WYIN (channel 56), branded on-air as Lakeshore PBS, 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

Gary, Indiana Gary is a city in Lake County, Indiana, United States. The city has been historically dominated by major industrial activity and is home to U.S. Steel's Gary Works, the largest steel mill complex in North America. Gary is located along the ...

, United States, serving the

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

area. It is owned by Northwest Indiana Public Broadcasting, Inc., as a

sister station In broadcasting, sister stations or sister channels are radio or television stations operated by the same company, either by direct ownership or through a management agreement. Radio sister stations will often have different formats, and somet ...

NPR National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...

member

WLPR-FM WLPR-FM is an FM noncommercial, public radio station broadcasting on 89.1 MHz in Lowell, Indiana and serving Northwest Indiana. The station is owned and operated by Northwest Indiana Public Broadcasting, Inc., which also owns PBS member st ...

(89.1). Both stations share studios on Indiana Place (Mississippi Street) in

Merrillville Merrillville is a town in Ross Township, Lake County, Indiana, United States. The population was 35,246 at the 2010 census. Merrillville is in east-central Lake County, in the Chicago metropolitan area. On January 1, 2015, Merrillville became the ...

, while WYIN's transmitter is located near Lake Dalecarlia (due south of Cedar Lake). WYIN is one of two PBS member stations in the Chicago

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 ...

, alongside Chicago-licensed

WTTW WTTW (channel 11) is a PBS member television station in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Owned by not-for-profit broadcaster Window to the World Communications, Inc., it is sister to commercial classical music radio station WFMT (98.7 FM). The ...

(channel 11).

History

Prior license history

The first television station in northwest Indiana was WCAE, a noncommercial station owned by the

Lake Central School Corporation Lake Central School Corporation is a public school district in St. John Township, Indiana. Schools Lake Central School Corporation operates several schools in St. John Township, Indiana.St. John, which broadcast on UHF channel 50 from September 26, 1967, to March 31, 1983. The station was closed when financial troubles prompted the school board to pull its subsidy, ceasing channel 50's operations.

Becoming WYIN

Northwest Indiana Public Broadcasting, a group that consisted of former WCAE advisory board members who had split from the school board in 1978, bought the WCAE license in late 1983 and set out to reactivate it. In a convoluted transaction that had as its purpose the construction of a new TV station in Chicago, Metrowest Corporation (owned by

Fred Eychaner Fred Eychaner (born c. 1945) is an American businessman and philanthropist. Eychaner is the chairman of Newsweb Corporation. He was included in ''Chicago'' magazine's 2014 list of the 100 most powerful Chicagoans. In 2005, the ''Chicago Tribune' ...

) paid NIPB $684,000 to join its plan to switch the noncommercial and commercial statuses of Gary's two TV channel allocations, channels 50 and 56. Metrowest had bought a majority stake in the permitholder of WDAI, a commercial station on channel 56; however, channel 56 could not be built from the

Sears Tower The Willis Tower (originally the Sears Tower) is a 108-story, skyscraper in the Loop community area of Chicago in Illinois, United States. Designed by architect Bruce Graham and engineer Fazlur Rahman Khan of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), ...

, while channel 50 could. The payment allowed NIPB to access matching federal grants to construct its own facilities. Metrowest eventually took channel 50 to air as commercial station

WPWR-TV WPWR-TV (channel 50) is a television station licensed to Gary, Indiana, United States, broadcasting the MyNetworkTV programming service to the Chicago area. It is one of two commercial television stations in the Chicago market to be licensed in I ...

(now a

MyNetworkTV MyNetworkTV (unofficially abbreviated MyTV, MyNet, MNT or MNTV, and sometimes referred to as My Network) is an American commercial broadcast television syndication service and former television network owned by Fox Corporation, operated by its ...

owned-and-operated station In the broadcasting industry, an owned-and-operated station (frequently abbreviated as an O&O) usually refers to a television or radio station owned by the network with which it is associated. This distinguishes such a station from an affiliate ...

). The WCAE non-commercial license that was now reassigned to channel 56 was reconstructed by NIPB who signed the station on the air as WYIN on November 15, 1987. For many years, WYIN fought to try to replace its aging transmitter and build a new tower atop either the Sears Tower or the

John Hancock Center The John Hancock Center is a 100-story, 1,128-foot supertall skyscraper located in Chicago, Illinois. Located in the Magnificent Mile district, the building was officially renamed 875 North Michigan Avenue in 2018. The skyscraper was designed ...

in downtown Chicago. Its plans, and any floated by

WYCC WYCC (channel 20) was a public television station in Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States. It was last owned by non-profit organization, not-for-profit broadcasting entity Window to the World Communications, Inc., alongside PBS member stati ...

, were bitterly opposed by

Window to the World Communications WTTW (channel 11) is a PBS member television station in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Owned by not-for-profit broadcaster Window to the World Communications, Inc., it is sister to commercial classical music radio station WFMT (98.7 FM). The ...

, which used their position as a national programming provider for PBS to turn back any attempts at competition from the two stations all being on an equal platform and transmitter position and power. WYIN pays a lower license fee for its carriage of PBS programs. WTTW station management claimed that if WYIN was allowed to transmit from Sears or the Hancock, it would retain that lower cost for PBS programming, leaving WTTW at a disadvantage as well as taking valuable pledge donations from the station. In the face of continued objections from WTTW, WYIN opted instead to build a new transmitter tower in

Cedar Lake, Indiana Cedar Lake is a town in Hanover Township, Lake County, Indiana, Hanover and Center Township, Lake County, Indiana, Center townships, Lake County, Indiana, United States. It is near the Illinois state line. Its population was 11,560 at the 2010 cen ...

. In November 2003, the station erected a transmission tower at its existing transmitter site, near Crown Point, which increased the station's power to 1.35 million

watt The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantify the rate of energy transfer. The watt is named after James Wa ...

Subchannel history

WYIN-DT2

In September 2010, digital subchannel 56.2 began simulcasting WYIN's main channel (digital subchannel 56.4 also simulcast digital channel 56.1

anamorphic widescreen Anamorphic widescreen (also called Full height anamorphic or FHA) is a process by which a comparatively wide widescreen image is horizontally compressed to fit into a storage medium (photographic film or MPEG-2 standard-definition frame, for exam ...

standard definition Standard-definition television (SDTV, SD, often shortened to standard definition) is a television system which uses a resolution that is not considered to be either high or enhanced definition. "Standard" refers to it being the prevailing sp ...

, before that subchannel was deleted in 2012). On March 30, 2015, Lakeshore Public Media collaborated with

NHK , also known as NHK, is a Japanese public broadcaster. NHK, which has always been known by this romanized initialism in Japanese, is a statutory corporation funded by viewers' payments of a television license fee. NHK operates two terrestr ...

to broadcast its English language network

NHK World NHK World-Japan (formerly and also known simply as NHK World) is the international arm of the Japanese state-controlled public broadcaster NHK. Its services are aimed at the overseas market, similar to those offered by other national public-ser ...

on digital subchannel 56.2; the subchannel relaunched as an NHK World affiliate on April 1, and was also initially made available on

Comcast Comcast Corporation (formerly known as American Cable Systems and Comcast Holdings),Before the AT&T merger in 2001, the parent company was Comcast Holdings Corporation. Comcast Holdings Corporation now refers to a subsidiary of Comcast Corpora ...

digital Digital usually refers to something using discrete digits, often binary digits. Technology and computing Hardware *Digital electronics, electronic circuits which operate using digital signals **Digital camera, which captures and stores digital i ...

channel 377.

WYIN-DT3 (defunct)

WYIN previously carried "Lakeshore Kids" on

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 ...

56.3, featuring children's programs primarily supplied by

PBS Kids PBS Kids is the brand for most of the children's programming aired by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in the United States. Some public television children's programs are not produced by PBS member stations or transmitted by PBS. Instead, ...

(some of them were distributed by

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 ...

); the subchannel, which launched in 2010, was broadcast in 16:9 anamorphic widescreen standard definition. "Lakeshore Kids" signed off on January 16, 2017 after the launch of the national PBS Kids channel, deferring to WTTW-DT4, which carries the network across the market.

Newscasts

The station began producing a weeknight prime time newscast focusing on local issues in northwest Indiana on September 4, 1990 as the ''Indiana Nightly Report''. This newscast (which was also rebroadcast at midnight each weeknight) originally competed with the hour-long 9:00 p.m. newscasts that air on

WGN-TV WGN-TV (channel 9) is an Independent station (North America), independent television station in Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States. Owned by Nexstar Media Group, it is sister station, sister to the company's sole radio property, talk ra ...

(channel 9) and

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 ...

owned-and-operated station

WFLD WFLD (channel 32) is a television station in Chicago, Illinois, United States, airing programming from the Fox network. It is owned and operated by the network's Fox Television Stations division alongside Gary, Indiana–licensed MyNetworkTV ...

(channel 32). Production of the program (later renamed ''56 Nightly News'') was suspended in December 1999, due to the lack of equipment to present a program at a viable technical quality and the issue of production costs for the newscast taking assets away from WYIN's other programming. The station entered into a news share agreement with

AT&T Broadband AT&T Broadband was AT&T's cable operations division. It was formed in 1999 when AT&T acquired the assets of TCI and renamed it to AT&T Broadband. The next year, AT&T Broadband acquired MediaOne as well and became the largest cable operations com ...

to simulcast the local news program it produced for the provider's local origination channel; on February 5, 2001, WYIN resumed production of the program, now retitled ''56 News'' (later to be renamed ''Lakeshore News Tonight'' in 2006). On May 6, 2013, the station expanded its newscasts into two separate broadcasts, with an early evening edition added at 6:00 p.m. while the late evening broadcast was moved to 10:00 p.m. On January 29, 2014, WYIN announced that it would discontinue ''Lakeshore News Tonight'' as a daily news program after the January 31 broadcast due to a reduction in the station's funding; WYIN management announced plans to possibly bring back the program in the spring in a retooled format as a weekly program. Lakeshore Public Media will reassign members of WYIN's news staff to WLPR-FM, Lakeshore Public Media's website, and to work on other projects for WYIN as well as for the revamped newscast. In the interim, news programming on WYIN will be reduced to daily live weather updates that will debut on February 3. The program was relaunched as the half-hour week-in-review format ''Lakeshore Report'' in May of that year, airing weekly on Friday evenings. In addition, the station also produces the weekly news and public affairs program ''Lakeshore Focus'' also on Friday evenings.

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 ...

Analog-to-digital conversion

WYIN began transmitting a digital signal on UHF channel 17 in February 2004, following the securement of a $2 million grant from the

Indiana General Assembly The Indiana General Assembly is the state legislature, or legislative branch, of the state of Indiana. It is a bicameral legislature that consists of a lower house, the Indiana House of Representatives, and an upper house, the Indiana Senate. ...

; the digital transmission antenna was placed on its then-recently completed transmitter facility near Crown Point. WYIN 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 56, 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 17. 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 56, which was among the high band UHF channels (52-69) that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition.

References

External links

* {{PBS Indiana Mass media in Gary, Indiana

YIN Yin may refer to: *the dark force in the yin and yang from traditional Chinese philosophy and medicine *Yīn (surname) (), a Chinese surname *Yǐn (surname) (), a Chinese surname *Shang dynasty, also known as the Yin dynasty **Yinxu or Yin, the S ...

Television channels and stations established in 1987 1987 establishments in Indiana PBS member stations