WEDU (channel 3) is a PBS 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 ea ...

licensed to

Tampa, Florida Tampa () is a city on the Gulf Coast of the U.S. state of Florida. The city's borders include the north shore of Tampa Bay and the east shore of Old Tampa Bay. Tampa is the largest city in the Tampa Bay area and the seat of Hillsborough ...

, United States, serving the

Tampa Bay area The Tampa Bay area is a major populated area surrounding Tampa Bay on the west coast of Florida in the United States. It includes the main cities of Tampa, St. Petersburg, and Clearwater. It is the 18th largest metropolitan area in the Unite ...

. Owned by Florida West Coast Public Broadcasting, it is 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 ...

to fellow PBS member WEDQ (channel 3.4). The two stations share studios on North Boulevard in Tampa, and transmitter facilities in

Riverview, Florida Riverview is an unincorporated census-designated place in Hillsborough County, Florida, United States. It is located south of Brandon. The population was 107,396 in the 2020 census, up from 71,050 in the 2010 census. Many of Tampa Bay's radio ...

History

The station first signed on the air on October 17, 1958. For many years, WEDU has been one of the highest-rated stations in the PBS system. At one point, it was the third most-watched PBS member station in the country. On February 8, 2017, USF announced that the license for secondary PBS outlet WUSF-TV had been sold for $18.8 million in the FCC spectrum auction, and that it would cease operations;WUSF TV License Sold; Station Will End Operations
/ref> on August 11, it announced that the station would go off the air on October 15. On October 8, it was announced that WUSF-TV had entered into a channel sharing agreement with WEDU, enabling the station to continue operations. WUSF-TV's broadcast license would also be transferred to WEDU's owner, Florida West Coast Public Broadcasting;WUSF-WEDU CSA
/ref> the transfer was completed on January 24, 2018. On October 16, 2017 at midnight, WEDU began airing two of WUSF-TV's former subchannels,

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. Inste ...

and Create, located on 3.5 and 3.6, respectively. Also on that date, WUSF-TV changed its calls to WEDQ, and began airing the secondary lineup of PBS programming that had previously aired on WEDU's fourth subchannel under the branding "WEDU Plus."

Technical information

Subchannels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:

Analog-to-digital conversion

WEDU shut down its analog signal, over

VHF Very high frequency (VHF) is the ITU designation for the range of radio frequency electromagnetic waves (radio waves) from 30 to 300 megahertz (MHz), with corresponding wavelengths of ten meters to one meter. Frequencies immediately below VHF ...

channel 3, on February 17, 2009, to conclude the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television.Congress delays digital TV switch, but WEDU will switch this month
Eric Deggans, St. Petersburg Times, February 5, 2009List of Digital Full-Power Stations
/ref> The station moved its digital signal from its pre-transition

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 54. That channel was among the high band UHF channels (52-69) that were removed from broadcast service. On June 12, 2009, it moved to VHF channel 13. Channel 13 originally was the analog channel for Fox

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 ...

WTVT WTVT (channel 13) is a television station licensed to Tampa, Florida, United States, broadcasting the Fox network to the Tampa Bay area. Owned and operated by the network's Fox Television Stations division, WTVT maintains studios on Kenne ...

but that station vacated Channel 13 on the rescheduled date of the digital television transition,WEDU FCC DTV status report
/ref> using PSIP to display WEDU'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 3 on digital television receivers.

References

External links

Official website
{{PBS PBS member stations Television channels and stations established in 1958 EDU 1958 establishments in Florida