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| Branding | VPM World |
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| Affiliations | World Channel |
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| Owner | VPM Media Corporation |
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| Technical information[5][6] | |
Licensing authority | FCC |
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WNVT (channel 23.3) is anon-commercial educationaltelevision station licensed toSpotsylvania Courthouse, Virginia, United States, serving theRichmond metropolitan area. The station's transmitter is located in the Richmond suburb ofBon Air inChesterfield County. WNVT is operated in a pair withCulpeper-licensedWNVC (channel 41.3), which serves theCharlottesville area from a transmitter atop Carters Mountain. The two stations are owned by Richmond-basedVPM Media Corporation, and broadcast programming fromWorld Channel.
WNVT first signed on March 1, 1972, on channel 53 asPBS member station "Northern Virginia Public TV".[7] The station, licensed toGoldvein, was owned by the Northern Virginia Educational Television Association, which had been formed in 1965, and served the Virginia side of theWashington, D.C.,television market. WNVT originally operated fromNorthern Virginia Community College.[8] When the station was under construction, the school offered anassociate of arts inbroadcast engineeringtechnology.
The Central Virginia Educational Television Corporation (later Commonwealth Public Broadcasting Corporation, now VPM Media Corporation) purchased the station in 1974.
As WNVT's transmitter was located inIndependent Hill, Virginia, in ruralPrince William County to the south of the Washington metropolitan area, reception in the more populated portions of Northern Virginia was difficult.Translator W14AA went on the air fromArlington in 1976 to increase coverage.[9][10] WNVT began building WNVC in 1981, and received special permission to broadcastCongressional hearings over W14AA.[11]
Fairfax-licensed WNVC signed on in May 1983 on channel 56, after being known as WIAH during the construction process. W14AA was sold in late 1981 and still broadcasts today asWMDO-CD. As the Washington market already had two full-service PBS stations inWETA-TV andWMPT, WNVC did not operate as a repeater of WNVT. Instead, it continued W14AA's coverage of Congress, along withState Department briefings, theVirginia General Assembly, county and local governments, school boards and fire districts. At the time, WNVC was billed as the only public television station independent of PBS in the nation.[12]
On weekends in the late 1980s, WNVC had an unusual reputation for sports coverage. The station showed as many syndicatedcollege basketball games as possible, including from theNCAA Division I men's basketball tournament in the era before every game was on national television. As there was generally only demand forBig East andAtlantic Coast Conference games in Washington, WNVC picked up games from major and minor conferences in other regions for relatively low cost. Its noncommercial status in turn freed it from the prospect of having to sell advertising for games that were likely to draw microscopic audiences. Director of development Mike Baker went on air during commercial breaks and halftimes with live appeals for donations. This stream of programming began to dry up in the early 1990s, whenCBS andESPN began national coverage of the entire tournament and increased coverage of regular-season games.[13][14]
In 1993, a pledge drive featuring a week of foreign films generated unexpectedly high interest, convincing management there was an audience for foreign-language content. WNVC rebranded as "World View TV" on September 1, 1994, carrying international television programming in multiple languages and local ethnic programming on the weekends.[15] At launch, the station's most popular program was theRussian state newscastVremya, shown live at 9 p.m.Moscow Time (1 p.m.Eastern);[16] it also aired Brazilian and Italian soccer, an in-studio celebration ofDiwali in 1997, and some local programming, including a Spanish-language health call-in program.[15] WNVT engaged in discussions throughout the 1990s to move its studios toMary Washington College inStafford County, but the move was scuttled in 1999 by rising costs, which had doubled in just two years.[17]
WNVT continued as a standard PBS member station through 1999, though it did not air the network's evening programming.[15][18][19] Beginning January 1, 2000, WNVT disaffiliated from PBS, reverting to an educational independent station during the day. WNVT also began relayingMuchMusic USA, an American spinoff of Canadian specialty channelMuchMusic, in afternoons and evenings.[20]
In 2001, the two stations became known asMHz Networks, with WNVC becoming MHz1 and WNVT becoming MHz2. WNVT's daily educational programming was branded as "MHz Learn", and it continued relaying MuchMusic USA in the evenings.[21]
In 2003, WNVT became digital-only on channel 30 due to the cost of running both analog and digital signals simultaneously in its largely rural coverage area.[22] The station dropped MuchMusic USA in 2003 for the Russian-language programming service "Russian World TV".[23] The Russian programming was dropped in 2005.[24]
WNVC signed on its digital signal on channel 57 later in 2004. On September 1, 2008, WNVC ceased broadcasting in analog permanently and took its digital signalsilent temporarily to relocate to channel 24.[25] Rather than continuing with their own programming lineups, the two stations placed a total of eightdigital subchannels on their two signals, largely consisting of relays of international satellite channels. The lineup expanding to ten on June 12, 2009, and the current twelve on August 1, 2012. Both stations changed theirvirtual channel number to 30, with WNVC broadcasting 30.1 through 30.6 due to its better coverage of the Washington metropolitan area, and WNVT broadcasting 30.7 through 30.12.[19]
MHz Networks' national multicast channelMHz Worldview was always carried on 30.1. The last set of channels includedTRT World,CGTN America,CGTN Documentary, Africa Today TV,France 24,CNC World,Arirang,TeleSUR,Deutsche Welle, and Vietnet. Previous channels includedNHK World,BVN,Al Jazeera English, Blue Ocean Network,SABC News International,NTA,Ethiopian Television,RT America,RT Spanish,VTV4,Euronews,CNC World, andTRT Türk.[19] Two months before the end of broadcast operations in Washington, on February 1, 2018, RT America was dropped from WNVC's signal, apparently due to concerns that MHz Networks or CPBC would be required to register under theForeign Agents Registration Act.[26]
In 2013, Commonwealth Public Broadcasting Corporationspun off the MHz Networks unit and sold the WNVC and WNVT towers. CPBC remained in control of the stations' licenses, and MHz Networks programmed them under contract.[27][28][29]
CPBC announced on March 31, 2017, that it had sold the licenses of WNVC and WNVT in theFederal Communications Commission's ongoingspectrum reallocation auction for $182 million.[29] CPBC did not see a need to continue running the two over-the-air signals, as the Washington market is already served by public television stationsWETA-TV,WHUT-TV, andWMPT, and it would prefer to focus on local and PBS programming.[30]
Both stations indicated they would continue over-the-air operations by sharing the channel of another station. CPBC stated it would attempt to find an in-market sharing partner, but was unable to do so, instead choosing to share with its ownWCVE-TV in Richmond and itsCharlottesvillesatellite WHTJ.[3][4][31]
The two stations suspended operations from their existing transmitter sites inIndependent Hill (WNVT) andMerrifield (WNVC) at midnight on March 31, 2018, and immediately moved to the transmitters of their respective sharing partners. The stations' cities of license were required to remain in the Washington market and moved to Spotsylvania Courthouse and Culpeper, respectively.[2][1] Responsibility for programming the stations reverted to CPBC.
MHz Networks announced that it would move its twelve streams of programming to local cable operators.[32] However, cable providers were not willing to carry the channels without the force ofmust-carry rules that apply to over-the-air stations, and MHz was unable to reach a deal to lease subchannels from another station. Consequently, MHz Worldview became unavailable over-the-air in the broadcaster's home market.[33] The company has since announced it would shut down its over-the-air service on March 1, 2020.[34] On February 3, WNVT and WNVC converted to being member stations ofWorld Channel, a news/documentary network that is also aired on most PBS member stations.[35]
| License | Channel | Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WCVE-TV | 23.1 | 1080i | 16:9 | VPM | PBS |
| 23.2 | 480i | Create | Create | ||
| 23.4 | Kids | PBS Kids | |||
| 23.5 | 720p | 16:9 | VPMPlus | PBS (WCVW) | |
| WNVT | 23.3 | 480i | 16:9 | World | World Channel |
| License | Channel | Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WHTJ | 41.1 | 1080i | 16:9 | VPM | PBS |
| 41.2 | 720p | VPMplus | Simulcast of WCVW | ||
| 41.4 | 480i | Kids | PBS Kids | ||
| 41.5 | Create | Create | |||
| WNVC | 41.3 | World | World Channel |
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)Broadcast television stations by affiliation in the Commonwealth ofVirginia | ||
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