WMHT (channel 17) is a

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 ...

licensed to

Schenectady, New York Schenectady ( ) is a City (New York), city in Schenectady County, New York, United States, of which it is the county seat. As of the United States Census 2020, 2020 census, the city's population of 67,047 made it the state's ninth-most populo ...

, United States, serving the Capital District as a member of

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 ...

. It is owned by WMHT Educational Telecommunications alongside NPR member

WMHT-FM WMHT-FM (89.1 Hertz, MHz) is a listener-supported, non-commercial radio station city of license, licensed to Schenectady, and serving the Capital District, New York, Capital District of New York (state), New York. It has a classical music radio ...

(89.1). The two stations share studios in the Rensselaer Technology Park in North Greenbush (with a

Troy Troy (/; ; ) or Ilion (; ) was an ancient city located in present-day Hisarlik, Turkey. It is best known as the setting for the Greek mythology, Greek myth of the Trojan War. The archaeological site is open to the public as a tourist destina ...

mailing address); the TV station's transmitter is located in the

Helderberg Escarpment The Helderberg Escarpment, also known as the Helderberg Mountains, is an escarpment in eastern New York (state), New York, United States, roughly west of the city of Albany, New York, Albany. The escarpment is the northeastern extremity of th ...

in New Scotland. WMHT operates digital

translator 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 ''trans ...

W23ER-D (channel 23) in Poughkeepsie (part of the

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

market Market is a term used to describe concepts such as: *Market (economics), system in which parties engage in transactions according to supply and demand *Market economy *Marketplace, a physical marketplace or public market *Marketing, the act of sat ...

). The translator's ownership was transferred from Dutchess Community College to WMHT in 2014.

History

The Mohawk-Hudson Council on Educational Television was formed in 1953, through financial support from commercial station

WRGB WRGB (channel 6) is a television station licensed to Schenectady, New York, United States, serving the Capital District as an affiliate of CBS. It is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group alongside CW affiliate WCWN (channel 45). The two station ...

(channel 6), its then-parent company

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) was an American Multinational corporation, multinational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate founded in 1892, incorporated in the New York (state), state of New York and headquartered in Boston. Over the year ...

(which was based in Schenectady) and many supporters and local businesses in the Albany/Capital Region. In the beginning, Mohawk-Hudson produced educational programs on WRGB; however, due to the station's tight scheduling, the council decided to form a

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 station of its own. WMHT signed on the air on March 26, 1962, on UHF channel 17 as the second educational TV station in the state of New York (after

WNED WNED may refer to: * WNED-FM, a radio station (94.5 FM) licensed to serve Buffalo, New York, United States * WNED-TV WNED-TV (channel 17), branded BTPM PBS, is a PBS member television station in Buffalo, New York, United States. It is owned by ...

in Buffalo). From the outset the station was a member of

National Educational Television National Educational Television (NET) was an American non-commercial educational, educational terrestrial television, broadcast television network owned by the Ford Foundation and later co-owned by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. It op ...

(NET) and became one of PBS' charter members after the two stations merged in 1970. In 1972, WMHT expanded into

FM radio FM broadcasting is a method of radio broadcasting that uses frequency modulation (FM) of the radio broadcast carrier wave. Invented in 1933 by American engineer Edwin Armstrong, wide-band FM is used worldwide to transmit high fidelity, high-f ...

by launching the first non-commercial

classical music Classical music generally refers to the art music of the Western world, considered to be #Relationship to other music traditions, distinct from Western folk music or popular music traditions. It is sometimes distinguished as Western classical mu ...

station in the United States (a format that continues to this day). In 1987, WMHT purchased the assets of

independent station An independent station is a broadcast station, usually a television station, not affiliated with a larger broadcast television network, network. As such, it only broadcasts broadcast syndication, syndicated programs it has purchased; brokered pr ...

WUSV (channel 45) and made it a secondary programming service under the calls WMHX. Due to financial difficulties, WMHT shut WMHX down in 1991 and returned it to the air three years later under the call letters WMHQ. In the late 1990s, WMHQ's commercial license became attractive and WMHT sold it to the

Tribune Company Tribune Media Company, also known as Tribune Company, was an American multimedia conglomerate headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Through Tribune Broadcasting, Tribune Media was one of the largest television broadcasting companies, owning 39 ...

for $18.5 million in 1999 with the station becoming WB affiliate WEWB that September (it is now CW affiliate WCWN, owned by the

Sinclair Broadcast Group Sinclair, Inc., doing business as Sinclair Broadcast Group, is a publicly traded American telecommunications conglomerate that is controlled by the descendants of company founder Julian Sinclair Smith. Headquartered in the Baltimore suburb o ...

). The money from this sale allowed WMHT to expand into digital television. It also allowed the station to replace its original facility in

Rotterdam Rotterdam ( , ; ; ) is the second-largest List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city in the Netherlands after the national capital of Amsterdam. It is in the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of South Holland, part of the North S ...

with a state-of-the-art facility in the Rensselaer Tech Park in town of North Greenbush, New York.

Programming

Programming produced by WMHT includes the state public affairs show ''New York NOW''. The program is also aired on all public Television and radio stations across the state of New York in addition to being aired online and in a podcast format.

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

WMHT 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 ...

channel 17 at noon on April 16, 2009. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 34, 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 ...

17. During the 2019 digital television repack, WMHT relocated from UHF channel 34 to channel 25.

Translator

* Poughkeepsie

Former translators

*W04AJ Schoharie (analog; off-air upon 2009 digital transition, and no longer licensed to WMHT) *W04BD Glens Falls (analog; off-air upon 2009 digital transition, and no longer licensed to WMHT)

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Wmht (Tv) MHT (TV) PBS member stations Television channels and stations established in 1962 1962 establishments in New York (state)