WDSE (TV)
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WDSE (channel 8), branded PBS North, 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
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 earth's s ...
in
Duluth, Minnesota Duluth ( ) is a Port, port city in the U.S. state of Minnesota and the county seat of St. Louis County, Minnesota, St. Louis County. Located on Lake Superior in Minnesota's Arrowhead Region, the city is a hub for cargo shipping. The population ...
, United States. Owned by the Duluth–Superior Area Educational Television Corporation, it is
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to
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radio station WDSE-FM (103.3). The two outlets share studios on rented space at the
University of Minnesota Duluth The University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD) is a public university in Duluth, Minnesota, United States. It is part of the University of Minnesota System. UMD offers 17 bachelor's degrees in 87 majors, graduate programs in 24 different fields, a tw ...
; the television station's transmitter is located west of downtown Duluth in Hilltop Park. WRPT (channel 31) in
Hibbing, Minnesota Hibbing is a city in St. Louis County, Minnesota, Saint Louis County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 16,214 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. The city was built on mining the rich iron ore of the Mesabi Iron Range an ...
, operates as a full-time
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of WDSE; this station's transmitter is located at Maple Hill Park south of Hibbing. WRPT covers areas of Minnesota's
Iron Range The Iron Range is collectively or individually a number of elongated iron-ore mining districts around Lake Superior in the United States and Canada. Much of the ore-bearing region lies alongside the range of granite hills formed by the Giants ...
(including
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,
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and Chisholm) that receive a marginal to non-existent over-the-air signal from WDSE, although there is significant overlap between the two stations' contours otherwise. WRPT is a straight
simulcast Simulcast (a portmanteau of "simultaneous broadcast") is the broadcasting of programs or events across more than one resolution, bitrate or medium, or more than one service on the same medium, at exactly the same time (that is, simultaneously) ...
of WDSE; on-air references to WRPT are limited to
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(FCC)-mandated hourly
station identification Station identification (ident, network ID, channel ID or bumper (broadcasting), bumper) is the practice of radio and television stations and broadcast network, networks identifying themselves on-air, typically by means of a call sign or brand na ...
s during programming. Aside from the transmitter, WRPT does not maintain any physical presence locally in Hibbing.


History

WDSE first went on the air on September 13, 1964, as the second educational station in Minnesota. The founding general manager was George Beck, former principal of Duluth Central High School, who had led the campaign for educational television in the Twin Ports for over a decade. The station originally operated from the Bradley Building in downtown Duluth. When the building was condemned to make room for
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, UMD offered the station space on campus for a new studio. WDSE moved to its current facility in 1978. It is named the Sax Brothers Memorial Communications Center in honor of the brothers of Duluth physician Milton Sax, who gave the initial $200,000 bequest for the project. In November 1982, WDSE was the first Minnesota television broadcaster to utilize a circularly polarized broadcast antenna, and in April 1985 it was the first in Minnesota to begin full-time
stereo Stereophonic sound, commonly shortened to stereo, is a method of sound reproduction that recreates a multi-directional, 3-dimensional audible perspective. This is usually achieved by using two independent audio channels through a configurat ...
television broadcasting. Its digital signal first went on the air on April 28, 2003, and in May 2003, WDSE became the first broadcaster in Minnesota to launch a channel, 8.2 PBS-HD, fully devoted to high-definition programming. In June 2008, WDSE became the first station in the Duluth–Superior market to begin producing local programming in high definition. WDSE/WRPT was the first station in the Duluth–Superior market to begin broadcasting in 5.1 Dolby surround sound starting June 12, 2009. On June 16, 2009, WDSE-TV/DT officially changed the station's call sign to simply WDSE, dropping the "TV" or "DT" at the end of the call sign. WRPT began broadcasting December 27, 2008, utilizing a directional antenna that beams the signal across the Minnesota Iron Range communities. Much of this area had been among the few areas without a clear over-the-air signal from a PBS station; Iron Range viewers had only been able to watch WDSE when cable arrived in the area in the 1970s. WRPT was one of the first of two construction permits ever granted by the FCC as a "digital singleton" facility; making it a rare ground-up digital only station that had no analog counterpart. On March 1, 2010, WRPT-DT officially changed the station's call sign to simply WRPT dropping the "DT" at the end of the call sign. In late August 2010, WDSE was rebranded from "PBS eight" to "PBS North" to reflect their extended coverage with WRPT into more of northeastern Minnesota. In 2012, the stations rebranded under their call letters as "WDSE-WRPT". The PBS North branding was reinstated in January 2023, with a new
North Star Polaris is a star in the northern circumpolar constellation of Ursa Minor. It is designated α Ursae Minoris ( Latinized to ''Alpha Ursae Minoris'') and is commonly called the North Star or Pole Star. With an apparent magnitude t ...
-inspired logo symbolizing the stations' goal to "illuminate, inspire and enrich lives to strengthen community".


Programming

Along with programming from PBS, Minnesota Public Television and
PBS Wisconsin PBS Wisconsin (formerly Wisconsin Public Television or WPT) is a network of non-commercial educational television stations operated primarily by the Wisconsin Educational Communications Board and the University of Wisconsin–Madison. It compri ...
, locally produced programs such as ''Minnesota Legislative Report'', ''WDSE Cooks'', ''Almanac North'', ''Venture North'', ''Native Report'', ''Great Gardening'', ''Lawyers on the Line'', and ''Doctors on Call'' are area favorites included in the broadcast schedule. WDSE produces, broadcasts, and supplies to the networks an intensive schedule of local and regional programming.


Technical information


Subchannels

The stations' signals are
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

WDSE discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over VHF channel 8, on June 12, 2009, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television.List of Digital Full-Power Stations
/ref> The station's digital signal relocated from 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 38 to VHF channel 8.


Translator

The last translator owned directly by WDSE was K67CT in Grand Marais. Rather than move from channel 67 to a channel between 2 and 51 as required to comply with the
digital television transition in the United States The digital television transition in the United States was the switchover from Analog TV, analog to exclusively Digital television, digital broadcasting of terrestrial television programming. It was originally set for December 31, 2006, but ...
, the translator was taken off the air December 1, 2011.


References


External links


Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wdse (Tv) 1964 establishments in Minnesota PBS member stations Public broadcasting in Wisconsin Television channels and stations established in 1964 Television stations in Duluth, Minnesota University of Minnesota Duluth