WNIT (channel 34) 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 ...

South Bend, Indiana South Bend is a city in and the county seat of St. Joseph County, Indiana, on the St. Joseph River near its southernmost bend, from which it derives its name. As of the 2020 census, the city had a total of 103,453 residents and is the fourt ...

, United States, owned by the Michiana Public Broadcasting Corporation. The station's studios are located at the corner of Lafayette and Jefferson Boulevards in downtown South Bend, and its transmitter is located just off of the St. Joseph Valley Parkway in the southern portion of South Bend.

History

WNIT's antenna and transmitter were purchased from

KFIZ-TV KFIZ-TV, UHF analog channel 34, was an independent television station licensed to Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, United States that operated from August 1, 1968, to November 30, 1972. The station was a sister station to KFIZ-AM, and covered an 11-count ...

in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, after that station went dark in November 1972. The station first signed on the air in February 1974 (the "-TV" suffix was used in the

call letters In broadcasting and radio communications, a call sign (also known as a call name or call letters—and historically as a call signal—or abbreviated as a call) is a unique identifier for a transmitter station. A call sign can be formally assigne ...

from 1974 to 1989). Prior to the station's launch, PBS programs had been offered to the market's commercial stations on a per-program basis, while

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

member station WTTW was available over-the-air in the extreme western portions of the market. Channel 34's original studio facilities were located at the Elkhart Area Career Center on California Road in Elkhart. On February 26, 2008, the

klystron A klystron is a specialized linear-beam vacuum tube, invented in 1937 by American electrical engineers Russell and Sigurd Varian,Pond, Norman H. "The Tube Guys". Russ Cochran, 2008 p.31-40 which is used as an amplifier for high radio frequen ...

tube that powered WNIT's transmitter failed, which reduced WNIT's analog signal strength to only 15 percent of its normal 1.38 million-

watt The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantify the rate of energy transfer. The watt is named after James ...

effective radiated power Effective radiated power (ERP), synonymous with equivalent radiated power, is an IEEE standardized definition of directional radio frequency (RF) power, such as that emitted by a radio transmitter. It is the total power in watts that would h ...

. The transmitter's major signal amplifiers subsequently failed on March 25, completely disabling the station's analog signal. With analog broadcasting due to end in the United States in 2009, the station opted to broadcast solely in digital. Most viewers did not lose access to WNIT programming due to the high penetration of cable and

satellite television Satellite television is a service that delivers television programming to viewers by relaying it from a communications satellite orbiting the Earth directly to the viewer's location. The signals are received via an outdoor parabolic antenna comm ...

in the area. On January 11, 2009, a fire severely damaged WNIT's administrative offices in Elkhart; there were no injuries resulting from the fire and the station's broadcast facilities and programming were unaffected. Local program production continued at the Elkhart Area Career Center and the station's administrative offices moved to a temporary location in the Tower Building on West Franklin Street in downtown Elkhart. This arrangement continued until May 11, 2010, when WNIT moved to

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...

affiliate

WSBT-TV WSBT-TV (channel 22) is a television station in South Bend, Indiana, United States, affiliated with CBS and Fox. Owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, the station maintains studios on East Douglas Avenue in Mishawaka, and its transmitter is loc ...

(channel 22)'s former studio on Lafayette and Jefferson streets in downtown South Bend. On December 17, 2008, WNIT had acquired and taken possession of the facility with the assistance of an in-kind donation by WSBT's owner,

Schurz Communications Schurz Communications is a South Bend, Indiana-based broadband media group and cloud services provider. It owned newspapers. History The company was founded in 1872 by Alfred B. Miller and Elmer Crockett with the creation of the ''South Bend ...

; that station had moved to new facilities in

Mishawaka Mishawaka is a city on the St. Joseph River, in Penn Township, St. Joseph County, in the U.S. state of Indiana. The population was 51,063 as of the 2020 census. Its nickname is "the Princess City". Mishawaka is a principal city of the South Be ...

in September 2008. In December 2020, the station re-branded as PBS Michiana and adopted the current PBS logo.

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

WNIT's analog signal, over UHF channel 34, shut down on March 25, 2008, due to the problems with its analog transmitter. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 35, 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 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 34.

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Wnit (Tv) PBS member stations Television channels and stations established in 1974 NIT (TV) 1974 establishments in Indiana