| Bowling Green, Ohio | |
|---|---|
| Branding | WBGU |
| Channels | Digital: 27 (UHF) |
| Subchannels | 27.1 PBS 27.2 Kids and Encore 27.3 Create |
| Affiliations | PBS |
| Owner | Bowling Green State University |
| First air date | February 10, 1964 |
| Call letters' meaning | Bowling Green State University |
| Former channel number(s) | Analog: 70 (1964-1973) 57 (1973-1986) 27 (1986-2009) Digital: 56 (2003-2008) |
| Former affiliations | NET (1964-1970) |
| Transmitter power | 153 kW |
| Height | 320 m |
| Facility ID | 6568 |
| Website | www.wbgu.org |
WBGU-TV is a Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) member Public television station in Bowling Green, Ohio operated by the Bowling Green State University. Unlike its companion radio station, WBGU (FM), WBGU-TV is not primarily operated by students at the university.
The station was founded in 1964 and currently operates at the Tucker Center for Telecommunications on the BGSU campus. (While officially part of the BGSU campus, the Tucker Center is actually located two blocks south of Wooster Street, which marks much of the southern boundary of the campus.) Each weekday during the academic term of public schools in the Great Black Swamp region, WBGU-TV broadcasts six hours of educational programming provided (and, in some cases, created) by the Northwest Ohio Educational Technology Foundation. The NWOET is operated at the Tucker Center, but is a non-profit state agency separate from the university.
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On February 10, 1964, WBGU-TV (originally licensed to Lima but operating in Bowling Green) broadcast for the first time, and, unusually for a U.S. television station, would undergo two frequency changes in its first two decades. The station first operated on channel 70, and moved to channel 57 in 1973; it would move to channel 27 in 1986.[1] The station first broadcast from a small studio located in the university's South Hall. After the Moore Musical Arts Center was built in 1979, the university's radio stations and telecommunications department (then the department of radio, television, and film) moved to West Hall, which formerly housed the university's college of music. Sometime after that, WBGU-TV moved to a new building located at 245 Troup Avenue in Bowling Green; the building was renamed the Tucker Center on May 6, 1994.
During the 1970s and early 1980s, WBGU maintained a low-powered repeater in Fort Wayne, Indiana on channel 39 (later to affiliate with Indianapolis' WFYI), which became full-powered WFWA in 1985.
Today, WBGU-TV broadcasts to nineteen counties in northwestern and west central Ohio including the markets of Toledo and Lima; depending on the antenna used, WBGU's signal could be tuned in as far west as Fort Wayne and as far north as southwestern Washtenaw County, Michigan and Windsor, Ontario.
In Toledo, Buckeye Cablesystem carries WBGU-TV on cable channel 57, which is, ironically, the station's previous channel number on the UHF dial.
WBGU-TV stopped transmitting both its analog signal on channel 27 and its pre-transition digital signal on channel 56 at midnight on Sunday, December 14, 2008, transmitting only a digital signal on channel 27 since Monday, December 15, 2008.[2]
WBGU began broadcasting digitally in August 2003. The digital signal is multiplexed:
Digital Channels
| Channel | Programming |
|---|---|
| 27.1 | Main WBGU programming / PBS |
| 27.2 | WBGU Kids 6:00am–10:00pm WBGU Encore (locally produced programs) 10:00pm–6:00am |
| 27.3 | Create |
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