WXXI-TV (channel 21) is a
PBS
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...
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 eart ...
in
Rochester, New York
Rochester () is a city in the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Monroe County, and the fourth-most populous in the state after New York City, Buffalo, and Yonkers, with a population of 211,328 at the 2020 United States census. Located in W ...
, United States. It is owned by the
WXXI Public Broadcasting Council
The WXXI Public Broadcasting Council is a community non-profit organization of some 36,000 subscribing members in the Rochester, New York metropolitan area, and owns that city's major public television and Community radio stations, a newspaper, an ...
alongside
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 ...
members
WXXI (1370 AM) and
WXXI-FM (91.5). The three outlets share studios at 280 State Street near downtown Rochester; WXXI-TV's transmitter is located on Pinnacle Hill on the border between Rochester and
Brighton.
Programming
National productions
WXXI-TV's national public television productions include ''A Warrior in Two Worlds'', ''Echoes from the Ancients'', ''
Out of the Fire'', ''
Albert Paley: Man of Steel'', ''
Biz Kid$'', and ''
Flight to Freedom''. WXXI-TV also produced ''Assignment: The World'', a weekly current-events program for schools, which aired on approximately 100 public television stations nationwide, and was the nation's longest-running instructional television program. Due to funding cuts, it was canceled and its last episode aired on May 23, 2013.
Former programming
ThinkBright, broadcast from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. on 21.3 until the digital transition.
Technical information
Subchannels
WXXI-TV entered the digital era in September 2003 when it signed on with Rochester's first full-power digital television signal.
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 ...
:
Channel 21.4, now PBS Kids since February 1, 2016, was originally a digital
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 ...
simulcast of WXXI-TV's analog signal.
Analog-to-digital conversion
WXXI-TV discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over
UHF channel 21, 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 16. 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 AT ...
, 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 21.
As part of the
SAFER Act,
WXXI-TV kept its analog signal on the air until July 10, 2009 to inform viewers of the
digital television transition through a loop of
public service announcement
A public service announcement (PSA) is a message in the public interest disseminated by the media without charge to raise public awareness and change behavior. In the UK, they are generally called a public information film (PIF); in Hong Kong, ...
s from the
National Association of Broadcasters. WXXI-TV had been awarded a $202,498 federal contract for an outreach initiative to help Rochester's over-the-air viewers prepare for the digital transition.
References
External links
*
John S. Porter papers at the
University of Maryland libraries. Porter served as the president and general manager from 1966 to 1969.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wxxi-Tv
XXI-TV
PBS member stations
Television channels and stations established in 1966
1966 establishments in New York (state)