WKBS-TV (channel 47) is a

religious Religion is usually defined as a social system, social-cultural system of designated religious behaviour, behaviors and practices, morality, morals, beliefs, worldviews, religious text, texts, sacred site, sanctified places, prophecy, prophecie ...

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 ...

Altoona, Pennsylvania Altoona is a city in Blair County, Pennsylvania. It is the principal city of the Altoona Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA). The population was 43,963 at the time of the 2020 Census, making it the eighteenth most populous city in Pennsylvania. ...

, United States,

owned and operated In the broadcasting industry, an owned-and-operated station (frequently abbreviated as an O&O) usually refers to a television or radio station owned by the network with which it is associated. This distinguishes such a station from an affiliate ...

Cornerstone Television The Cornerstone Television Network is a non-commercial Christian broadcast and satellite television network based in Wall, Pennsylvania, United States. Its founder was Russ Bixler. The network has 44 full-power and 57 low-power affiliate station ...

. The station's transmitter is located in Logan Township. WKBS-TV operates as a full-time

satellite A satellite or artificial satellite is an object intentionally placed into orbit in outer space. Except for passive satellites, most satellites have an electricity generation system for equipment on board, such as solar panels or radioisotope ...

of Cornerstone's flagship station, Greensburg-licensed

WPCB-TV WPCB-TV (channel 40) is a television station licensed to Greensburg, Pennsylvania, United States, serving the Pittsburgh area as the flagship of the religious network Cornerstone Television. Cornerstone originates most of its programs from this s ...

(channel 40), whose studios are located in

Wall, Pennsylvania Wall is a borough in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 580 at the 2010 census. History Wall is located at the site of a farm purchased by James Walls in 1829. The property, on the south bank of Turtle Creek, was ...

. WKBS-TV covers areas of West-Central Pennsylvania that receive a marginal to non-existent over-the-air signal from WPCB-TV, although there is significant overlap between the two stations'

contours Contour may refer to: * Contour (linguistics), a phonetic sound * Pitch contour * Contour (camera system), a 3D digital camera system * Contour, the KDE Plasma 4 interface for tablet devices * Contour line, a curve along which the function has a ...

otherwise. WKBS-TV is a straight

simulcast Simulcast (a portmanteau of simultaneous broadcast) is the broadcasting of programmes/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, simultane ...

of WPCB-TV; on-air references to WKBS-TV are limited to

Federal Communications Commission The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdiction ...

(FCC)-mandated hourly

station identification Station identification (ident, network ID or channel ID or bumper) is the practice of radio and television stations and broadcast network, networks identifying themselves on-air, typically by means of a call sign or brand name (sometimes known, ...

s during programming. Besides the transmitter, WKBS-TV does not maintain any physical presence in Altoona, and unlike its parent station, it does not broadcast in high definition and has a different

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 compressi ...

lineup.

History

In 1983, Cornerstone Television was granted a

construction permit Planning permission or developmental approval refers to the approval needed for construction or expansion (including significant renovation), and sometimes for demolition, in some jurisdictions. It is usually given in the form of a building perm ...

for channel 47 in Altoona, Pennsylvania, to serve the Johnstown–Altoona market. It bought the transmitter used by the original

WKBS-TV WKBS-TV (channel 47) is a religious broadcasting, religious television station in Altoona, Pennsylvania, United States, owned-and-operated station, owned and operated by Cornerstone Television. The station's transmitter is located in Logan Towns ...

(channel 48) in

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

when that station went dark in 1983, and used this transmitter to put channel 47 on the air November 2, 1985, reusing the WKBS-TV callsign.

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 ...

Analog-to-digital conversion

WKBS-TV shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 47, 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 46.CDBS Print
/ref> 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 47.

References

External links

* Television channels and stations established in 1985 KBS-TV 1985 establishments in Pennsylvania Religious television stations in the United States Court TV affiliates Bounce TV affiliates Ion Television affiliates Dabl affiliates Defy TV affiliates TrueReal affiliates {{Pennsylvania-tv-station-stub