WETA-TV (channel 26) is the primary PBS

member Member may refer to: * Military jury, referred to as "Members" in military jargon * Element (mathematics), an object that belongs to a mathematical set * In object-oriented programming, a member of a class ** Field (computer science), entries in ...

television station A television station is a set of equipment managed by a business, organisation or other entity, such as an amateur television (ATV) operator, that transmits video content and audio content via radio waves directly from a transmitter on the ea ...

in Washington, D.C. Owned by the Greater Washington Educational Telecommunications Association, it is a

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to NPR member WETA (90.9 FM). The two outlets share studios in nearby

Arlington County, Virginia Arlington County is a county in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The county is situated in Northern Virginia on the southwestern bank of the Potomac River directly across from the District of Columbia, of which it was once a part. The county ...

; WETA-TV's transmitter is located in the Tenleytown neighborhood in Northwest Washington. WETA-TV also effectively, but unofficially serves as one of three flagship stations of PBS, alongside WGBH-TV in

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

and WNET in

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. Among the programs produced by WETA-TV that are distributed nationally by PBS are the '' PBS NewsHour'', '' Washington Week'', and several cultural and documentary programs, such as the

Ken Burns Kenneth Lauren Burns (born July 29, 1953) is an American filmmaker known for his documentary films and television series, many of which chronicle American history and culture. His work is often produced in association with WETA-TV and/or th ...

documentaries and ''

A Capitol Fourth ''A Capitol Fourth'' is an annual Independence Day concert special broadcast by PBS. It is presented from the west lawn of the United States Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., and is also simulcast by NPR and the American Forces Network. The ...

''.

History

In 1952, the

Federal Communications Commission The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdicti ...

(FCC) allocated 242 channels for non-commercial use across the United States; channel 26 was allocated for use in Washington, D.C. In 1953, the Greater Washington Educational Television Association (GWETA) was formed to file for a channel 26 construction permit, joining the D.C. Board of Education. The Board of Education would drop its bid in 1954. GWETA credits Elizabeth Campbell with having founded the organization. In the early days, before it was granted a license for its own channel, GWETA produced educational programming for WMAL-TV and WTTG. An application was finally filed on May 3, 1961, and approved on June 12, for a construction permit for the channel. GWETA was eventually granted a license by the FCC to activate channel 26; WETA-TV first signed on the air on October 2, 1961, with the first televised class being aired on October 16. WETA originally operated out of Yorktown High School in Arlington; the station later relocated its operations to the campus of Howard University in 1964. Rapid growth led a station that had been described as having "a rough time meeting the monthly bills" in 1963 to even pursue thoughts of a second channel in 1965. In 1967, WETA began producing ''Washington Week in Review'' (now simply titled '' Washington Week''), a political discussion program that became the station's first program to be syndicated nationally to other non-commercial educational stations and is now the network's longest-running public affairs program. Around 1970, the Greater Washington Educational Television Association changed its name to the Greater Washington Educational Telecommunications Association to reflect the oversight of the new WETA (FM). In 1972, the producing organization National Public Affairs Center for Television merged into WETA. In 1992, WETA broadcast the first publicized over-the-air

high-definition television High-definition television (HD or HDTV) describes a television system which provides a substantially higher image resolution than the previous generation of technologies. The term has been used since 1936; in more recent times, it refers to the g ...

signal in the United States. In 1995, WETA acquired CapAccess, an interactive computer network. From that acquisition, WETA helped connect public schools, public libraries and local government agencies to the Internet. In 1996, WETA launched its first national educational project, LD Online, a website that seeks to help children and adults reach their full potential by providing accurate and up-to-date information and advice about learning disabilities and ADHD. It was joined in 2001 by Reading Rockets, a

multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to tradit ...

project offering information and resources on how young kids learn to read, why so many struggle, and how caring adults can help. In 2003, Reading Rockets spun off Colorín Colorado, a free web-based service that provides information, activities, and advice for educators, and

Spanish-speaking Hispanophone and Hispanic refers to anything relating to the Spanish language (the Hispanosphere). In a cultural, rather than merely linguistic sense, the notion of "Hispanophone" goes further than the above definition. The Hispanic culture is th ...

families of English language learners (ELLs). To support the parents and educators of older students who struggle with reading, WETA launched Adlit.org in 2007. AdLit.org is a multimedia educational initiative offering research (articles, instructional strategies, school-based outreach events, professional development webcasts, and book recommendation) to develop teens' literacy skills, prevent school dropouts, and prepare students for the demands of college. Seeing a need to educate the public about brain injuries, in 2008 WETA, in partnership with the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center, launched BrainLine.org. The site features videos, webcasts, recent research, personal stories, and articles on preventing, treating, and living with

traumatic brain injuries A traumatic brain injury (TBI), also known as an intracranial injury, is an injury to the brain caused by an external force. TBI can be classified based on severity (ranging from mild traumatic brain injury TBI/concussionto severe traumatic ...

. In 1997, WETA tested its new full-power digital transmitter by broadcasting the first-ever high definition telecast of a live

Major League Baseball Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (A ...

game to the

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; the digital facility was activated for full-time broadcasting in November 1998. With the national closure of the PBS Kids network in 2005, WETA did not become a PBS Kids Sprout partner. By April 2006, the station had added

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programming to a subchannel prior to its January 2007 launch as a nationwide network. In 2007, WETA started broadcasting a children's channel. In February 2009, WETA only aired a daily three-hour children's morning block on its primary channel, clearing the afternoon for general audience programs like ''Charlie Rose'', travel shows, repeats of the previous night's prime time shows, movies, documentaries, and miniseries. WETA decided to drop Create due to the network moving to being fee-based on July 1, 2012 and perceived lack of programming flexibility. WETA How-To lifestyle programming replaced Create in January 2012. How-To was replaced by WETA UK on July 4, 2012 after an analysis of audience and local viewers' demand for British programs.

Technical information

Subchannels

The station's digital channel is multiplexed: Channel 26.2, "WETA UK", is a subchannel programmed in-house with a schedule of shows produced in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and ...

. Channel 26.5, "WETA Metro", is also produced in-house and focuses on timeshifted rebroadcasts of news programming and reruns that interest a local audience.

Analog-to-digital conversion

WETA-TV shut down its analog signal, on

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 (on ...

channel 26, on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal continued to broadcasts on its pre-transition UHF channel 27. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's

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 via digits on a receiver's ...

as its former UHF analog channel 26.

History

Technical information

Subchannels

Analog-to-digital conversion

References

External links