WTCI (channel 45) 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 eart ...

Chattanooga, Tennessee Chattanooga ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Hamilton County, Tennessee, United States. Located along the Tennessee River bordering Georgia, it also extends into Marion County on its western end. With a population of 181,099 in 2020 ...

, United States. Owned by the Greater Chattanooga Public Television Corporation, the station maintains studios on Bonnyshire Drive in Chattanooga, and its transmitter is located on Sawyer Cemetery Road in

unincorporated Unincorporated may refer to: * Unincorporated area, land not governed by a local municipality * Unincorporated entity, a type of organization * Unincorporated territories of the United States, territories under U.S. jurisdiction, to which Congress ...

Mile Straight.

History

The

Tennessee Department of Education The Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) is the state education agency of Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-larges ...

began WTCI on March 4, 1970 on channel 45, as the third in a series of public television stations that included

WLJT WLJT-DT (channel 11), branded on-air as West TN PBS, is a PBS member television station licensed to Lexington, Tennessee, United States, serving western and northwestern Tennessee. The station is owned by the West Tennessee Public Television Cou ...

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and WSJK-TV (now WETP) in the Tri-Cities and

Knoxville Knoxville is a city in and the county seat of Knox County in the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2020 United States census, Knoxville's population was 190,740, making it the largest city in the East Tennessee Grand Division and the state' ...

; WCTE-TV in Cookeville followed later in the decade. It is now operated by the Greater Chattanooga Public Television Corporation, a

non-profit A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...

community organization, which assumed the station's

broadcast license A broadcast license is a type of spectrum license granting the licensee permission to use a portion of the radio frequency spectrum in a given geographical area for broadcasting purposes. The licenses generally include restrictions, which vary f ...

in 1984. WTCI offers a diverse mix of programming, featuring informational, cultural, and entertainment shows from both local and PBS sources to viewers in portions of four states (

Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to th ...

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, and

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). However, some program duplication occurs with

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station, WNGH-TV, which operates at a much higher power and is seen in most of WTCI's

broadcast range A broadcast range (also listening range or listening area for radio, or viewing range or viewing area for television) is the service area that a broadcast station or other transmission covers via radio waves (or possibly infrared light, which is ...

, including Chattanooga itself. Shows created by WTCI include ''The A List'', ''Tennessee Insider'', ''First Things First'', ''Southern Accents'', and ''Chattanooga History Makers''. It is also a member of The Tennessee Channel Network. It also carries the digital subchannel Create. WTCI Create and Tennessee Channel, airing on weekends, is on channel 45.2 and Comcast channel 208. In 2003, WTCI relocated from its old studios located on the

Chattanooga State Community College Chattanooga State Community College (Chattanooga State or, informally, Chatt State) is a public community college in Chattanooga, Tennessee.“Chattanooga State Community College.” Educating Tennessee. Tennessee Board of Regents. http://www.tb ...

campus to its current location on Bonnyshire Drive, since the cost of renovating the 37-year-old building at CSCC was deemed prohibitive.

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

WTCI shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 45, on February 17, 2009, the original target date in which full-power television stations in the United States were to transition from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate (which was later pushed back to June 12, 2009). The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 29. 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 ...

, digital 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 its former UHF analog channel 45.

References

External links