WSVW-LD (channel 30) is a low-power television station in

Harrisonburg, Virginia Harrisonburg is an independent city in the Shenandoah Valley region of the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. It is also the county seat of the surrounding Rockingham County, although the two are separate jurisdictions. At the 2 ...

, United States, affiliated with

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 ...

and

The CW Plus The CW Plus is a secondary national programming service feed of The CW that is fully controlled and 75% owned by Nexstar Media Group, with Paramount Global and Warner Bros. Discovery each owning a 12.5% stake in the network. It is intended primar ...

. It is owned by

Gray Television Gray Television, Inc. is an American publicly traded television broadcasting company based in Atlanta, Georgia. Founded in 1946 by James Harrison Gray as Gray Communications Systems, the company owns or operates 180 stations across the United St ...

alongside

ABC ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script known as the alphabet. ABC or abc may also refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Broadcasting * American Broadcasting Company, a commercial U.S. TV broadcaster ** Disney–ABC Television ...

affiliate

WHSV-TV WHSV-TV (channel 3) is a television station in Harrisonburg, Virginia, United States, affiliated with ABC. It is owned by Gray Television alongside two low-power stations: Class A dual Fox/ CBS affiliate WSVF-CD (channel 43) and dual NBC/ CW ...

(channel 3) and Class A dual

Fox Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull, upright, triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or ''brush''). Twelve sp ...

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainmen ...

affiliate

WSVF-CD WSVF-CD (channel 43) is a low-powered, Class A television station in Harrisonburg, Virginia, United States, affiliated with Fox and CBS. It is owned by Gray Television alongside ABC affiliate WHSV-TV (channel 3) and low-powered dual NBC/ CW+ af ...

(channel 43). The three stations share studios on North Main Street (

US 11 {{Infobox road , country=USA , type=US , route=11 , map={{maplink, frame=yes, plain=yes, frame-align=center, frame-width=290, frame-height=330, type=line, from=U.S. Route 11.map , map_custom=yes , map_notes=US 11 in red, US 11E in blue, US 11W in ...

) in downtown Harrisonburg, and operate a newsroom in Fishersville, serving Staunton, Waynesboro, and

Augusta County Augusta County is a county in the Shenandoah Valley on the western edge of the Commonwealth of Virginia. The second-largest county of Virginia by total area, it completely surrounds the independent cities of Staunton and Waynesboro. Its count ...

. WSVW-LD's transmitter is located atop

Massanutten Mountain Massanutten Mountain is a synclinal ridge in the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians, located in the U.S. state of Virginia. It is near the West Virginia state line. Geography The mountain bisects the Shenandoah Valley just east of Strasburg in Sh ...

. There is no separate website for WSVW-LD; instead, it is integrated with that of sister station WHSV-TV. W22EX-D (virtual channel 30, UHF digital channel 22) in Staunton operates as a

translator Translation is the communication of the Meaning (linguistic), meaning of a #Source and target languages, source-language text by means of an Dynamic and formal equivalence, equivalent #Source and target languages, target-language text. The ...

of WSVW-LD; this station's transmitter is located atop

Elliott Knob Elliott Knob is one of the highest mountains in the northern portions of the U.S. state of Virginia. At , the peak is located on the ridge known as Great North Mountain. A subpeak known simply as "Hogback" () is located to the southwest. A small, ...

west of Staunton. Even though WSVW-LD and W22EX-D both have digital signals of their own, their low-power

broadcast range A broadcast range (also listening range or listening area for radio, or viewing range or viewing area for television) is the service area that a broadcast station or other transmission covers via radio waves (or possibly infrared light, which ...

s only cover the immediate Harrisonburg and Staunton areas, respectively. Therefore, the NBC-affiliated main feed is

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 ...

1080i 1080i (also known as Full HD or BT.709) is a combination of frame resolution and scan type. 1080i is used in high-definition television (HDTV) and high-definition video. The number "1080" refers to the number of horizontal lines on the screen. ...

full high definition on WHSV-TV's second

digital 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 compress ...

in order to reach the entire

market Market is a term used to describe concepts such as: *Market (economics), system in which parties engage in transactions according to supply and demand *Market economy *Marketplace, a physical marketplace or public market Geography *Märket, an ...

; this signal can be seen on UHF channel 20.2 (or virtual channel 3.2 via

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 ...

) from a separate transmitter atop Elliott Knob.

History

The station signed on in June 2011 as W30CT-D, a translator of

Charlottesville Charlottesville, colloquially known as C'ville, is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia. It is the county seat of Albemarle County, which surrounds the city, though the two are separate legal entities. It is named after Queen Cha ...

-based NBC affiliate

WVIR-TV WVIR-TV (channel 29) is a television station in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, affiliated with NBC and The CW Plus. Owned by Gray Television, the station has studios on East Market Street ( US 250 Business) in downtown Charlottesvill ...

(channel 29). W30CT-D was one of two translators of WVIR-TV for the Harrisonburg-Staunton-Waynesboro market, broadcasting from Massanutten Mountain for Harrisonburg. A second translator, W41DT-D (currently W22EX-D), signed on earlier in the year from Elliott Knob to cover the other cities. For years, WVIR had been one of the default NBC affiliates piped into the Shenandoah Valley on cable, along with

WRC-TV WRC-TV (channel 4) is a television station in Washington, D.C., airing programming from the NBC network. It is owned-and-operated station, owned and operated by the network's NBC Owned Television Stations division alongside Class A television se ...

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

and WWBT in

Richmond Richmond most often refers to: * Richmond, Virginia, the capital of Virginia, United States * Richmond, London, a part of London * Richmond, North Yorkshire, a town in England * Richmond, British Columbia, a city in Canada * Richmond, California, ...

. On March 4, 2019,

Waterman Broadcasting Waterman Broadcasting Corporation is a small American television broadcasting company based in Fort Myers, Florida. It was founded in 1978 in Fort Myers when it purchased WBBH from Broadcast Telecasting Services, Inc. It was founded by Bernard Wa ...

announced a deal to sell WVIR-TV, along with W30CT-D and W22EX-D, to

on that day. Gray already owned

-affiliated rival

WCAV WCAV (channel 19) is a television station in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, affiliated with CBS and Fox. It is owned by Lockwood Broadcast Group alongside low-power ABC affiliate WVAW-LD (channel 16). Both stations share studios on R ...

and

affiliate

WVAW-LD WVAW-LD (channel 16) is a low-power television station in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, affiliated with ABC. It is owned by Lockwood Broadcast Group alongside dual CBS/Fox affiliate WCAV (channel 19). Both stations share studios on R ...

(channel 16), which were concurrently sold to

Lockwood Broadcast Group Lockwood Broadcast Group is a television broadcasting company that owns stations in several markets. Lockwood Broadcast main offices are located in Hampton, Virginia with Operation Headquarters in Richmond, Virginia. History Lockwood Broadcast ...

. WVIR became a sister station to Fox affiliate WAHU-CD (channel 27, now

WVIR-CD WVIR-CD (channel 35) is a low-power, Class A television station in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States. It is a translator of dual NBC/ CW+ affiliate WVIR-TV (channel 29) which is owned by Gray Television. WVIR-CD's transmitter is located o ...

), which was not included in the sale and retained by Gray to serve as a WVIR-TV translator. The sale was approved on April 15, and the transaction was completed on October 1. The next day, WVIR-TV's new sister station WHSV-TV announced that it would convert the two translators into separate NBC/ CW+ affiliates for Harrisonburg, effective December 1; concurrently with the announcement, W30CT-D became WSVW-LD. As announced, WSVW-LD/W22EX-D were converted into dual NBC/CW+ affiliates for Harrisonburg on December 1.The Official Logo Of WSVW-LD/W22EX-D (NBC) & WSVW-LD2/W22EX-D2 (CW+)
/ref> The station relies primarily on cable and satellite for its viewership, which are all but essential for acceptable television in this vast and mountainous market. Although it would not normally qualify for

must-carry In cable television, governments apply a must-carry regulation stating that locally licensed television stations must be carried on a cable provider's system. North America Canada Under current CRTC regulations, the lowest tier of service on ...

due to its low-power status, it is carried on all Shenandoah Valley cable systems due to the

retransmission consent Retransmission consent is a provision of the 1992 United States Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act that requires cable operators and other multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) to obtain permission from commercia ...

provision of the must-carry rules. This provision allows full-power stations to request compensation from cable systems as a condition of carrying them. In this case, Gray has the right to require cable systems to carry WSVW as part of the compensation for carrying WHSV.

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 ...

Translator

References

External links

* {{Gray TV The CW affiliates SVW-LD Low-power television stations in the United States NBC network affiliates Circle (TV network) affiliates Gray Television