WHTN (channel 39) is a

religious Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatur ...

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 eart ...

licensed to Murfreesboro, Tennessee, United States, serving the Nashville area as an owned-and-operated station of the

Christian Television Network Christian Television Network (CTN) is a non-profit broadcast television network of small owned-and-operated stations (O&O) that broadcasts religious programming. It is based in Largo, Florida (with a mailing address of Clearwater), and the flagsh ...

(CTN). The station's studios are located on Lebanon Road in Mount Juliet, and its transmitter is located on Lone Oak Road near Gladeville. WHTN offers 24-hour religious programming, much of which is produced either locally or at the CTN home base in Clearwater, Florida.

History

WHTN signed on as WFYZ on December 30, 1983, with a general entertainment format featuring

cartoons A cartoon is a type of visual art that is typically drawn, frequently animated, in an unrealistic or semi-realistic style. The specific meaning has evolved over time, but the modern usage usually refers to either: an image or series of images ...

sitcom A sitcom, a portmanteau of situation comedy, or situational comedy, is a genre of comedy centered on a fixed set of characters who mostly carry over from episode to episode. Sitcoms can be contrasted with sketch comedy, where a troupe may use ...

movies A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere ...

and

music video A music video is a video of variable duration, that integrates a music song or a music album with imagery that is produced for promotional or musical artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a music marketing device ...

s. It was originally owned by Murfreesboro TV Corporation. In 1984, lacking the resources to grow and amidst signal problems in parts of Nashville, the station's management realized it was unable to compete against fellow independent stations WCAY-TV (channel 30, then owned by TVX, Inc., now

WUXP-TV WUXP-TV (channel 30) is a television station in Nashville, Tennessee, United States, affiliated with MyNetworkTV. It is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group alongside dual Fox/ CW affiliate WZTV (channel 17); it is also sister to Dabl affiliate W ...

) and

WZTV WZTV (channel 17) is a television station in Nashville, Tennessee, United States, affiliated with Fox and The CW. It is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group alongside MyNetworkTV affiliate WUXP-TV (channel 30); it is also sister to Dabl affiliate ...

(channel 17, then owned by

Multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to tradit ...

). It was bought by businessman Bob Hudson and its callsign changed to WHTN ("Hudson Television Nashville"; the

radio station Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radi ...

he bought in a nearby area was likewise temporarily changed to WHRD ("Hudson Radio Dickson")). Hudson experimented with long-form, limited-commercial programs such as feature films with only two commercial breaks. This format also failed to gain a sizable audience. By 1985, the station shifted to a 24-hour music video format. Later in 1985, the station was sold to CTN and flipped to an all-religious format at the beginning of 1986.

Technical information

Subchannels

Analog-to-digital conversion

WHTN shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 39, 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 38. 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 AT ...

, 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 39.

Spectrum incentive auction results

Due to the station's participation in the FCC's 2016–17 spectrum incentive auction, WHTN filed for a construction permit to relocate its digital allocation from channel 38 to channel 16 on October 18, 2019, as a result of the spectrum repacking.

References

External links

Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Whtn HTN Television channels and stations established in 1983 1983 establishments in Tennessee Christian Television Network affiliates