is a form of single-frequency network in which a single broadcast signal is fed via microwave, landline, or communications satellite to m ...
of digital television signals; it has been involved with testing new ways to distribute these signals to difficult reception areas and received an experimental permit from the FCC in 2003. 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 Terrain (), alternatively relief or topographical relief, is the dimension and shape of a given surface of land. In physical geography, terrain is the lay of the land. This is usually expressed in terms of the elevation, slope, and orientati ...
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. This work was the basis for a pair of ATSC standards issued in 2004 to provide design guidance for the implementation of distributed transmission systems: * A/110A, "Synchronization Standard for Distributed Transmission, Revision A" * A/111, "Design of Synchronized Multiple Transmitter Networks" These standards were later used by other broadcasters, such as New York City's
Metropolitan Television Alliance The Metropolitan Television Alliance, LLC (MTVA) is a group organized in the wake of the loss of the transmission facilities atop the World Trade Center (1973–2001), World Trade Center in 2001. Its mission is to identify, design and build a facili ...
, as a basis of tests in 2007. This testing was crucial to other U.S. television stations and the FCC for developing guidelines pertaining to this type of broadcasting.


References


External links

*
WPSU-TV's coverage map.WPSU-TV's Local Programming Page.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wpsu-Tv 1965 establishments in Pennsylvania Clearfield County, Pennsylvania PBS member stations Pennsylvania State University Television channels and stations established in 1965 PSU-TV