WOUB-TV (channel 20) 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 ...

Athens, Ohio Athens is a city in Athens County, Ohio, United States, and its county seat. The population was 23,849 at the 2020 United States census. Located along the Hocking River within Appalachian Ohio about southeast of Columbus, Ohio, Columbus, Athe ...

, United States. The station's transmitter is located west of the city off SR 56. Its programming can also be seen on satellite station WOUC-TV (channel 44) in

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, with transmitter near Fairview, Ohio. The WOUB/WOUC studios and offices are located in the Radio-TV building on the Athens campus of

Ohio University Ohio University (Ohio or OU) is a Public university, public research university with its main campus in Athens, Ohio, United States. The university was first conceived in the 1787 contract between the United States Department of the Treasury#Re ...

, which owns the stations'

licenses A license (American English) or licence (Commonwealth English) is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something (as well as the document of that permission or permit). A license is granted by a party (licensor) to another part ...

through the WOUB Center for Public Media. The Center is a non-academic unit of the Scripps College of Communication. The two stations, combined, serve southeastern

Ohio Ohio ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Erie to the north, Pennsylvania to the east, West Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Indiana to the ...

and portions of neighboring

West Virginia West Virginia is a mountainous U.S. state, state in the Southern United States, Southern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States.The United States Census Bureau, Census Bureau and the Association of American ...

and

Kentucky Kentucky (, ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north, West Virginia to the ...

. The public media center also serves as a laboratory for Ohio University students who are interested in gaining experience in broadcasting and related technologies. In addition to radio ( WOUB AM and FM) and television, WOUB is also active in online services and media production. Unlike most PBS stations, the channel produces a regular local newscast by university students studying and training on television newscasts at Ohio University. With that, they mainly focus on the area around Athens, which is mostly ignored by the Columbus, Zanesville and Huntington– Charleston stations that serve the Athens area.

Coverage area

Athens and surrounding Athens County are located in the fringes of the Columbus market, which is primarily served by

WOSU-TV WOSU-TV (channel 34) is a PBS member television station in Columbus, Ohio, United States. Owned by Ohio State University as part of WOSU Public Media, it is sister to public radio stations WOSU-FM (89.7) and WOSA (101.1 FM). The three station ...

. However, the combined power of the two stations reaches most of the Huntington–Charleston and Zanesville markets, as well as portions of the Columbus, Parkersburg and Wheeling– Steubenville markets. The station leases commercial fiber line to permit it to be carried on the Columbus local feeds of the DBS providers under ''

must-carry In cable television, many governments, including the ones of the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada, apply a must-carry regulation stating that forces a cable TV provider to carry the public interest programming, like locally licensed te ...

'' provisions. WOUC-TV serves as the PBS station of record for the Zanesville, Parkersburg, and Wheeling–Steubenville markets; in the latter case, that market is no longer able to receive WQED in

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...

due to WQED selling off its spectrum in exchange for a low VHF frequency assignment in the spectrum incentive auction that makes reception hard to get even within the city limits of Pittsburgh, much less distant areas. WOUB-TV is the secondary PBS station in Columbus to WOSU-TV, while it shares the primary status in the Huntington–Charleston market alongside West Virginia Public Broadcasting and

Kentucky Educational Television Kentucky Educational Television (KET) is a statewide television network serving the U.S. Commonwealth (U.S. state), commonwealth of Kentucky as a member of PBS. It is operated by the Kentucky Authority for Educational Television, an agency of ...

Technical information

As of April 11, 2018, when they expanded to six broadcast streams per transmitter, WOUB-TV and WOUC-TV share the same programming.

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

In 2009, when the analog to digital conversion was completed, WOUB-TV and WOUC-TV used channels 27 and 35, respectively for digital television operations. Following the transition, the stations remained on those channels; however, they use 20 and 44 as their respective

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 ...

s. In 2019, both stations moved to new physical channels as part of the FCC's spectrum repack process.

Images

File:WOUB-FM_&_TV_transmitter-building.jpg, Transmitter facility for WOUB-FM/TV, Athens, Ohio. Photo taken in 1993. File:WOUB-FM_&_TV_transmitter-tower.jpg, Transmitter tower for WOUB-FM/TV, Athens, Ohio. Photo taken in 1993.

References

External links

Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Woub-Tv Ohio University PBS member stations Television channels and stations established in 1963 OUB-TV