WLIW (TV)

WLIW (channel 21) is a secondary PBS member television station licensed to Garden City, New York, United States, and serving the New York City television market. It is owned by The WNET Group (formerly known as the Educational Broadcasting Corporation and later as WNET.org) alongside the area's primary PBS member, Newark, New Jersey–licensed WNET (channel 13), and two Class A stations which share spectrum with WNET: WNDT-CD (channel 14) and WMBQ-CD (channel 46). Through an outsourcing agreement, The WNET Group also operates New Jersey's PBS state network NJ PBS and the website NJ Spotlight.

WLIW and WNET share studios at One Worldwide Plaza in Midtown Manhattan with an auxiliary street-level studio in the Lincoln Center complex on Manhattan's Upper West Side. WLIW's transmitter is located at One World Trade Center; the station also maintains a production studio at its former transmitter site in Plainview, New York.

History

Originally operated by the Long Island Educational Television Council, the station first signed on the air on January 14, 1969, serving Nassau County and western Suffolk County. By the early 1980s the station was being carried on nearly all cable systems in the New York metropolitan area, and began identifying as "Garden City–New York."

The station fed news coverage from WNBC during the September 11 terrorist attacks.

In February 2003, the Long Island Educational Television Council merged with the Educational Broadcasting Corporation (the present-day WNET Group), combining WLIW's operations with those of WNET. The Long Island Educational Television Council was retained as WLIW's governing board and fundraising arm.

WLIW promotes itself as a more locally oriented station than WNET. For most of the late 1990s and early 2000s, it branded itself as "New York Public Television." However, it is a major producer of national PBS and American Public Television programming in its own right, much like WNET. Among its more prominent shows are the innovative ''Visions'' series and many music specials featuring noted American performers like Frank Sinatra, Billy Joel, Neil Sedaka, Ricky Nelson and international stars like Helmut Lotti and Sarah Brightman. Regular hosts of these specials produced for PBS include Laura Savini, Terrel Cass, Mark Simone, David Rubinson and Lisa Jandovitz.

In 2005, the station debuted a new on-air identity, including color palette and on-air graphics, designed and conceived by Trollback + Company. It was the station's first corporate branding initiative since its launch in 1969. In 2009, WLIW unified its branding with its sister WNET. It kept its longtime on-air name of WLIW 21, and used a predominantly blue color scheme rather than WNET's red; it did, however, carry over the dotted "i" from WNET's "Thirteen" logo. It rolled out a new logo in 2012, removing the dotted "i."

Programming

Public television programming presented by WLIW include ''Front and Center'', ''Priscilla's Yoga Stretches'', and '' Consuelo Mack WealthTrack''.

Technical information

Subchannels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:

Analog-to-digital conversion

WLIW discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over UHF channel 21, on June 12, 2009, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television. The station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition UHF channel 22 to channel 21.

Originally, WLIW's digital signal only operated at 89,900 watts–equivalent to 449,500 watts in analog. It only provided grade B coverage of New York City itself, and was marginal at best over-the-air on the New Jersey side of the market. However, few people lost access to the station due to the high penetration of cable and satellite in the market.

The station has since moved its transmitter to One World Trade Center. Although its power was reduced to 72,000 watts (equivalent to 360,000 watts in analog), it gave the station an over-the-air coverage area comparable to the other New York City stations.

ATSC 3.0

On February 1, 2022, The WNET Group announced plans to convert WLIW into an ATSC 3.0 television station. As part of the plan, WLIW will move its ATSC 1.0 broadcast to its sister station, WNET, while WLIW will carry ATSC 3.0 broadcasts from its sister stations, WNET and NJ PBS in addition to WLIW's own broadcast. The transition is subject to FCC approval and The WNET Group will make an announcement on the launch of ATSC 3.0 in the future.

References

External links

Official websiteALL ARTS websiteWLIW's Visions Series Website

{{PBS New York

LIW
PBS member stations
Television channels and stations established in 1969
Garden City, New York
Plainview, New York
Mass media in Nassau County, New York