Georgia Public Broadcasting

Georgia Public Broadcasting (GPB) is the public broadcasting radio and television state network in the U.S. state of Georgia. It is operated by the Georgia Public Telecommunications Commission.

GPB operates all of the non-commercial educational Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR) stations in Georgia, except WPBA, WABE, and WCLK in Atlanta, WFSL-FM in Thomasville (which relays WFSQ-FM from FSU radio in Tallahassee, Florida), and WTJB-FM in Columbus (which relays Troy University Public Radio from WTSU-FM in Troy, Alabama).

History

In 1960, the University of Georgia began WGTV, Georgia's second public television station (after WETV, now WPBA). From 1960 to 1964, in a separate initiative, the Georgia Board of Education started up four educational television stations across the state, aimed at in-school instruction. In 1965, the university and the board merged their efforts as Georgia Educational Television (GETV). It became Georgia Public Television (GPTV) in 1983, a year after the state legislature transferred authority for the stations to the Georgia Public Telecommunications Commission, the oversight board for GPB.

In 1984, the GPTC entered public radio for the first time, starting stations in Macon and Columbus. These formed the nuclei of Peach State Public Radio, renamed Georgia Public Radio in 2001. During the 1980s and 1990s, stations that had been operated by other educational institutions and community groups became affiliated with the network.

In 1995, the GPTC began using "Georgia Public Broadcasting" as its corporate name. In early 2004, GPTV and Georgia Public Radio officially became known as Georgia Public Broadcasting, which now serves as an umbrella title for all GPB operations.

Its headquarters and primary radio and television production facility is on Fourteenth Street in Midtown Atlanta, just west of the Downtown Connector in the Home Park neighborhood, north of Georgia Tech and south of Atlantic Station. This facility caused some controversy when, because of its inherently educational nature, GPB was allowed to use Georgia Lottery funds for construction of the mid-rise building.

The GPB studios were used for the first-season production of the syndicated CBS Television Distribution program Swift Justice With Nancy Grace via a subsidy by the Georgia Film, Music & Digital Entertainment Office, and was credited as such at the end of each episode. Production of that series was moved to Los Angeles for its second season.

GPB Radio

GPB Radio broadcasts 24 hours per day on several FM stations across the state, except in Atlanta. The network had translator station W264AE in Atlanta on 100.7 FM with a tower located downtown. However, it (and WGHR) was forced to go silent when a full-power station WWWQ (now WNNX) FM 100.5 was moved-in on an adjacent channel from Anniston, Alabama (where it was WHMA-FM).

Previously, GPB Radio could be heard on the second audio program (SAP) of GPB analog TV at most times, and can still be heard this way on DirecTV, but for unknown reasons not on over-the-air digital TV. On FM it reaches nearly all of Georgia, plus parts of Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, and Tennessee. Some stations have some locally-produced programming.

GPB Radio stations in southern and southeastern Georgia also relay hurricane evacuation information for listeners approaching or leaving Georgia's Atlantic coast or the Florida panhandle. Signs along Interstate and other major highways in the region direct the evacuee to the nearest GPB Radio station carrying the emergency information.

Radio stations

WGPB and WNGH were commercial radio stations purchased by a GPB foundation in the late 2000s, hence their location outside of the 88-92 MHz reserved band.

Except for W250AC in Athens and former W264AE IN Atlanta, none of the translator stations are owned by GPB/GPTC, but rather by Radio Assist Ministry and Edgewater Broadcasting, two related companies that speculatively apply for such stations during FCC filing windows, assign them to non-commercial educational "parent" stations to avoid broadcast license fees, then rent or sell them to other stations for a profit. While many more RAM/EB stations are assigned to rebroadcast GPB stations in the FCC database, only these five are listed by GPB.

GPB Television

GPB Television broadcasts PBS and GPB programming 24 hours per day on a network of nine GPTC-owned stations across the state, plus numerous low-power LPTV broadcast translator stations (especially in the state's mountainous northeastern counties). The Descriptive Video Service can be heard on the SAP channel when the current program offers it, and GPB Radio can be heard when it does not. It reaches nearly all of Georgia, plus parts of Alabama, Florida, South Carolina and Tennessee. All stations are rebroadcasters, simulcasting at all times. GPB-produced programming includes Gardening in Georgia, Georgia Backroads, Georgia's Business, Georgia Outdoors, Georgia Traveler, and many more, such as annual coverage of the Georgia General Assembly when it is in legislative session early in the year.

GPB Knowledge is a digital subchannel (x.3), operating since September 2008 but officially launched on October 1. GPB Knowledge carries PBS World in prime time and GPB documentary and news programming (including BBC World News). It replaces GPB Education, which is still available to schools statewide on demand by Internet.

GPB Kids began in January 2009 on channel x.2, replacing the standard-definition feed (identical to analog) of GPB's main channel. In December 2008, it was only a static station identification for all nine stations (including the GPB/PBS Kids logo), and the electronic program guide for the channel continued to show GPB TV main-channel information.

Television stations

Each of GPB's television stations identifies itself with two locations—usually, the smaller community where the station is licensed by the FCC (almost always the transmitter location) and the larger city it serves. The exceptions are WVAN and WJSP, which are actually licensed in major Georgia cities: WVAN is licensed to Savannah, while WJSP is licensed to Columbus. However, in order to conform to the pattern, GPB lists the locations for the stations' transmitters as the second city.

This rule only applies to the television stations, not to those on radio, which, except for two, bear only the location of the transmitter.

As of 2010, the GPB television stations are:

Footnotes

¹ WACS-TV was off-air from March 1, 2007 to April or May 2008, due to a radio tower collapse caused by a tornado.
² At the time of its sign-on in 1968, WMUM-TV was known as WDCO-TV and broadcasted on channel 15. WDCO-TV moved to channel 29 in 1990, and changed to its current call letters in 2006.
³ At the time of its sign-on in 1967, WNGH-TV was known as WCLP, which changed from WCLP-TV (1979) to its current call letters in 2008 to match the new GPB FM station.

WUGA-TV

On December 23, 2010, the University of Georgia announced that its television station WNEG-TV in Toccoa will be starting a programming partnership with GPB, which would provide all programming to the station, with most of the content coming from its GPB Knowledge subchannel.^[1] The station filed with the FCC to change to a non-commercial license.^{[2] [3]} The new partnership between UGA and GPB is due to a reduction of advertising dollars, resulting from the economic downturn and WNEG's loss of CBS affiliation.^[4] At 5:30 a.m. on Sunday, May 1, 2011, the station has started airing GPB Knowledge programming, with the call letter change to WUGA-TV commencing a day later.^[5]

Digital television

WGTV, WXGA-TV, and WVAN-TV were the first GPB stations to commence digital television operations. The other six stations began digital broadcasting in July 2008. The ERP/HAAT figures listed within the table for those stations are based on those listed in the stations' individual Wikipedia articles, though some of the stations were operating at low power, and only went full-power when the final analog television shutdown occurred.

The above example labels are from WGTV, while another station uses "WNGH-DT", "Kids", and "Knowled" (the limit for channel label being seven characters).

The hourly station identification indicates all stations have a -DT suffix, when in fact all still legally have -TV, except for WGTV which has no suffix.

After analog shutdown

GPB ended all analog transmissions on February 17, 2009, which was the original date for full-power stations to cease analog operations; the date was later moved to June 12, 2009.^[6][7]

After the analog television shutdown:

• WACS-TV, WNGH-TV, WJSP-TV, and WMUM-TV remained on their respective, pre-transition channel numbers (8, 33, 23, and 7).^{[8][9][10][11]}
• WGTV, WXGA-TV, and WVAN-TV returned to channels 8, 8, and 9, respectively, for their digital transmissions;^[12][13][14]
• WABW-TV and WCES-TV each moved to channel 6 for their digital broadcasts.^[15][16]

Using PSIP to display virtual channels for each GPB station corresponding to their former analog channels.

GPB has placed most of its stations on VHF due to the lower effective radiated power requirements (20 or 32 kW instead of 1000 kW), which in turn reduces the cost of buying the transmitter and using the electrical power for it. For WABW and WCES, this will make them one of the few in the country to use low-VHF channels (2 to 6), which require larger receiving antennas, are prone to tropospheric ducting (weather) and impulse noise, make mobile TV (ATSC-M/H) difficult, and for 5 and 6 are also an obstacle to expanding the FM broadcast band. The upper-VHF channels also have these problems, but less so.

Broadcast translators

Several low-power broadcast translator stations are or were found in the hilly and mountainous terrain of the north Georgia mountains. These include:

• W13DJ-D Carrollton, channel 13—digital signal reaches parts of Carroll County in northern west-central Georgia, replaced W49AD in late summer 2009
• W08EG-D Toccoa, channel 68—signal reaches parts of Stephens and Habersham counties in northeastern Georgia, and replaced W68AF
• W11DD-D Hartwell & Royston, channel 11—signal reaches Hart and neighboring counties in northeastern Georgia, replaced analog W22AC
• W12DK-D Young Harris, channel 12—located on Brasstown Bald (highest point in state) with future GPB WBTB FM; was formerly W04BJ, whose signal from a different site reached parts of Towns and Union counties in far north-northeastern Georgia, off-air since May 2008 due to equipment failure
• W50AB Hiawassee, channel 50—signal reached parts of Towns and Rabun counties in northeastern Georgia, digital coverage provided by W04BJ's replacement

The first two are assigned to WGTV, the middle to WCES, and the latter two to WNGH. W49AD in downtown Carrollton was assigned to WJSP, while W13DJ-D is outside of town.

Former translators

The following translators were abandoned by GPB, which had their licenses (and in some cases digital applications and permits) cancelled by the FCC, apparently at GPB's request, possibly due to the expense of running and upgrading them.

• Carnesville, channel 52—signal reached parts of Franklin County in northeastern Georgia
• Cedartown, channel 65—signal reached parts of Polk and Floyd counties in northwestern Georgia
• Draketown, channel 27—signal reached parts of Haralson and Paulding counties in northwestern Georgia
• Elberton, channel 60—signal reached parts of Elbert County in northeastern Georgia
• Flintstone, channel 51—signal reached parts of Walker, Dade, and Catoosa Counties in Northwestern Georgia, as well as parts of Hamilton County and Chattanooga, Tennessee
• LaFayette, channel 35—signal reached parts of Walker and Dade counties in northwestern Georgia

Television shows

Series

• Gardening in Georgia
• Georgia's Backroads and More Georgia Backroads
• Georgia's Business
• Georgia Outdoors
• Georgia Traveler

Specials

• Georgia Aquarium: Keepers of the Deep
• Georgia Gazette
• Georgia Graduation Stories
• Georgia High School Sports
• Georgia On My Mind
• Georgia Quilts: Stitches And Stories
• Georgia Read More
• Georgia Serenade
• Georgia Valor
• Georgia Weekly
• Georgia's Civil War
• Georgia's Historic Inns
• Historic Houses of Georgia: The Antebellum Years
• Main Street Georgia
• Quarterly Pledge Drives
• Secret Seashore: Georgia's Barrier Islands (see The Golden Isles of Georgia)
• Sites to Behold: The History of Georgia's State Parks
• Sustainable Georgia
• The Georgia Meth Invasion
• The South Takes Flight: 100 Years of Aviation in Georgia
• The Thomas B. Murphy Story (see Tom Murphy)
• Vanishing Georgia
• Lost Atlanta: The Way We Were
• The Day Atlanta Stood Still

GPB Education

GPB Education (formerly known as Peachstar) serves state agencies and the Georgia learning community through the use of telecommunications technology. GPB delivers high-quality educational programming that reflects state standards to Georgia classrooms using the GPB satellite network, open-air television, and the GPB video streaming portal. GPB provides professional development to Georgia educators through face-to-face trainings, satellite-delivered programs, and interactive webcasts. GPB also meets the training needs of state agencies through its video production, satellite broadcast, and interactive webcasting services, as well as through its extensive digital library.

GPB is currently transitioning its GPB Education programming from direct broadcast satellite to digital terrestrial television, through their GPB Knowledge subchannel.^[17]

References

1. ^ http://wneg32.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5098:wneg-tv-to-become-wuga-tv&catid=1:latest-news&Itemid=18
2. ^ http://licensing.fcc.gov/cgi-bin/ws.exe/prod/cdbs/forms/prod/prefill_and_display.pl?Application_id=1412075&Service=DT&Form_id=314&Facility_id=63329
3. ^ Gainesville Times: "WNEG to join Georgia public broadcasting", December 24, 2010.
4. ^ Associated Press, via Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "UGA TV station to join GA.'s state network", December 25, 2010.
5. ^ http://www.redandblack.com/2011/05/02/station-officially-changes-hands/
6. ^ Public TV to end analog era, Kristi E. Swartz, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, February 14, 2009
7. ^ http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-09-221A3.pdf
8. ^ CDBS Print
9. ^ CDBS Print
10. ^ CDBS Print
11. ^ CDBS Print
12. ^ CDBS Print
13. ^ CDBS Print
14. ^ CDBS Print
15. ^ CDBS Print
16. ^ CDBS Print
17. ^ DTV Satellite Transition

External links

• Georgia Public Broadcasting website
  • GPB television stations map — includes coverage areas