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 (channel 13), and two Class A stations which share spectrum with WNET: WNDT-CD (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 13), ...

(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 ...

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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; the station also maintains a production studio at its former transmitter site in Plainview, New York.

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. 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 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, Ricky Nelson and international stars like Helmut Lotti 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 Consuelo Mack (née Cotter, born 30 November 1949 in New York, New York) is an American business news journalist and host of ''WealthTrack'', a news program presented by WLIW-TV in New York City, distributed by American Public Television, and air ...

''.

Technical information

Subchannels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:

Analog-to-digital conversion

WLIW discontinued regular programming on 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 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 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