Maryland Public Television (MPT) is thePBS member state network for theU.S. state ofMaryland. It operates under the auspices of theMaryland Public Broadcasting Commission, an agency of theMaryland state government that holds thelicenses for all PBS member stations licensed in the state.
MPT's headquarters are located at the Irene and Edward H. Kaplan Production Studio on Owings Mills Boulevard in the unincorporated community ofOwings Mills in northwesternBaltimore County. MPT operates six full-power transmitters that cover nearly all of the state, plusWashington, D.C., and parts ofVirginia,West Virginia,Delaware, andPennsylvania.
WMPB (licensed toBaltimore) first signed on in 1969 as the first station of the Maryland Center for Public Broadcasting; it gainedsatellite stations inSalisbury,Hagerstown, andAnnapolis between 1971 and 1975, resulting in a formation of a statewide public television network. The network adopted its current name in 1984. Maryland Instructional Television (Maryland ITV), a division of the State Department of Education, was also housed at the network until 1991. On July 4, 1987, WFPT (licensed toFrederick) signed on to fill coverage gaps in the outer Washington market, while WGPT inOakland began operations to cover the extreme west of the state, much of which previously had no local television service at all.
About 1999, the network launched an afternoonBritcom programming block,Afternoon Tea, replacing children's programming. By 2009, MPT was airing kids' programming during the day on its MPT Select channel.[1]
In September 2015, as part of budget cuts, MPT outsourced itsmaster control operations to Public Media Management—a joint venture ofBoston PBS memberWGBH andSony Corporation.[2]
Minidragons (1991–1993), six-episode documentary series featuring the growing economies of several Asian countries, portrayed through the lens of local people.[14]
MPT Salutes Vietnam Veterans:[15] Maryland Public Television salutes the men and women who served in theVietnam era
Newsnight Maryland, a locally produced news program that reviews the stories happening in the state of Maryland.
^Aside from their transmitters, the MPT stations (except WMPB) do not maintain any physical presence in their cities of license.
^WMPT used the callsign WAPB from 1975 to July 4, 1984.
^WMPB used the callsign WETM during its construction permit from 1967 to 1968.[19]
^First licensed in 1979 astranslator W62AY and replaced by a full-power license from the same transmitter site.[20]
^WWPB used the -TV suffix in its callsign from 1974 to October 15, 1976.[21]
^First licensed in 1979 as translator W36AB and replaced by a full-power license from the same transmitter site.[22]
WGPT is assigned to thePittsburgh, Pennsylvania, market and electsmust-carry status on satellite providers there. For the purposes of pay-television carriage, WMPT and WMPB are assigned to the Baltimore market, while WFPT and WWPB are assigned to Washington–Hagerstown and WCPB to Salisbury.[23]
MPT's stations ended regular programming on their analog signals on June 12, 2009, the official date on which full-power television stations in the United Statestransitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The stations' digital channel allocations post-transition are as follows:[27]
WMPB shut down its analog signal, overUHF channel 67; the station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 29,[28] usingvirtual channel 67.
WMPT ended regular programming on its analog signal, over UHF channel 22; the station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 42,[29] using virtual channel 22. As part of theSAFER Act, WMPT kept its analog signal on the air until June 26 to inform viewers of the digital television transition through a loop ofpublic service announcements from theNational Association of Broadcasters.[30]
WCPB shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 28; the station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition UHF channel 56, which was among the high band UHF channels (52–69) that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition, to its analog-era UHF channel 28.[31]
WWPB shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 31; the station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 44,[32] using virtual channel 31.
WGPT shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 36; the station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition UHF channel 54, which was among the high band UHF channels (52–69) that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition, to its analog-era UHF channel 36.[33]
WFPT shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 62; the station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 28,[34] using virtual channel 62.
As a part of therepacking process following the2016–2017 FCC incentive auction, channels 38 through 51 were removed from television broadcasting. None of MPT's stations sold their allocations, but five of them moved channels within the UHF band: WMPT moved to channel 21, WMPB to channel 22, WWPB to channel 29, WGPT to channel 26, and WCPT to channel 16.[35]
MPT joined the Baltimore market'sATSC 3.0 lighthouse station, hosted atWNUV, on June 24, 2021.[36] In return, WMPT and WMPB hosts WNUV's main channel (54.1) to preserve coverage for existing ATSC 1.0 TV sets.[37]
