WTBL-CD was a class A

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 eart ...

Lenoir, North Carolina Lenoir is a city in and the county seat of Caldwell County, North Carolina, United States. The population was 18,263 at the 2020 census. Lenoir is located in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. To the northeast are the Brushy Mountains, ...

. It broadcast over-the-air on channel 49, and on

cable Cable may refer to: Mechanical * Nautical cable, an assembly of three or more ropes woven against the weave of the ropes, rendering it virtually waterproof * Wire rope, a type of rope that consists of several strands of metal wire laid into a hel ...

channel 13 in the Lenoir area. It was an independent station with some programming from

The Cowboy Channel The Cowboy Channel (formerly FamilyNet) is an American cable television network in over 42 million cable and satellite homes, which carries Western and rodeo sports. The network was founded in 1979 as the National Christian Network, and took th ...

. WTBL-CD was last owned by OTA Broadcasting, LLC, a company controlled by

Michael Dell Michael Saul Dell (born February 23, 1965) is an American billionaire businessman and philanthropist. He is the founder, chairman, and CEO of Dell Technologies, one of the world's largest technology infrastructure companies. He is ranked the ...

MSD Capital MSD Capital is an American private Investment company, investment firm that manages the capital of Michael Saul Dell, Michael Dell and his family. The firm, which is based in New York City, New York and has offices in Santa Monica and West Palm B ...

. WLNN-CD in Boone provided its newscasts and other local programming for the station, and broadcast full-time on WTBL-CD's second digital subchannel. On April 13, 2017, the FCC identified WTBL-CD will be compensated $8.2 million to go off-the-air as part of the

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 ...

. WTBL-CD ceased operations October 25, 2017; its license was surrendered on October 30.

History

As W53AO

WTBL-CD started as W53AO, on Channel 53. The station was mentioned in the April 1994 edition of Popular Communications magazine, in which it made mention of the station's attempt to be carried on the local cable television system.Popular Communications, April 1994; retrieved February 5, 2019.
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Digital television

References

External links

* Television channels and stations established in 1988 1988 establishments in North Carolina Television channels and stations disestablished in 2017 2017 disestablishments in North Carolina Low-power television stations in the United States Defunct television stations in the United States TBL-CD {{NorthCarolina-tv-station-stub