WATC-DT (channel 57) is a religious broadcasting independent television station in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. Owned by Carolina Christian Broadcasting, the station maintains studios on Enterprise Drive in Norcross, and its transmitter is located on Sweat Mountain in northeastern Cobb County, near the Cherokee County line. WATC broadcasts programming from various Christian television networks, including World Harvest Television, The Inspiration Network, The Worship Network, Golden Eagle and Shepherd's Chapel.

History

In 1996, WATC was the last of the Atlanta media market's 13 full-power TV stations to sign on. WATC granted permission to simulcast its signal on WSKC-CA (channel 22, also licensed to Atlanta), so that station could maintain its Class A status. WSKC-CA was located on the same

broadcast tower Radio masts and towers are typically tall structures designed to support antennas for telecommunications and broadcasting, including television. There are two main types: guyed and self-supporting structures. They are among the tallest human-mad ...

as WATC, and could continue broadcasting in analog even after WATC went digital-only in February 2009. However, it was off-air as of March 2009, and remained so for most of the year. Since then, the station has moved to transmit digitally from a location near Norcross as WSKC-CD, and now airs Korean programming as it had previously done on analog before its affiliation with WATC. Despite the DTV Delay Act extending the deadline from February 17 to June 12, the station ended analog service on the original date. On June 18, it changed its broadcast callsign from the unsuffixed WATC it has since the beginning, a few days after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced that TV stations were free to add or drop "-DT" as easily as "-TV". It has also received a

construction permit Planning permission or developmental approval refers to the approval needed for construction or expansion (including significant renovation), and sometimes for demolition, in some jurisdictions. It is usually given in the form of a building perm ...

for a fill-in broadcast translator in Union City, Georgia (southwestern metro Atlanta) on channel 36, which was vacated by analog WATL. It will have the same callsign as its parent station (with no extra numerals or other differentiation, despite not being a same-channel booster) and could not be sold separately, as it is within a program the FCC created in 2009 in order to address the shortcomings of the

ATSC Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) standards are an American set of standards for digital television transmission over terrestrial, cable and satellite networks. It is largely a replacement for the analog NTSC standard and, like that ...

digital broadcast television system. Since ATSC is very prone to multipath interference, this may be due to reflected signals from the

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s of downtown Atlanta and midtown Atlanta, as well as terrain shielding of the

Chattahoochee River The Chattahoochee River forms the southern half of the Alabama and Georgia border, as well as a portion of the Florida - Georgia border. It is a tributary of the Apalachicola River, a relatively short river formed by the confluence of the Chatta ...

valley and the hills around it. WATC is seen in rural parts of northwestern Georgia on WKSY-LD subchannel 21.4, from Summerville. The station formerly had another translator station, W42AO, licensed to Athens, Georgia. That station became

WAGC-LD WAGC-LD (channel 14) was a low-power television station in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. Originally W42AO and then WAGC-LP in Athens, Georgia, its digital replacement was located at the North Druid Hills tower site in Atlanta. The station ...

. Owner Carolina Christian Broadcasting, Inc. also owns WGGS-TV, its

sister station In broadcasting, sister stations or sister channels are radio or television stations operated by the same company, either by direct ownership or through a management agreement. Radio sister stations will often have different formats, and somet ...

Greenville, South Carolina Greenville (; locally ) is a city in and the seat of Greenville County, South Carolina, United States. With a population of 70,720 at the 2020 census, it is the sixth-largest city in the state. Greenville is located approximately halfway be ...

. In early May 2011, the station added other religious programming called "WATC too" on new

channel Channel, channels, channeling, etc., may refer to: Geography * Channel (geography), in physical geography, a landform consisting of the outline (banks) of the path of a narrow body of water. Australia * Channel Country, region of outback Austral ...

57.2.

Technical information

Subchannels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:

Analog-to-digital conversion

WATC shut down its analog signal, over

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 57, on February 17, 2009, to conclude the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television.List of Digital Full-Power Stations
/ref> The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 41, using PSIP to display WATC's virtual channel as 57 on digital television receivers, which was among the high band UHF channels (52-69) that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Watc-Dt Television stations in Georgia (U.S. state) Independent television stations in the United States Television channels and stations established in 1996 1996 establishments in Georgia (U.S. state) ATC-DT Religious television stations in the United States