WNPT (TV)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| WNPT | |
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| Nashville, Tennessee | |
| Branding | Npt - Nashville Public Television |
| Slogan | Television worth watching. |
| Channels | Analog: 8 (VHF) |
| Affiliations | PBS |
| Owner | Nashville Public Television, Inc. |
| First air date | September 10, 1962 |
| Call letters’ meaning | Nashville Public Television |
| Former callsigns | WDCN (1962-2000) |
| Former channel number(s) | 2 (1962-1973) |
| Former affiliations | NET (1962-1970) |
| Transmitter Power | 316 kW (analog) 44.8 kW (digital) |
| Height | 390 m (analog) 411 m (digital) |
| Facility ID | 41398 |
| Transmitter Coordinates | |
| Website | www.wnpt.net |
WNPT (Nashville Public Television), channel 8, is a PBS outlet in Nashville, Tennessee that is operated by a community-funded, non-profit organization known as Nashville Public Television.
[edit] History
The station signed on the air on September 10, 1962, as WDCN (for Davidson County Nashville), on channel 2. It is Tennessee's second-oldest public television station, behind WKNO-TV in Memphis. It was originally owned by the Nashville school board, which became an arm of the metropolitan government when Nashville and Davidson County merged in 1963. Like most eventual PBS affiliates, WDCN was established to serve area schoolchildren with educational programming and thus, in its first years, it broadcast only in the daytime. NET telecasts in the evenings began sometime in the late 1960s.
On December 11, 1973, WDCN swapped channels with ABC affiliate WSIX-TV, which changed its calls to WNGE-TV (now WKRN-TV) and moved to channel 8. This was only the third time in U.S. television history that the FCC allowed two established stations to exchange frequencies; an almost identical trade occurred in New Orleans three years earlier in 1970, also involving the ABC and PBS stations. Apparently the proceeds from the exchange of channel positions with WSIX/WNGE owners General Electric enabled WDCN to build studios circa 1974-1975 near the Tennessee State Fairgrounds in south Nashville. The new studio allowed locally-originated programs to broadcast in color for the first time. Originally, the station broadcast from a small building located near Belmont College (now Belmont University).
Political and funding issues prompted the Metro Nashville government to begin proceedings in the late 1990s to relinquish WDCN's license to a community board. Some local residents welcomed the change, since they believed that the school board's ownership inhibited WDCN from broadcasting PBS programs reputed to be even mildly controversial (even though Nashville itself is very liberal by Southern standards, the suburbs and adjacent rural areas are quite conservative, especially on social issues), including some programs that were broadcast on practically all PBS stations in markets as big or smaller than Nashville.
Whatever the motivation, WDCN would become the last public television station in the state to be emancipated from a governmental body. WKNO had never been publicly operated, and the state board of education released the remaining stations in the state to community groups back in 1984. Metro formally released WDCN in 2000 to a new board known as "Nashville Public Television." The new board changed the station's calls to WNPT. However, the station almost never refers to its call letters or channel number on the air, usually calling itself "Nashville Public Television."
[edit] Station Logos
 WDCN-TV logo, September 1979. |
[edit] External links
- NPT - Nashville Public Television
- Query the FCC's TV station database for WNPT
- BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on WNPT-TV
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