WTCT (channel 27) is a

religious Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatur ...

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 eart ...

licensed to

Marion, Illinois Marion is a city in Williamson and Johnson Counties, Illinois, United States, and is the county seat of Williamson County. The population was 16,855 at the 2020 census. It is part of a dispersed urban area that developed out of the early 20th ...

, United States, serving the

Paducah Paducah ( ) is a home rule-class city in and the county seat of McCracken County, Kentucky. The largest city in the Jackson Purchase region, it is located at the confluence of the Tennessee and the Ohio rivers, halfway between St. Louis, Miss ...

–

Cape Girardeau Cape Girardeau ( , french: Cap-Girardeau ; colloquially referred to as "Cape") is a city in Cape Girardeau and Scott Counties in the U.S. state of Missouri. At the 2020 census, the population was 39,540. The city is one of two principal citi ...

–

Harrisburg Harrisburg is the capital city of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Dauphin County. With a population of 50,135 as of the 2021 census, Harrisburg is the 9th largest city and 15th largest municipality in Pe ...

television market as the flagship station of the locally based

Tri-State Christian Television Tri-State Christian Television, Inc., doing business as TCT Network and TCT Ministries, is a religious television network in the United States. The network was founded in May 1977 by Garth Coonce and his wife, Tina Coonce. TCT Network includes t ...

(TCT) network. WTCT's transmitter is located near Goreville, Illinois. The national feed of TCT via WTCT is available on

DirecTV DirecTV (trademarked as DIRECTV) is an American multichannel video programming distributor based in El Segundo, California. Originally launched on June 17, 1994, its primary service is a digital satellite service serving the United States. I ...

channel 377.

History

The station signed on the air in August 1981 as independent station WDDD-TV. In 1984, the station's call letters were changed to WTCT and became a TBN station in 1986 along with a few independent stations that switched to the religious network during that year. The station also carried

business news Business journalism is the part of journalism that tracks, records, analyzes and interprets the business, economic and financial activities and changes that take place in societies. Topics widely cover the entire purview of all commercial activ ...

programming from the

Financial News Network The Financial News Network (FNN) was an American financial and business news television network that was launched November 30, 1981. The purpose of the network was to broadcast programming nationwide, five days a week for seven hours a day on t ...

after the late movie each weeknight before sign-off until 1985. In 2007, the station became a TCT owned-and-operated station.

Technical information

Subchannels

The station's digital 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 - a ...

Analog-to-digital conversion

WTCT shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 27, 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 remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 17. Through the use of

PSIP The Program and System Information Protocol (PSIP) is the MPEG (a video and audio industry group) and privately defined program-specific information originally defined by General Instrument for the DigiCipher 2 system and later extended for the AT ...

, 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 27.

Former translators

WTCT previously broadcast on low-power

translators Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transl ...

in Paducah, Kentucky on W54AE (channel 54), in Cape Girardeau, Missouri on KCGI-CA (channel 45), and in

Sikeston, Missouri Sikeston is a city located both in southern Scott County and northern New Madrid County, in the state of Missouri, United States. It is situated just north of the " Missouri Bootheel", although many locals consider Sikeston a part of it. By way ...

on K54CA (channel 54); these translators ceased operation around 2010.

References

External links

Tri-State Christian Television
Television channels and stations established in 1981 1981 establishments in Illinois Television stations in the Paducah–Cape Girardeau–Harrisburg market Tri-State Christian Television affiliates Laff (TV network) affiliates Bounce TV affiliates {{Illinois-tv-station-stub