WCNY-TV (channel 24) is a

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcasting, public broadcaster and Non-commercial activity, non-commercial, Terrestrial television, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly fu ...

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 ...

Syracuse, New York Syracuse ( ) is a City (New York), city in and the county seat of Onondaga County, New York, Onondaga County, New York, United States. It is the fifth-most populous city in the state of New York following New York City, Buffalo, New York, Buffa ...

, United States. Owned by The Public Broadcasting Council of Central New York, Inc. it is

sister A sister is a woman or a girl who shares one or more parents with another individual; a female sibling. The male counterpart is a brother. Although the term typically refers to a familial relationship, it is sometimes used endearingly to refer to ...

classical music Classical music generally refers to the art music of the Western world, considered to be distinct from Western folk music or popular music traditions. It is sometimes distinguished as Western classical music, as the term "classical music" also ...

radio station

WCNY-FM WCNY-FM (Classic FM) is a public radio station in Syracuse, New York that plays classical music and is a National Public Radio (NPR) member station. Broadcasting on 91.3 MHz, the station is owned and operated by The Public Broadcasting Council of ...

(91.3). The two stations share studios on West Fayette Street in Syracuse's Near Westside neighborhood and transmitter facilities in

Pompey, New York Pompey is a town in the southeast part of Onondaga County, New York. The population was 7,080 at the time of the 2010 census. The town was named after the Roman general and political leader Pompey by a late 18th-century clerk interested in the Clas ...

. WCNY is also seen on

translator Translation is the communication of the Meaning (linguistic), meaning of a #Source and target languages, source-language text by means of an Dynamic and formal equivalence, equivalent #Source and target languages, target-language text. The ...

W22DO-D (channel 22), covering the

Mohawk Valley The Mohawk Valley region of the U.S. state of New York is the area surrounding the Mohawk River, sandwiched between the Adirondack Mountains and Catskill Mountains, northwest of the Capital District. As of the 2010 United States Census, th ...

(including Utica and

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

) from a transmitter on Smith Hill Road in Deerfield.

History

WCNY was established in March 1965 by the

Onondaga County Onondaga County ( ) is a county in the U.S. state of New York. As of the 2020 census, the population was 476,516. The county seat is Syracuse. Onondaga County is the core of the Syracuse, NY MSA. History The name ''Onondaga'' derives from ...

School Board Association under a charter by the

New York State Education Department The New York State Education Department (NYSED) is the department of the New York state government responsible for the supervision for all public schools in New York and all standardized testing, as well as the production and administration o ...

. A non-profit organization, initially known as The Educational Television Council of Central New York, Inc., was set up to manage the station. The station was originally assigned the call letters WHTV, but switched to WCNY-TV on September 23, 1965, after the station now known as

WWNY-TV WWNY-TV (channel 7) is a television station licensed to Carthage, New York, United States, serving as the CBS affiliate for the Watertown area. It is owned by Gray Television alongside low-power, Class A Fox affiliate WNYF-CD (channel 28). B ...

in Watertown gave up the call letters.Casciano Burns, Christine, Fox, Tim, and Gulino, Lou (2013). ''Images of America: Syracuse Television''. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing. p. 95, 96, 104, 108, 110, 118. It went on the air December 20, 1965. The new station's equipment was donated by

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable energ ...

, whose plant in the nearby town of Salina manufactured broadcast equipment. General Electric also provided WCNY with its studios, located on Old Liverpool Road in the eastern end of Salina. (WCNY's entire TV and radio operations would be based there until 2013, when it moved to its current location.) WCNY initially broadcast in

monochrome A monochrome or monochromatic image, object or palette is composed of one color (or values of one color). Images using only shades of grey are called grayscale (typically digital) or black-and-white (typically analog). In physics, monochrom ...

, using cameras used to tape

The Beatles The Beatles were an English Rock music, rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, that comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are regarded as the Cultural impact of the Beatles, most influential band of al ...

' first appearance on ''

The Ed Sullivan Show ''The Ed Sullivan Show'' is an American television program, television variety show that ran on CBS from June 20, 1948, to March 28, 1971, and was hosted by New York City, New York entertainment columnist Ed Sullivan. It was replaced in Septembe ...

'', but switched to color in 1971. WCNY was initially a member station 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 o ...

(NET). When NET was replaced by the Public Broadcasting Service in 1970, WCNY became a member station of PBS. Over the years, WCNY has been responsible for producing programs and specials of local interest, some of which were distributed nationally by PBS and/or other outlets. Among the programs produced by WCNY and seen nationally include ''Old Enough To Care'', a six-part drama that was picked up by PBS and distributed to their member stations in 1982, and ''

Pappyland ''Pappyland'' is an American half-hour children's television series originally written by Jon Nappa. More than 30 half-hour episodes were written by award-winning children's writer, Eric J. Roberts. Award-winning children's author Benette Whitmo ...

'', a children's television program co-produced with Craftsmen and Scribes' Creative Workshop and telecast for three years on

TLC TLC may refer to: Arts and entertainment Television * ''TLC'' (TV series), a 2002 British situational comedy television series that aired on BBC2 * TLC (TV network), formerly the Learning Channel, an American cable TV network ** TLC (Asia), an A ...

's ''Ready Set Learn'' block, in addition to various PBS member stations. In 2007, the station discontinued its

pledge drive A pledge drive is an extended period of fundraising activities, generally used by public broadcasting stations to increase contributions. The term "pledge" originates from the promise that a contributor makes to send in funding at regular interval ...

, making it the only PBS member station to do so. According to WCNY's president and CEO, the station is "focused on truly eliminating our dependence on any state and federal funding".

Television programs produced by WCNY

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 - a ...

: WCNY-TV became the first television station in the Syracuse market to produce and broadcast their own programs in high definition in 2006. WCNY-TV operates four digital programming subchannels, which also simulcast on W22DO-D.

Analog-to-digital conversion

WCNY-TV 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 (on ...

channel 24, on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 25. Through the use of

PSIP The Program and System Information Protocol (PSIP) is the MPEG (a video and audio industry group) and privately defined program-specific information originally defined by General Instrument for the DigiCipher 2 system and later extended for the A ...

, digital television receivers display the station's

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 via digits on a receiver's ...

as its former UHF analog channel 24. Prior to March 2013, WCNY-TV's main programming was broadcast in SD-only (480i) on subchannel 24.1, while continuous HD (1080i) programming was offered on subchannel 24.4. Create had also been cable-only until that month's channel map reorganization. A repeater on UHF analog channel 62 had transmitted from Nedrow to reach over-the-air viewers south of Syracuse in higher elevations until the 2009 digital conversion.

Translator

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Wcny-Tv PBS member stations Television channels and stations established in 1965 CNY-TV 1965 establishments in New York (state)