WHRO-TV,

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 ...

15 (

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 ...

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 ...

channel 31), is a Public Broadcasting Service ( PBS)

member Member may refer to: * Military jury, referred to as "Members" in military jargon * Element (mathematics), an object that belongs to a mathematical set * In object-oriented programming, a member of a class ** Field (computer science), entries in ...

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 A license (or licence) is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something (as well as the document of that permission or permit). A license is granted by a party (licensor) to another party (licensee) as an element of an agreeme ...

to both

Hampton Hampton may refer to: Places Australia *Hampton bioregion, an IBRA biogeographic region in Western Australia *Hampton, New South Wales *Hampton, Queensland, a town in the Toowoomba Region * Hampton, Victoria Canada * Hampton, New Brunswick *Ha ...

and

Norfolk, Virginia Norfolk ( ) is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. Incorporated in 1705, it had a population of 238,005 at the 2020 census, making it the third-most populous city in Virginia after neighboring Virginia B ...

, United States. Owned by the Hampton Roads Educational Telecommunications Association (HRETA), a consortium of 20

Hampton Roads Hampton Roads is the name of both a body of water in the United States that serves as a wide channel for the James, Nansemond and Elizabeth rivers between Old Point Comfort and Sewell's Point where the Chesapeake Bay flows into the Atlantic ...

and Eastern Shore school systems, it is

sister A sister is a woman or a girl who shares one or more parents with another individual; a female sibling. The male counterpart is a brother. Although the term typically refers to a family, familial relationship, it is sometimes used endearingly to r ...

public radio Public broadcasting involves radio, television and other electronic media outlets whose primary mission is public service. Public broadcasters receive funding from diverse sources including license fees, individual contributions, public financing ...

stations WHRV (89.5 FM) and

WHRO-FM WHRO-FM is a Public Radio broadcast radio station, broadcasting a classical music format. WHRO is licensed to Norfolk, Virginia, serving Hampton Roads. WHRO-FM is owned and operated by the Hampton Roads Educational Telecommunications Associatio ...

(90.3). The stations share studios at the Public Telecommunications Center for Hampton Roads next to the campus of

Old Dominion University Old Dominion University (Old Dominion or ODU) is a public research university in Norfolk, Virginia. It was established in 1930 as the Norfolk Division of the College of William & Mary and is now one of the largest universities in Virginia w ...

in Norfolk, while WHRO-TV's transmitter is located in

Suffolk, Virginia Suffolk is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia, and as such has no county. As of the 2020 census, the population was 94,324. It is the 9th most populous city in Virginia and the largest city in Virginia by boundary land area a ...

History

The station signed on September 27, 1959 as the first educational station licensed in Virginia. The channel 15 position was previously occupied by then-

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...

and now current ABC affiliate

WVEC-TV WVEC (channel 13) is a television station licensed to Hampton, Virginia, United States, serving the Hampton Roads area as an affiliate of ABC. The station is owned by Tegna Inc., and maintains studios on Woodis Avenue in Norfolk; its transmitter ...

, now on channel 13. It was a member of

National Educational Television National Educational Television (NET) was an American educational broadcast television network owned by the Ford Foundation and later co-owned by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. It operated from May 16, 1954 to October 4, 1970, and ...

(NET) and owned by the Norfolk and Hampton school systems. Only two years later, it moved to its current facility in Norfolk, which was heavily renovated in 1990. Eight other school systems began using WHRO's services in 1964 and HRETA was formed two years later. It became a charter member of PBS in 1970. WHRO is well known for its instructional programming, much of which is distributed to other PBS stations as well as member/owner and other school systems and health systems through a private educational broadcast network. WHRO also had an annual fundraising auction marathon, ''The Great TV Auction'', which featured local celebrities as auctioneers. WHRO also sponsors th
Consortium for Interactive Instruction
(CII), which is a partnership among all the Hampton Roads area school divisions as well as many private schools for the advancement of technology in the school curriculum. One of the key events that CII sponsors is the Great Computer Challenge. This is a competition for students at all levels of K-12 education in many areas of computer technology. For example, students at the middle and high school levels compete in categories varying from web design to

C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...

Visual Basic Visual Basic is a name for a family of programming languages from Microsoft. It may refer to: * Visual Basic .NET (now simply referred to as "Visual Basic"), the current version of Visual Basic launched in 2002 which runs on .NET * Visual Basic ( ...

and

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mo ...

programming, as well as music composition,

computer-aided design Computer-aided design (CAD) is the use of computers (or ) to aid in the creation, modification, analysis, or optimization of a design. This software is used to increase the productivity of the designer, improve the quality of design, improve co ...

desktop publishing Desktop publishing (DTP) is the creation of documents using page layout software on a personal ("desktop") computer. It was first used almost exclusively for print publications, but now it also assists in the creation of various forms of online ...

and desktop presentations (

PowerPoint Microsoft PowerPoint is a presentation program, created by Robert Gaskins and Dennis Austin at a software company named Forethought, Inc. It was released on April 20, 1987, initially for Macintosh computers only. Microsoft acquired Powe ...

). To celebrate its 50th anniversary, WHRO changed its logo on September 27, 2009.

Eastern Shore translators

There are two low-powered

translators Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transl ...

of WHRO-TV that are located in the

Eastern Shore of Virginia The Eastern Shore of Virginia consists of two counties ( Accomack and Northampton) on the Atlantic coast detached from the mainland of the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. The region is part of the Delmarva Peninsula and is s ...

and are municipally owned by Accomack County rather than the HRETA. WHRO-TV and the HRETA do not own or operate any translators in the Greater Hampton Roads area. * '
W18EG-D
'' Channel 18.4 Onancock * '
W25AA-D
'' Channel 25 Onancock WHRO-TV previously had a translator with the call sign W20CW serving Craddockville; the license for this translator was canceled on March 28, 2011.

Digital television

Digital channels

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

WHRO-TV discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over

channel 15, on February 17, 2009, to conclude the federally mandated from analog to digital television. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 16, using

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 ...

to display WHRO-TV's

as 15 on digital television receivers.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Whro-Tv Hampton, Virginia Norfolk, Virginia PBS member stations Television channels and stations established in 1959 HRO-TV 1959 establishments in Virginia