WLIW (channel 21) is a secondary
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 ...
licensed to
Garden City, New York
Garden City is a village located on Long Island in Nassau County New York. It is the Greater Garden City area's anchor community. The population was 23,272 at the 2020 census.
The Incorporated Village of Garden City is primarily located within ...
, United States, and serving the
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
television market
A media market, broadcast market, media region, designated market area (DMA), television market area, or simply market is a region where the population can receive the same (or similar) television and radio station offerings, and may also incl ...
. It is owned by The WNET Group (formerly known as the Educational Broadcasting Corporation and later as WNET.org) alongside the area's primary PBS member,
Newark, New Jersey
Newark ( , ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey and the seat of Essex County and the second largest city within the New York metropolitan area.[WNET
WNET (channel 13), branded on-air as "Thirteen" (stylized as "THIRTEEN"), is a primary PBS member television station licensed to Newark, New Jersey, United States, serving the New York City area. Owned by The WNET Group (formerly known as the ...]
(channel 13), and two
Class A stations which
share spectrum with WNET:
WNDT-CD
WNDT-CD, (channel 14) is a class A low–power, First Nations Experience- affiliated television station, licensed to New York, New York. Owned by The WNET Group (formerly known as the Educational Broadcasting Corporation and later as WNET.org ...
(channel 14) and
WMBQ-CD
WMBQ-CD (channel 46) is a class A low–power, First Nations Experience- affiliated television station, licensed to New York, New York. Owned by WNET, the station is sister to the city's two PBS member stations, Newark-licensed WNET (channel 1 ...
(channel 46). Through an
outsourcing
Outsourcing is an agreement in which one company hires another company to be responsible for a planned or existing activity which otherwise is or could be carried out internally, i.e. in-house, and sometimes involves transferring employees and ...
agreement, The WNET Group also operates New Jersey's PBS state network
NJ PBS
NJ PBS (known as NJTV prior to 2021) is a public television network serving the U.S. state of New Jersey. The network is owned by the New Jersey Public Broadcasting Authority (NJPBA), an agency of the New Jersey state government which owns the ...
and the website NJ Spotlight.
WLIW and WNET share studios at
One Worldwide Plaza
One Worldwide Plaza is the largest tower of Worldwide Plaza, a three-building commercial and residential complex in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. Designed by David Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), One ...
in
Midtown Manhattan
Midtown Manhattan is the central portion of the New York City borough of Manhattan and serves as the city's primary central business district. Midtown is home to some of the city's most prominent buildings, including the Empire State Buildin ...
with an auxiliary street-level studio in the
Lincoln Center
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (also simply known as Lincoln Center) is a complex of buildings in the Lincoln Square neighborhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It has thirty indoor and outdoor facilities and is host to 5 millio ...
complex on Manhattan's
Upper West Side
The Upper West Side (UWS) is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It is bounded by Central Park on the east, the Hudson River on the west, West 59th Street to the south, and West 110th Street to the north. The Upper West ...
. WLIW's transmitter is located at
One World Trade Center
One World Trade Center (also known as One World Trade, One WTC, and formerly Freedom Tower) is the main building of the rebuilt World Trade Center complex in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Designed by David Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Mer ...
; the station also maintains a production studio at its former transmitter site in
Plainview, New York
Plainview is a hamlet and census-designated place (CDP) located near the North Shore of Long Island in the town of Oyster Bay in Nassau County, New York, United States. The population of the CDP was 27,100. The Plainview post office has t ...
.
History
Originally operated by the
Long Island
Long Island is a densely populated island in the southeastern region of the U.S. state of New York (state), New York, part of the New York metropolitan area. With over 8 million people, Long Island is the most populous island in the United Sta ...
Educational Television Council, the station first signed on the air on January 14, 1969, serving
Nassau County and western
Suffolk County. By the early 1980s the station was being carried on nearly all cable systems in the New York metropolitan area, and began identifying as "Garden City–New York."
The station fed news coverage from
WNBC
WNBC (channel 4) is a television station in New York City, serving as the flagship of the NBC network. It is owned and operated by the network's NBC Owned Television Stations division alongside Linden, New Jersey–licensed Telemundo station WN ...
during the
September 11 terrorist attacks
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial ...
.
In February 2003, the Long Island Educational Television Council merged with the Educational Broadcasting Corporation (the present-day WNET Group), combining WLIW's operations with those of WNET. The Long Island Educational Television Council was retained as WLIW's governing board and fundraising arm.
WLIW promotes itself as a more locally oriented station than WNET. For most of the late 1990s and early 2000s, it branded itself as "New York Public Television." However, it is a major producer of national PBS and
American Public Television
American Public Television (APT) is an American nonprofit organization and syndicator of programming for public television stations in the United States. It distributes public television programs nationwide for PBS member stations and independ ...
programming in its own right, much like WNET. Among its more prominent shows are the innovative ''Visions'' series and many music specials featuring noted American performers like
Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert Sinatra (; December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was an American singer and actor. Nicknamed the "Honorific nicknames in popular music, Chairman of the Board" and later called "Ol' Blue Eyes", Sinatra was one of the most popular ...
,
Billy Joel
William Martin Joel (born May 9, 1949) is an American singer, pianist and songwriter. Commonly nicknamed the "Piano Man (song), Piano Man" after his album and signature song of the same name, he has led a commercially successful career as a solo ...
,
Neil Sedaka
Neil Sedaka (; born March 13, 1939) is an American singer-songwriter and pianist. Since his music career began in 1957, he has sold millions of records worldwide and has written or co-written over 500 songs for himself and other artists, collabo ...
,
Ricky Nelson
Eric Hilliard Nelson (May 8, 1940 – December 31, 1985) was an American musician, songwriter and actor. From age eight he starred alongside his family in the radio and television series ''The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet''. In 1957, he bega ...
and international stars like
Helmut Lotti
Helmut Lotti (born Helmut Barthold Johannes Alma Lotigiers; 22 October 1969), is a Belgian tenorGoldsmith B (2009)Belgian tenor Helmut Lotti wants to find his own style ''WDEZ''. Retrieved 23 April 2010. and singer-songwriter. Lotti performs in ...
and
Sarah Brightman
Sarah Brightman (born 14 August 1960) is an English classical crossover soprano singer, actress and dancer.
Brightman began her career as a member of the dance troupe Hot Gossip and released several disco singles as a solo performer. In 1981, ...
. Regular hosts of these specials produced for PBS include Laura Savini, Terrel Cass, Mark Simone, David Rubinson and Lisa Jandovitz.
In 2005, the station debuted a new on-air identity, including color palette and on-air graphics, designed and conceived by Trollback + Company. It was the station's first corporate branding initiative since its launch in 1969. In 2009, WLIW unified its branding with its sister WNET. It kept its longtime on-air name of WLIW 21, and used a predominantly blue color scheme rather than WNET's red; it did, however, carry over the dotted "i" from WNET's "Thirteen" logo. It rolled out a new logo in 2012, removing the dotted "i."
Programming
Public television programming presented by WLIW include ''
Front and Center
''Front and Center'' is an American television series that aired on public television in 2012, presented by PBS member station WLIW. The series was originally called ''Front Row Center'' and was developed by the producers of ''Soundstage''. T ...
'', ''Priscilla's Yoga Stretches'', and ''
Consuelo Mack WealthTrack''.
Technical information
Subchannels
![Wliw-plainview](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/Wliw-plainview.jpg)
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
WLIW discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over
UHF channel 21, on June 12, 2009, as part of the
federally mandated transition from analog to digital television. The station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition UHF channel 22 to channel 21.
Originally, WLIW's digital signal only operated at 89,900 watts–equivalent to 449,500 watts in analog. It only provided grade B coverage of New York City itself, and was marginal at best over-the-air on the New Jersey side of the market. However, few people lost access to the station due to the high penetration of cable and satellite in the market.
The station has since moved its transmitter to One World Trade Center. Although its power was reduced to 72,000 watts (equivalent to 360,000 watts in analog), it gave the station an over-the-air coverage area comparable to the other New York City stations.
ATSC 3.0
On February 1, 2022, The WNET Group announced plans to convert WLIW into an
ATSC 3.0
ATSC 3.0 is a major version of the ATSC standards for television broadcasting created by the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC).
The standards are designed to offer support for newer technologies, including HEVC for video channels of u ...
television station. As part of the plan, WLIW will move its ATSC 1.0 broadcast to its sister station, WNET, while WLIW will carry ATSC 3.0 broadcasts from its sister stations, WNET and NJ PBS in addition to WLIW's own broadcast. The transition is subject to FCC approval and The WNET Group will make an announcement on the launch of ATSC 3.0 in the future.
References
External links
Official websiteALL ARTS websiteWLIW's Visions Series Website
{{PBS New York
LIW
PBS member stations
Television channels and stations established in 1969
Garden City, New York
Plainview, New York
Mass media in Nassau County, New York