WSVW-LD (channel 30) is a

low-power television station Low-power broadcasting is broadcasting by a Radio broadcasting#Station, broadcast station at a low transmitter power output to a smaller service area than "full power" stations within the same region. It is often distinguished from "micropower ...

Harrisonburg, Virginia Harrisonburg is an independent city (United States), independent city in the Shenandoah Valley region of the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. It is also the county seat of the surrounding Rockingham Cou ...

, United States, affiliated with

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. It is one of NBCUniversal's ...

and

The CW Plus The CW Plus is a secondary national broadcast television broadcast syndication, syndication service feed of The CW, whose controlling stake of 75% is owned by Nexstar Media Group, with Paramount Global and Warner Bros. Discovery holding their ow ...

. It is owned by

Gray Media Gray Media, Inc., doing business as Gray Television, is an American publicly traded television broadcasting company based in Atlanta. Founded in 1946 by James Harrison Gray as Gray Communications Systems, the company owns or operates 180 statio ...

alongside

ABC ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script. ABC or abc may also refer to: Arts, entertainment and media Broadcasting * Aliw Broadcasting Corporation, Philippine broadcast company * American Broadcasting Company, a commercial American ...

affiliate

WHSV-TV WHSV-TV (channel 3) is a television station in Harrisonburg, Virginia, United States, affiliated with ABC. It is owned by Gray Media alongside two low-power stations: Class A dual Fox/CBS affiliate WSVF-CD (channel 43) and dual NBC/ CW+ affi ...

(channel 3) and Class A dual

Fox Foxes are small-to-medium-sized omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull; upright, triangular ears; a pointed, slightly upturned snout; and a long, bushy tail ("brush"). Twelve species ...

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS (an abbreviation of its original name, Columbia Broadcasting System), is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainme ...

affiliate

WSVF-CD WSVF-CD (channel 43) is a low-power, Class A television station in Harrisonburg, Virginia, United States, affiliated with Fox and CBS. It is owned by Gray Media alongside ABC affiliate WHSV-TV (channel 3) and low-powered dual NBC/ CW+ affil ...

(channel 43). The three stations share studios on North Main Street (

US 11 U.S. Route 11 or U.S. Highway 11 (US 11) is a major north–south United States Numbered Highway extending across the eastern U.S. The southern terminus of the route is at US 90 in Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refu ...

) in downtown Harrisonburg, and operate a newsroom in Fishersville, serving Staunton, Waynesboro, and Augusta County. WSVW-LD's transmitter is located atop

Massanutten Mountain Massanutten Mountain is a synclinal ridge in the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians, located in the U.S. state of Virginia. The original Native American name for the ridge is unknown. Geography The mountain bisects the Shenandoah Valley just e ...

. There is no separate website for WSVW-LD; instead, it is integrated with that of sister station WHSV-TV. W22EX-D (virtual channel 30, UHF digital channel 22) in Staunton operates as a

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 ...

of WSVW-LD; this station's transmitter is located atop Elliott Knob west of Staunton. Even though WSVW-LD and W22EX-D both have digital signals of their own, their low-power

broadcast range A broadcast range (also listening range or listening area for radio, or viewing range or viewing area for television) is the service area that a broadcast station or other transmission covers via radio waves (or possibly infrared light, which i ...

s only cover the immediate Harrisonburg and Staunton areas, respectively. Therefore, the NBC-affiliated main feed is

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) ...

1080i In high-definition television (HDTV) and video display technology, 1080i is a video display format with 1080 lines of vertical resolution and Interlaced video, interlaced scanning method. This format was once a standard in HDTV. It was particular ...

full high definition on WHSV-TV's second

digital subchannel In broadcasting, digital subchannels are a method of transmitting more than one independent program stream simultaneously from the same digital radio or television station on the same radio frequency channel. This is done by using data compress ...

in order to reach the entire

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 ...

; this signal can be seen on channel 3.2 from a separate transmitter atop Elliott Knob.

History

The station signed on in June 2011 as W30CT-D, a translator of

Charlottesville Charlottesville, colloquially known as C'ville, is an independent city in Virginia, United States. It is the seat of government of Albemarle County, which surrounds the city, though the two are separate legal entities. It is named after Quee ...

-based NBC affiliate WVIR-TV (channel 29). W30CT-D was one of two translators of WVIR-TV for the Harrisonburg-Staunton-Waynesboro market, broadcasting from Massanutten Mountain for Harrisonburg. A second translator, W41DT-D (currently W22EX-D), signed on earlier in the year from Elliott Knob to cover the other cities. For years, WVIR had been one of the default NBC affiliates piped into the Shenandoah Valley on cable, along with

WRC-TV WRC-TV (channel 4) is a television station in Washington, D.C., serving as the market's NBC outlet. It is owned and operated by the network's NBC Owned Television Stations division alongside Class A television service, Class A Telemundo outlet W ...

Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

, and

WWBT WWBT (channel 12) is a television station in Richmond, Virginia, United States, affiliated with NBC. It is owned by Gray Media alongside Ashland-licensed CW affiliate WUPV (channel 65). The two stations share studios on Midlothian Turnp ...

Richmond Richmond most often refers to: * Richmond, British Columbia, a city in Canada * Richmond, California, a city in the United States * Richmond, London, a town in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, England * Richmond, North Yorkshire, a town ...

. On March 4, 2019, Waterman Broadcasting announced a deal to sell WVIR-TV, along with W30CT-D and W22EX-D, to

Gray Television Gray Media, Inc., doing business as Gray Television, is an American publicly traded television broadcasting company based in Atlanta. Founded in 1946 by James Harrison Gray as Gray Communications Systems, the company owns or operates 180 statio ...

on that day. Gray already owned

-affiliated rival WCAV and

affiliate WVAW-LD (channel 16), which were concurrently sold to

Lockwood Broadcast Group Lockwood Broadcast Group is a television broadcasting company that owns stations in several markets. The company's main offices are located in Richmond, Virginia, with operational headquarters in Hampton, Virginia. History Lockwood Broadcast be ...

. WVIR became a sister station to Fox affiliate WAHU-CD (channel 27, now WVIR-CD), which was not included in the sale and retained by Gray to serve as a WVIR-TV translator. The sale was approved on April 15, and the transaction was completed on October 1. The next day, WVIR-TV's new sister station WHSV-TV announced that it would convert the two translators into separate NBC/ CW+ affiliates for Harrisonburg, effective December 1; concurrently with the announcement, W30CT-D became WSVW-LD. As announced, WSVW-LD/W22EX-D were converted into dual NBC/CW+ affiliates for Harrisonburg on December 1.The Official Logo Of WSVW-LD/W22EX-D (NBC) & WSVW-LD2/W22EX-D2 (CW+)
/ref> The station relies primarily on cable and satellite for its viewership, which are all but essential for acceptable television in this vast and mountainous market. Although it would not normally qualify for

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 ...

due to its low-power status, it is carried on all Shenandoah Valley cable systems due to the

retransmission consent Retransmission consent is a provision of the 1992 United States Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act that requires cable operators and other multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) to obtain permission from commerc ...

provision of the must-carry rules. This provision allows full-power stations to request compensation from cable systems as a condition of carrying them. In this case, Gray has the right to require cable systems to carry WSVW as part of the compensation for carrying WHSV.

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— ...

Translator

References

{{Gray TV 2011 establishments in Virginia The CW affiliates Gray Media Grit (TV network) affiliates SVW-LD NBC affiliates Television channels and stations established in 2011 SVW-LD True Crime Network affiliates