WZBJ-CD (channel 19) is a low-power,

Class A television station The class A television service is a system for regulating some low-power television (LPTV) stations in the United States. Class A stations are denoted by the broadcast callsign suffix "-CA" (analog) or "-CD" (digital), although very many analog -C ...

licensed to

Lynchburg, Virginia Lynchburg is an independent city (United States), independent city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. First settled in 1757 by ferry owner John Lynch (1740–1820), John Lynch, the city's populati ...

, United States. It is 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 Danville-licensed

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 ...

affiliate

WZBJ WZBJ (channel 24) is a television station licensed to Danville, Virginia, United States, serving the Roanoke– Lynchburg market as an affiliate of MyNetworkTV. It is owned by Gray Television alongside Roanoke-licensed CBS affiliate WDBJ (chann ...

(channel 24) which 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 ...

; the WZBJ stations collectively serve as a sister outlet to Roanoke-licensed

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

WDBJ WDBJ (channel 7) is a television station licensed to Roanoke, Virginia, United States, serving as the CBS affiliate for the Roanoke– Lynchburg market. It is owned by Gray Television alongside Danville-licensed MyNetworkTV affiliate WZBJ, chann ...

(channel 7). WZBJ-CD's transmitter is located on Candlers Mountain near the campus of the station's former owner,

Liberty University Liberty University (LU) is a private Baptist university in Lynchburg, Virginia. It is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia (Southern Baptist Convention). Founded in 1971 by Jerry Falwell Sr. and Elmer L. Towns, Liberty i ...

; its parent station shares studios with WDBJ on Hershberger Road in northwest Roanoke.

History

The station first came on the air on January 23, 1991, as W19BC channel 19, a translator station for FamilyNet, a network owned at the time by Liberty University founder

Jerry Falwell Jerry Laymon Falwell Sr. (August 11, 1933 – May 15, 2007) was an American Baptist pastor, televangelism, televangelist, and conservatism in the United States, conservative activist. He was the founding pastor of the Thomas Road Baptist Church, ...

. On September 1, 1991, W19BC began originating programming and became a 24/7 local LPTV station. In 2000, it changed its

callsign In broadcasting and radio communications, a call sign (also known as a call name or call letters—and historically as a call signal—or abbreviated as a call) is a unique identifier for a transmitter station. A call sign can be formally assigne ...

to WTLU-CA. The station previously branded itself as HopeNow.tv. The station's digital transmitter, WTLU-LD on channel 43, signed on in 2010; in 2012, the analog WTLU-CA transmitter went

dark Darkness, the direct opposite of lightness, is defined as a lack of illumination, an absence of visible light, or a surface that absorbs light, such as black or brown. Human vision is unable to distinguish colors in conditions of very low lum ...

, and its Class A status was transferred to the digital license as WTLU-CD. The call letters changed to WLHG-CD in 2015. On April 30, 2018,

announced it would purchase WLHG-CD from Liberty University for $50,000. Under the terms of the transaction, Gray would hold an option agreement to acquire WFFP-TV, and enter into a shared services agreement (to take effect on June 15), whereby Gray would provide programming for and receive a share of the programming and advertising revenue accrued by WLHG-CD and WFFP, which would in turn become sister stations to Gray's existing property in the Roanoke–Lynchburg market, CBS affiliate WDBJ, a station that shares its physical channel spectrum with WFFP. Gray took control of WLHG-CD as scheduled on June 15. On the same day, it began simulcasting WDBJ's MyNetworkTV subchannel "My 19" on WLHG-CD. While the station moved to Gray's control, the station's

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 ...

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 ...

system was not in use, rendering WLHG-CD's channels temporarily as 43.3 and 43.4. On September 1, 2018, the call letters were changed to WZBJ-CD, and it began sharing virtual channel 24 with the full-power

license (which concurrently changed call letters from WFFP-TV).

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 ...

ATSC 3.0 lighthouse

References

External links

* {{Use mdy dates, date=January 2023 Gray Television MyNetworkTV affiliates Cozi TV affiliates Decades (TV network) affiliates ZBJ-CD Low-power television stations in the United States Television channels and stations established in 2010 2010 establishments in Virginia ATSC 3.0 television stations