WDLI-TV

WDLI-TV, virtual channel 17 (UHF digital channel 49), is a TBN owned-and-operated television station serving Cleveland and Akron, Ohio, United States that is licensed to Canton.^[2] The station is owned by the Trinity Broadcasting Network. WDLI maintains offices and transmitter facilities located on the west side of Akron, just north of Rolling Acres Mall.

History

The station first signed on the air in January 1967 as WJAN,^[3] an independent station owned by Janson Industries; it offered a typical slate of locally produced and syndicated programming. In its early years, WJAN broadcast in black-and-white only, as the station could not afford color equipment, though most of the shows acquired by the station were not originally filmed in color anyway.

In 1971, the station began broadcasting in color. At that time, the availability of religious programming was increasing; WJAN began broadcasting religious programs a few hours a day. The station was broadcasting from 1:00 p.m. to midnight daily by 1973, however WJAN continued to struggle.

When WKBF-TV (channel 61, allocation now used by WQHS-DT) went dark and its owners combined that station's programming assets onto newly acquired WUAB (channel 43), WJAN was unable to purchase any of the shows that WUAB did not acquire, except for some religious programs. Beginning in 1974, WJAN added The PTL Club and The 700 Club to its daily schedule and began broadcasting religious programs for almost the entire broadcast day.^{[citation needed]} In August 1977, Janson sold WJAN to televangelist Jim Bakker, founder of the PTL Club. Under Bakker, WJAN officially adopted a 24-hour-a-day Christian format. The station dropped The 700 Club and added more PTL-produced programming.

Bakker sold WJAN to the David Livingstone Missionary Foundation in December 1982; shortly afterward, its calls were changed to its current call letters, WDLI-TV. The station continued broadcasting the PTL Satellite Service full-time. Four years later, in March 1986, Livingstone sold WDLI to its present owners, the Trinity Broadcasting Network. At that point, PTL programs were dropped in favor of TBN programming. On January 1, 2009, WDLI began to be carried on most Cleveland area cable providers.

Digital television^[4]

This station's digital signal, like most other full-service TBN owned-and-operated stations, carries five different TBN-run networks.

TBN-owned full-power stations permanently ceased analog transmissions on April 16, 2009.

TBN constructed a new transmitter tower in the Akron suburb of Norton, near other television and radio transmission towers in the area near Akron's Rolling Acres Mall. WDLI's digital signal is receivable throughout the Cleveland market, unlike its analog signal (originating from a transmitter in the Canton suburb of Louisville), which had poor reception away from Canton. Though the station's operations are now all located near Akron, Canton remains WDLI's city of license, and promotes itself as serving "Canton-Akron/Cleveland".

Analog-to-digital conversion

WDLI-TV shut down its analog signal, over channel 17, on April 16, 2009, two months before the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate on June 12, 2009. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition channel 39.^[5] Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former analog channel 17.

On November 15, 2010, WDLI moved its digital signal from channel 39 to channel 49 (its virtual channel remains on channel 17) as part of an additional boost to its transmitter power.^[6][7]

Translator stations

WDLI's signal was once relayed on translators W52DS in Youngstown, and W51BI serving Geauga, Lake, and eastern Cuyahoga counties from a site in Kirtland. Both translators were shut down by TBN due to declining support, which was attributed to the digital transition; W51BI ceased operations on July 13, 2009,^[8] while W52DS left the air March 26, 2010.^[9] Their licenses, along with 42 other silent TBN repeaters, were cancelled on December 1, 2011 for remaining silent over a year.^[10]

References

External links

• TBN website
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WDLI
• BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on WDLI-TV