WILL-TV (channel 12) is a

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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 earth ...

licensed to

Urbana, Illinois Urbana ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Champaign County, Illinois, United States. As of the 2020 census, Urbana had a population of 38,336. As of the 2010 United States Census, Urbana is the List of municipalities in Illinois, 38th-most pop ...

, United States, serving the

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region. Owned by the

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the University ...

as part of

Illinois Public Media Illinois Public Media, previously "WILL AM-FM-TV", is a not-for-profit organization located within the College of Media at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, which is responsible for the university's public media service activities. It ...

, it is

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member stations

WILL Will may refer to: Common meanings * Will and testament, instructions for the disposition of one's property after death * Will (philosophy), or willpower * Will (sociology) * Will, volition (psychology) * Will, a modal verb - see Shall and will ...

(580 AM) and

WILL-FM WILL-FM ( 90.9 MHz) is a public, listener-supported radio station owned by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and licensed to Urbana, Illinois, United States. It is operated by Illinois Public Media, with studios located at Campbell ...

(90.9). The three stations share studios at Campbell Hall for Public Telecommunication on the university's campus; WILL-TV's transmitter is located on East 1700th Road North, west of

Monticello Monticello ( ) was the primary plantation of Founding Father Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, who began designing Monticello after inheriting land from his father at age 26. Located just outside Charlottesville, V ...

History

Commercial television operation in the United States was first authorized in 1941. However, by 1948, the

Federal Communications Commission The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdiction ...

(FCC) determined that insufficient channels had been created to provide for national interference-free coverage, and there was also a need to set aside allocations for use by

non-commercial educational station A non-commercial educational station (NCE station) is a radio station or television station that does not accept on-air advertisements ( TV ads or radio ads), as defined in the United States by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and was ...

s. In order to give itself time to review options, a "freeze" on new TV station construction was announced, which would last until 1952. Meanwhile, in May 1951, the

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included funding for a University of Illinois TV program-production unit."Part II: Final TV Report: 528. The Urbana Educational Reservation"
(Sixth Report and Order, adopted April 11, 1952, released April 14, 1952), ''Broadcasting'', April 14, 1952, pages 61-62. In 1952, the FCC announced a new TV allocation plan, which included a reservation for an educational station in Urbana on VHF channel 12. At this time the FCC also announced the creation of 70 UHF TV channels; however, existing receivers could only receive VHF stations, and UHF assignments were considered to be uneconomical for commercial operation. In particular, the Illinois Broadcasters Association complained that the Urbana channel 12 assignment was the only VHF channel allocation in south central Illinois; moreover, that the university should not operate its own TV station, and should only prepare programming for use by commercial stations. There were also petitions filed with the FCC to modify the Urbana educational channel 12 allocation; however, the commission left this assignment unchanged. In November 1953, the university filed an application to build the new station. After a bill that would have forced the university to withdraw its application was narrowly defeated in the legislature, the Illinois Broadcasters Association funded a taxpayer's lawsuit filed by Evanston restaurant owner Stephen Turkovich, that claimed financial support for the station violated provisions of the state's 1955 Finance Act. The case ultimately went to the Illinois Supreme Court, which in 1957 ruled that the state financing was proper. Because the station's initial application listed a main studio location in

Champaign Champaign ( ) is a city in Champaign County, Illinois, United States. The population was 88,302 at the 2020 census. It is the tenth-most populous municipality in Illinois and the fourth most populous city in Illinois outside the Chicago metropo ...

, regulations at the time meant it could not be assigned the call sign WILL-TV, because sister station WILL was licensed to a different community, Urbana. Thus when the application was approved and a construction permit issued, the TV station was initially issued the call sign WTLC. However, in March 1955, prior to commencing operations, the main studio location was changed to Urbana, which allowed the call sign to be changed to WILL-TV.History Cards for WILL-TV
fcc.gov. Retrieved August 2, 2019. WILL-TV inaugurated broadcasting on August 1, 1955, from makeshift studios underneath the west stands of Memorial Stadium. Financial support included a transmitter donated by

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable energ ...

, and $100,000 from an independent

Ford Foundation The Ford Foundation is an American private foundation with the stated goal of advancing human welfare. Created in 1936 by Edsel Ford and his father Henry Ford, it was originally funded by a US$25,000 gift from Edsel Ford. By 1947, after the death ...

agency, the Fund for Adult Education. Originally airing for only a few hours at night, the station began daytime broadcasts in 1958, consisting of telecourses from the university. Also aired during this era was news, documentaries, and children's programming.WILL Illinois Public Media
, American Archive of Public Broadcasting. Retrieved July 30, 2019. WILL-TV became an affiliate of PBS upon the network's formation. The station added Saturday programming in 1974, four years after joining PBS.

Programming

In addition to PBS network and local programming, WILL-TV carries

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. Instead, ...

on one digital subchannel, and a mixture of programming from the Create and

World In its most general sense, the term "world" refers to the totality of entities, to the whole of reality or to everything that is. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the worl ...

networks on a second subchannel.

Technical information

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 ...

Analog-to-digital conversion

WILL-TV shut down its analog signal on VHF channel 12 on June 12, 2009, the official date when 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 VHF channel 9. 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 ...

, 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 channel 12, its former VHF analog assignment. The "WILL-TV" callsign was transferred from the former analog channel 12 to digital channel 9, and the pre-transition call sign "WILL-DT" was retired.

References

External links

Illinois Public Media's WILL AM-FM-TV website

"Division of Broadcasting"
''Alumni News'' (College of Communications: University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), 1977-78: Fiftieth Anniversary (special issue), pages 24–29: historical overview of radio and TV broadcasting at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign up to 1977
FCC History Cards for WILL-TV
(covering 1953-1979) {{DEFAULTSORT:Will-Tv University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign ILL-TV ILL-TV Television channels and stations established in 1955 1955 establishments in Illinois PBS member stations Urbana, Illinois