WMVT (channel 36) 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 ...
in
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Milwaukee ( ), officially the City of Milwaukee, is both the most populous and most densely populated city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, Milwaukee County. With a population of 577,222 at th ...
, United States. It is owned by
Milwaukee Area Technical College
Milwaukee Area Technical College (or MATC) is a public two-year vocational-technical college based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. MATC offers day, evening, and weekend classes at campuses in downtown Milwaukee, Oak Creek, West Allis, and Mequon. En ...
alongside primary PBS member
WMVS (channel 10). Collectively branded as
Milwaukee PBS
Milwaukee PBS is the collective brand for two Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) member television stations licensed to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States: WMVS (channel 10) and WMVT (channel 36). Both stations are owned and operated by the Milw ...
, the two stations share studios at the Continuing Education Center on the MATC campus on North 8th Street in downtown Milwaukee, and transmitter facilities on North Humboldt Boulevard in Milwaukee's
Estabrook Park
Estabrook Park is a Milwaukee County park in the village of Shorewood, Wisconsin and is home to the WITI TV Tower and the historic Benjamin Church House. It was named for Charles E. Estabrook, a distinguished Wisconsin lawyer and politician, and ...
neighborhood.
WMVT and WMVS operate separately from the
PBS Wisconsin
PBS Wisconsin (formerly Wisconsin Public Television or WPT) is a state network of non-commercial educational television stations operated primarily by the Wisconsin Educational Communications Board and the University of Wisconsin–Madison. It c ...
state network owned by the
University of Wisconsin Extension
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase ''universitas magistrorum et scholarium'', which rou ...
and serves the rest of the state; however, WMVT runs
instructional television
Instructional television (ITV) is the use of television programs in the field of distance education. Educational television programs on instructional television may be less than one half hour long (generally 15 minutes in length) to help their i ...
programs from PBS Wisconsin, and Milwaukee Area Technical College and Milwaukee PBS coordinate instructional television efforts for their broadcast area.
History
The station first signed on the air on January 28, 1963. It was operated by Milwaukee Vocational and Technical School, forerunner of MATC, alongside WMVS.
Digital television
Analog-to-digital conversion
WMVT 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 36, at 9 a.m. 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 35. 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 36.
WMVT formerly did not have a digital broadcast signal, and the station's channel slot was used to broadcast a full-quality high definition digital signal of WMVS, due to the limitations of the VHF channel 8 signal within the area. WMVS-DT had to operate on limited power until the digital switchover in order to protect the analog channel 8 signal of
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an Television in the United States, American English-language Commercial broadcasting, commercial television network, broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Enterta ...
affiliate
WOOD-TV
WOOD-TV (channel 8) is a television station licensed to Grand Rapids, Michigan, United States, serving as the NBC affiliate for West Michigan. It is owned by Nexstar Media Group alongside Battle Creek–licensed ABC affiliate WOTV (channel 41) an ...
across
Lake Michigan
Lake Michigan is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is the second-largest of the Great Lakes by volume () and the third-largest by surface area (), after Lake Superior and Lake Huron. To the east, its basin is conjoined with that o ...
in
Grand Rapids, Michigan
Grand Rapids is a city and county seat of Kent County, Michigan, Kent County in the U.S. state of Michigan. At the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the city had a population of 198,917 which ranks it as the List of municipalities in Mi ...
, which regularly propagated over the lake and into Wisconsin. Another shuffle occurred on September 1, 2010 which brought over three of WMVT's subchannel services onto WMVS' bandwidth, along with a standard definition simulcast of WMVS' 10.1 feed over digital channel 36.2 in 480i
widescreen
Widescreen images are displayed within a set of aspect ratios (relationship of image width to height) used in film, television and computer screens. In film, a widescreen film is any film image with a width-to-height aspect ratio greater than t ...
standard definition to address viewer complaints about reception of VHF channels post-transition. This shuffle also enabled 36.1 to eventually air programming in high definition beginning on February 7, 2011, a move that was delayed by budget concerns.
Spectrum sale, channel sharing with WMVS
On April 13, 2017, Milwaukee PBS announced that it had participated in the
FCC
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 ...
's 2016
spectrum auction
A spectrum auction is a process whereby a government uses an auction system to sell the rights to transmit signals over specific bands of the electromagnetic spectrum and to assign scarce spectrum resources. Depending on the specific auction form ...
and successfully sold the UHF spectrum for WMVT for just under $85 million. On August 31, 2017, WMVT's audio channels on 36.4 and 36.5 featuring classical and jazz formats were discontinued.
Sinclair
Sinclair may refer to:
Places
* Lake Sinclair, near Milledgeville, Georgia
* Sinclair, Iowa
* Sinclair, West Virginia
* Sinclair, Wyoming
* Sinclair Mills, British Columbia
* Sinclair Township, Minnesota
* Sinclair, Manitoba
People
* Sin ...
,
Weigel Broadcasting
Weigel Broadcasting Co. is an American television broadcasting company based in Chicago, Illinois, alongside its flagship station WCIU-TV (Channel 26), at 26 North Halsted Street in the Greektown neighborhood. It currently owns 25 television sta ...
, and Milwaukee PBS all decided on a switch date of January 8, 2018 for their various local spectrum moves, which took place at 9 a.m. that morning. At that time, Milwaukee PBS re-mapped their channels onto physical channel 8, with WMVT retaining their main channel on 36.1 in HD,
World
In its most general sense, the term "world" refers to the totality of entities, to the whole of reality or to everything that is. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the worl ...
moving to 36.2 and MPTV's weather service mapping to 36.3. WMVS then mapped to main service on 10.1 in HD, with
Create on 10.2 and PBS Kids remaining on 10.3.
In early February 2018, the traffic camera footage formerly carried on 36.6 became a part of 36.3's weather maps/conditions loop.
Programming
While WMVS is billed as the area's mainstream PBS station, WMVT maintains a more educational and news format. The station's schedule is heavy on
documentary, instructional,
DIY
"Do it yourself" ("DIY") is the method of building, modifying, or repairing things by oneself without the direct aid of professionals or certified experts. Academic research has described DIY as behaviors where "individuals use raw and semi ...
, and
news
News is information about current events. This may be provided through many different Media (communication), media: word of mouth, printing, Mail, postal systems, broadcasting, Telecommunications, electronic communication, or through the tes ...
programming. Until October 2014, when the state's instructional programming efforts move
online-only WMVT functioned as the Milwaukee member for the
Wisconsin Educational Communications Board
The Wisconsin Educational Communications Board (ECB) is a Wisconsin state agency that plans, develops, constructs and operates statewide public radio, public television, public safety, and educational telecommunication systems and programs, 's instructional telecourse programs for students and teachers and most
Wisconsin Badgers
The Wisconsin Badgers are the athletic teams representing the University of Wisconsin–Madison (University of Wisconsin). They compete as a member of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I level (Football Bowl Subdivisi ...
sports coverage from
PBS Wisconsin
PBS Wisconsin (formerly Wisconsin Public Television or WPT) is a state network of non-commercial educational television stations operated primarily by the Wisconsin Educational Communications Board and the University of Wisconsin–Madison. It c ...
; British drama and comedy programming, along with encores of Milwaukee PBS and PBS programming has now replaced the instructional programming in the overnight, weekend and morning timeslots. When WMVS holds its annual
auction
An auction is usually a process of buying and selling goods or services by offering them up for bids, taking bids, and then selling the item to the highest bidder or buying the item from the lowest bidder. Some exceptions to this definition ex ...
and
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 ...
s, WMVT takes on the responsibility of running PBS prime time programming normally seen on channel 10. The station also previously aired ''
PBS NewsHour
''PBS NewsHour'' is an American evening television news program broadcast on over 350 PBS
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virg ...
'' on a half-hour
delay
Delay (from Latin: dilatio) may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
* ''Delay 1968'', a 1981 album by German experimental rock band Can
* ''The Delay'', a 2012 Uruguayan film
People
* B. H. DeLay (1891–1923), American aviator and acto ...
in lieu of WMVS for a ten-year period until September 5, 2016, when Milwaukee PBS's locally based programming moved to WMVT.
WMVT also has a "Student Operations Day" held annually on the first Saturday in May, in which students from Milwaukee Area Technical College's broadcasting department use the Milwaukee PBS facilities to produce their own shows to air on channel 36, which vary from serious educational and history programs to comedy shows.
See also
*
Milwaukee PBS
Milwaukee PBS is the collective brand for two Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) member television stations licensed to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States: WMVS (channel 10) and WMVT (channel 36). Both stations are owned and operated by the Milw ...
References
External links
Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wmvt
PBS member stations
Television channels and stations established in 1963
1963 establishments in Wisconsin
Public broadcasting in Wisconsin
MVT