WLIW (TV)

WLIW, virtual channel 21 (UHF digital channel 32), is a secondary Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) member television station licensed to Garden City, New York, United States and serving the New York City television market. Owned by WNET (formerly known as the Educational Broadcasting Corporation), it is sister to the area's primary PBS member, Newark, New Jersey-licensed WNET (channel 13), and two Class A stations which share spectrum with WNET: WNDT-CD (channel 14) and WMBQ-CD (channel 46); through an outsourcing agreement, WNET also operates New Jersey's PBS state network NJTV and the website NJ Spotlight. WLIW and WNET share studios at One Worldwide Plaza in Midtown Manhattan with an auxiliary street-level studio in the Lincoln Center complex on Manhattan's Upper West Side. WLIW's transmitter is located at One World Trade Center; the station also maintains a production studio at its former transmitter site in Plainview, New York.

WLIW
Garden City, New York/
New York, New York
United States
ChannelsDigital: 32 (UHF)
Virtual: 21 (PSIP)
BrandingWLIW 21
Programming
SubchannelsSee § Digital channels
Affiliations
Ownership
OwnerWNET
Radio: WLIW-FM
History
First air date
January 14, 1969 (1969-01-14)
Former channel number(s)
  • Analog:
  • 21 (UHF, 1969–2009)
  • Digital:
  • 22 (UHF, 1999–2009)
  • 21 (UHF, 2009–2019)
  • NET (1969–1970)
Call sign meaning
Long Island West
Technical information
Licensing authority
FCC
Facility ID38336
ERP72 kW
HAAT495.6 m (1,626 ft)
Transmitter coordinates40°42′46.8″N 74°0′47.3″W
Links
Public license information
Profile
LMS
Websitewww.wliw.org

In terms of potential audience reach, WLIW is the third-most watched public television station in the United States.[1]

History
WLIW's former broadcast tower, adjacent to its studios in Plainview, New York, June 2010.

Originally operated by the Long Island Educational Television Council, the station first signed on the air on January 14, 1969 serving Nassau County and western Suffolk County. By the early 1980s the station was being carried on nearly all cable systems in the New York metropolitan area, and began identifying as "Garden City/New York."

The station fed news coverage from WNBC during the September 11 terrorist attacks.

In February 2003, the Long Island Educational Television Council merged with the Educational Broadcasting Corporation (the present-day WNET Group), combining WLIW's operations with those of WNET. The Long Island Educational Television Council was retained as WLIW's governing board and fundraising arm.

WLIW logo, used from 2005 to 2009.

WLIW promotes itself as a more locally oriented station than WNET. For most of the late 1990s and early 2000s, it branded itself as "New York Public Television." However, it is a major producer of national PBS and American Public Television programming in its own right, much like WNET. Among its more prominent shows are the innovative Visions series and many music specials featuring noted American performers like Frank Sinatra, Billy Joel, Neil Sedaka, Ricky Nelson and international stars like Helmut Lotti and Sarah Brightman. Regular hosts of these specials produced for PBS include Laura Savini, Terrel Cass, Mark Simone, David Rubinson and Lisa Jandovitz.

In 2005, the station debuted an on-air identity, including color palette and on-air graphics, designed and conceived by Trollback + Company. It was the station's first corporate branding initiative since its launch in 1969. In 2009, WLIW unified its branding with its sister WNET, adopting a similar logo, but in a blue color scheme rather than WNET's red, but keeping the "WLIW 21" brand name; it did, however, carry over the dotted "i" from the WNET logo. It rolled out a new logo in 2012, removing the dotted "i."

Programming

Public television programming presented by WLIW include Front and Center, Priscilla's Yoga Stretches, and Consuelo Mack WealthTrack.

Digital television

Digital channels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:

Channel Video Aspect PSIP Short Name Programming[2]
21.11080i16:9WLIW HDMain WLIW programming / PBS
21.2480iCreateCreate
21.3WorldWorld
21.41080iAllArtsAll Arts

Analog-to-digital conversion

WLIW discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over UHF channel 21, on June 12, 2009, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television.[3] The station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition UHF channel 22 to channel 21.

References
  1. WLIW21, the Third Most-Watched Public Television Station in the Nation, Becomes Available in High Definition on Most Cable Providers". Thirteen.org. June 2, 2014.
  2. RabbitEars TV Query for WLIW
  3. List of Digital Full-Power Stations
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