WTGL (channel 45) is a
religious
Religion is a range of social- cultural systems, including designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relate humanity to supernatural ...
independent television station licensed to
Leesburg, Florida
Leesburg is a city in Lake County, Florida, Lake County, Florida, United States. As of 2020, the population had exactly 27,000 residents.
Leesburg is in central Florida, between Lake Harris (Florida), Lake Harris and Lake Griffin, at the head o ...
, United States, serving the
Orlando
Orlando commonly refers to:
* Orlando, Florida, a city in the United States
Orlando may also refer to:
People
* Orlando (given name), a masculine name, includes a list of people with the name
* Orlando (surname), includes a list of people wit ...
area. The station is locally owned by Good Life Broadcasting, and maintains studios on Skyline Drive in
Lake Mary, Florida
Lake Mary is a suburban city that is located in the Greater Orlando, Greater Orlando metropolitan area in Seminole County, Florida, United States, and is located in Central Florida. The population was 16,798 at the 2020 census. It is the home of ...
. Through a
channel sharing agreement
In telecommunications, frequency sharing or channel sharing is the assignment to or use of the same radio frequency by two or more stations that are separated geographically or that use the frequency at different times. It reduces the potential fo ...
with
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 station
WUCF-TV (channel 24), the two stations transmit using WUCF-TV's spectrum from an antenna near
Bithlo.
WTGL airs programming from
Total Living Network,
World Harvest Television and
The Worship Network. Prior to mid-2010, it was affiliated with Faith TV until that network became
My Family TV. That network has since moved to
low-power station WSCF-LD (channel 31).
History
The original construction permit for Channel 45 was granted to Central Florida Educational Television, Inc. (a now-defunct subsidiary of the Central Florida Educational Foundation, owner of
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 ...
station
WPOZ) in 1987. It was assigned the call letters WLCB-TV, which stood for "Leesburg Community Broadcasting", after the station's city of license. However, CFET was never able to get the station on the air, so it sold the construction permit and partially completed transmitting facility to Good Life Broadcasting (then owner of then-WTGL-TV, channel 52) in May 2000, after the
FCC began to permit
duopolies. Once Good Life secured the permit, it completed the construction of its transmitting facility, and the station signed on for the first time on December 12, 2000. WLCB took a mix of general entertainment and religious programming. The station ran a mix of
westerns, old
sitcom
A sitcom (short for situation comedy or situational comedy) is a genre of comedy produced for radio and television, that centers on a recurring cast of character (arts), characters as they navigate humorous situations within a consistent settin ...
s,
public domain
The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no Exclusive exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly Waiver, waived, or may be inapplicable. Because no one holds ...
movies
A film, also known as a movie or motion picture, is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, emotions, or atmosphere through the use of moving images that are generally, since ...
, some lifestyle shows, and initially
cartoons
A cartoon is a type of visual art that is typically drawn, frequently Animation, animated, in an realism (arts), unrealistic or semi-realistic style. The specific meaning has evolved, but the modern usage usually refers to either: an image or s ...
, which by 2003 were gone. Their original station, then called WTGL, continued on with an all Christian/religious format.
Good Life owned and operated both its original station and WLCB until September 2006, when the original WTGL was sold to
TBN and its call sign was subsequently changed to
WHLV-TV. Good Life continues to host WHLV's master control operations to the present day even though WHLV has since moved to its own studio facility. The two stations shared a studio on the corner of
I-4 and Michigan Avenue in Orlando until June 2007, when Channel 45 and the master controls for Channel 52 were moved to the former studios of
WKCF
WKCF (channel 18) is a television station licensed to Clermont, Florida, United States, serving the Orlando area as an affiliate of The CW. It is owned by Hearst Television alongside Daytona Beach–licensed NBC affiliate WESH (channel 2). ...
in Lake Mary.
With the WTGL callsign made available since the original WTGL became WHLV-TV, WLCB officially changed its call sign to WTGL (without the "-TV" suffix) on September 12, 2007. Even though the "-TV" suffix is missing from Channel 45's legal call sign, the station continues to use the "-TV" suffix on-air and on its website.
Technical information
Subchannels
Analog-to-digital conversion
WTGL 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 45, on February 17, 2009, the original target date on which full-power television stations in the United States were to
transition from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate (which was later pushed back to June 12, 2009). The station's digital signal continued to broadcasts on its pre-transition UHF channel 46, 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 ...
45. On March 9, 2018, WTGL began sharing spectrum with WUCF-TV; the station ceased broadcasting on RF channel 46 on March 28, 2018.
References
External links
*
{{Florida Religious Stations
2000 establishments in Florida
Independent television stations in the United States
TGL
Television channels and stations established in 2000
TGL