WOUB-TV (channel 20) 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 ...

Athens, Ohio Athens is a city and the county seat of Athens County, Ohio. The population was 23,849 at the 2020 census. Located along the Hocking River within Appalachian Ohio about southeast of Columbus, Athens is best known as the home of Ohio Universi ...

, United States. The station's transmitter is located west of the city off SR 56. Its programming can also be seen on

satellite station A broadcast relay station, also known as a satellite station, relay transmitter, broadcast translator (U.S.), re-broadcaster (Canada), repeater (two-way radio) or complementary station (Mexico), is a broadcast transmitter which repeats (or tran ...

WOUC-TV (channel 44) in

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

, with transmitter near

Fairview, Ohio Fairview is a village in Belmont and Guernsey counties in the U.S. state of Ohio. The population was 67 as of the 2020 census. It is part of the Wheeling metropolitan area. History Fairview was platted in 1814. The name Fairview is commenda ...

. The WOUB/WOUC studios and offices are located in the Radio-TV building on the Athens campus of

Ohio University Ohio University is a public research university in Athens, Ohio. The first university chartered by an Act of Congress and the first to be chartered in Ohio, the university was chartered in 1787 by the Congress of the Confederation and subse ...

, which owns the stations'

licenses 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 ...

through the WOUB Center for Public Media. The Center is a non-academic unit of the Scripps College of Communication. The two stations, combined, serve southeastern

Ohio Ohio () is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Of the List of states and territories of the United States, fifty U.S. states, it is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 34th-l ...

and portions of neighboring

West Virginia West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian, Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States.The Census Bureau and the Association of American Geographers classify West Virginia as part of the Southern United States while the ...

and

Kentucky Kentucky ( , ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States and one of the states of the Upper South. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north; West Virginia and Virginia ...

. The public media center also serves as a laboratory for Ohio University students who are interested in gaining experience in broadcasting and related technologies. In addition to radio ( WOUB AM and FM) and television, WOUB is also active in online services and media production. Unlike most PBS stations, the channel produces a regular local newscast by university students studying and training on television newscasts at Ohio University. With that, they mainly focus on the area around Athens, which is mostly ignored by the

Columbus Columbus is a Latinized version of the Italian surname "''Colombo''". It most commonly refers to: * Christopher Columbus (1451-1506), the Italian explorer * Columbus, Ohio, capital of the U.S. state of Ohio Columbus may also refer to: Places ...

Zanesville Zanesville is a city in and the county seat of Muskingum County, Ohio, United States. It is located east of Columbus and had a population of 24,765 as of the 2020 census, down from 25,487 as of the 2010 census. Historically the state capi ...

and Huntington– Charleston stations that serve the Athens area.

Coverage area

Athens and surrounding Athens County are located in the fringes of the Columbus market. However, the combined power of the two stations reaches most of the Huntington–Charleston and Zanesville markets, as well as portions of the Columbus, Parkersburg and Wheeling–

Steubenville Steubenville is a city in and the county seat of Jefferson County, Ohio, United States. Located along the Ohio River 33 miles west of Pittsburgh, it had a population of 18,161 at the 2020 census. The city's name is derived from Fort Steuben, a ...

markets. The station leases commercial fiber line to permit it to be carried on the Columbus local feeds of the DBS providers.

Technical information

As of April 11, 2018, when they expanded to six broadcast streams per transmitter, WOUB-TV and WOUC-TV share the same programming.

Subchannels

The stations' digital signals are

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

In 2009, when the analog to digital conversion was completed, WOUB-TV and WOUC-TV used channels 27 and 35, respectively for digital television operations. Following the transition the stations remained on those channels, but, it uses PSIP to display 20 and 44 as the stations' respective

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 ...

s. In 2019, both stations moved to new physical channels as part of the FCC's spectrum re-pack process.

Images

File:WOUB-FM_&_TV_transmitter-building.jpg, Transmitter facility for WOUB-FM/TV, Athens, Ohio. Photo taken in 1993. File:WOUB-FM_&_TV_transmitter-tower.jpg, Transmitter tower for WOUB-FM/TV, Athens, Ohio. Photo taken in 1993.

References

External links

Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Woub-Tv PBS member stations Ohio University Television channels and stations established in 1963 Television stations in Ohio