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.jpg) WGBH Guest Street studios (with "digital mural" LED screen) | |
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| Channels | |
| Branding | GBH 2 |
| Programming | |
| Affiliations | 2.1/44.1:PBS |
| Ownership | |
| Owner | WGBH Educational Foundation |
| History | |
First air date | May 2, 1955 (70 years ago) (1955-05-02) |
Former channel numbers |
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| NET (1955–1970) | |
Call sign meaning | Great Blue Hill(original location of transmitter) |
| Technical information[1] | |
Licensing authority | FCC |
| Facility ID | 72099 |
| ERP | 34 kW |
| HAAT | 362.7 m (1,190.0 ft) |
| Transmitter coordinates | 42°18′10.7″N71°13′4.9″W / 42.302972°N 71.218028°W /42.302972; -71.218028 |
| Links | |
Public license information | |
| Website | www |
WGBH-TV (channel 2), brandedGBH 2, is aPBSmembertelevision station inBoston, Massachusetts, United States. It is theflagship property of theWGBH Educational Foundation, which also owns Boston's secondary PBS memberWGBX-TV (channel 44) andSpringfield, Massachusetts PBS memberWGBY-TV (channel 57, operated byNew England Public Media),Class A Biz TVaffiliateWFXZ-CD (channel 24) andpublic radio stationsWGBH (89.7 FM) andWCRB (99.5 FM) in the Boston area, andWCAI radio (and satellites WZAI and WNAN) onCape Cod.
WGBH-TV, WGBX-TV, and the WGBH and WCRB radio stations share studios on Guest Street in northwest Boston'sBrighton neighborhood; WGBH-TV's transmitter is located on Cabot Street (east ofI-95/MA 128) inNeedham, Massachusetts, on the former candelabra tower, which is shared withFox affiliateWFXT and serves as a full power backup facility for sister station WGBX-TV as well asCBSowned-and-operated station (O&O)WBZ-TV,ABC affiliateWCVB-TV,NBC O&OWBTS-CD (which itselfshares spectrum with WGBX), andindependent stationWSBK-TV.
WGBH is a prominent distributor and producer of national PBS programming, with some of its most notable programs having includedAmerican Experience,The French Chef,Frontline,Masterpiece,Nova, andThe Victory Garden.
TheWGBH Educational Foundation received its firstbroadcast license for radio in April 1951 under the auspices of theLowell Institute Cooperative Broadcasting Council, a consortium of local universities and cultural institutions, whose collaboration stems from an 1836 bequest by textile manufacturerJohn Lowell, Jr. that called for free public lectures for the citizens of Boston.WGBH (FM) first signed on the air on October 6, 1951, with a live broadcast of a performance by theBoston Symphony Orchestra.
TheFederal Communications Commission (FCC) originally awarded a construction permit toWaltham-based electronics companyRaytheon to build a television station that would transmit onVHF channel 2 in Boston. Raytheon planned to launch a commercial television station using the call letters WRTB-TV (for "Raytheon Television Broadcasting"). However, after some setbacks and the cancellation of the construction permit license, WRTB never made it on the air, paving the way for the FCC to allocate channel 2 fornon-commercial educational use. WGBH subsequently applied for and received a license to operate on that channel. The WGBH Educational Foundation obtained initial start-up funds for WGBH-TV from the Lincoln and Therese Filene Foundation.[2]
The station'scallsign refers toGreat Blue Hill (the highest point in the Boston area at an elevation of 635 feet (194 m)), a location inMilton that served as the original location of WGBH-TV's transmitter facility and where the transmitter for WGBH radio continues to operate to this day.[3][a]
WGBH-TV first signed on the air at 5:20 pm on May 2, 1955, becoming the firstpublic television station in Boston and the first non-commercial television station to sign on inNew England. The first program to air on the station wasCome and See, achildren's program hosted byTony Saletan and Mary Lou Adams, which was filmed atTufts Nursery Training School.[4] Channel 2 originally served as a member station of the National Educational Television and Radio Center (NETRC), which evolved intoNational Educational Television (NET) in 1963; for its first few years on the air, channel 2 only broadcast on Monday through Fridays between 5:30 and 9 p.m.
For the first six years, operations were based out of studio facilities located at 84Massachusetts Avenue inCambridge, Massachusetts, directly across from theRogers Building main entrance toMIT.[5] The first television studios were located in second-floor space which originally had housed aroller skating rink.[5] The uneven and rippled maple floors caused difficulties moving the heavy TV cameras, and loud creaking noises plagued thesound engineers.[5]
In 1957,Hartford N. Gunn Jr. was appointedgeneral manager of WGBH; he would later earn theCorporation for Public Broadcasting's Ralph Lowell Award for his achievements in programming development.[6] Under Gunn, who would serve until February 1970, WGBH made significant investments in technology and programming to improve the station's profile, and set out to become a major producer of public television.
In February 1957, WGBH expanded its programming to weekends for the first time, adding a four-hour schedule on Sunday afternoons from 2:30 to 6:30 p.m. (its sign-on time on Sundays was later extended to 11 a.m. that May). In March 1958, channel 2 began offeringacademic instructional television programs, with the debut of eight weekly science programs aimed at students in the sixth grade, which were televised "in some 48 separate school systems in and around the Boston area". In November of that year, the station installed a new full-power transmitter donated byWestinghouse, which increased channel 2's transmitting power to 100,000 watts.[4]
During the early morning hours of October 14, 1961, a large fire devastated the Cambridge studios of WGBH-TV and WGBH radio.[7] WGBH was only off the air for one day after the fire.[7] Before the conflagration, WGBH had purchased a usedGreyhound bus, and had begun refitting it as a mobile TV studio. It was parked behind the 84 Massachusetts Avenue building but somehow survived the disaster, and became a vital temporary facility for continued operations.[5]
Until the WGBH Educational Foundation was able to build a new studio complex to replace the destroyed former building, the two stations arranged to operate from temporary offices, and had to produce their local programming from the studio facilities of various television stations in the Boston area and southern New Hampshire. WGBH-TV maintained a splintered operation, basing itsmaster control operations atNewman Catholic Center atBoston University, production facilities (for which it was reserved to use late nights and on weekends) at the studios of thenCBS affiliateWHDH-TV (channel 5, now defunct; allocation as of March 1972 operated byABC affiliateWCVB-TV) on Morrissey Boulevard in Boston'sDorchester section, and its film and tape library (including those which were salvaged from the fire) was housed at the studios of fellow NET stationWENH-TV (channel 11) inDurham, New Hampshire.[8][7][9]
Several area universities also chipped in to temporarily house other operations displaced by the fire: WGBH's scenic department was relocated toNortheastern University, its arts department was set up on the Boston University campus, and programming and production offices were based in Cambridge'sKendall Square neighborhood. WHDH,NBC affiliateWBZ-TV (channel 4, as of January 1995 a CBSowned-and-operated station) and ABC affiliateWNAC-TV (channel 7, now defunct; allocation now occupied byindependent stationWHDH that is unrelated to the above-mentioned WHDH-TV, which its channel is now used by WCVB-TV) also provided technical and production assistance to the WGBH television and radio stations until a permanent facility was built to reintegrate the stations' operations.[4][10]
On August 29, 1963, WGBH-TV and WGBH radio both began operating from a new studio facility for the stations that was built at 125 Western Avenue in Boston'sAllston neighborhood (the post office box address that the station adopted at that time – P.O. Box 350, Boston, MA 02134 – would become associated with a jingle used on the WGBH-produced children's program,ZOOM, both in its1972 and1999 adaptations, exhorting viewers to send in ideas for use on the show).[11]
On June 18, 1966, WGBH-TV relocated its transmitter to a broadcast tower inNeedham, Massachusetts, The following year on September 25, 1967, WGBH-TV gained a sister television station in the Boston area, WGBX-TV (channel 44), which has transmitted its signal from the Needham site since the station signed on. WGBX's digital signal on UHF channel 32 shares the master antenna at the very top of the tower with several commercial stations in the market, while WGBH-TV's channel 5 digital transmitter operates from a different tower on Cabot St, also in Needham.[12][13]
The launch of WGBX was one facet of a plan developed by the WGBH Educational Foundation in the late 1960s to operate a network of six non-commercial television stations around Massachusetts. However, these plans never materialized in their intended form; besides WGBX, the only other station that ultimately made it on the air wasWGBY (channel 57) inSpringfield, which launched in 1971. Three additional WGBH-owned stations were to have launched, all of which were slated to use the letters "WGB" for the first three letters in their callsigns; these included WGBW, which was to broadcast on channel 35 inAdams (the "W" in its callsign was to stand for "West"; the callsign has since been reassigned to aradio station inTwo Rivers, Wisconsin), along with two stations inNew Bedford andWorcester.
On the night of April 5, 1968, WGBH-TV (at roughly three hours' notice) broadcast aJames Brown concert from theBoston Garden, the night afterMartin Luther King Jr. wasassassinated. Boston MayorKevin White, who was worried that the concert would set off a riot, and certain that cancellation would be worse, contacted WGBH to air the concert on TV, and told the public to stay home and watch, helping prevent boycotts in the region. The concert would later be seen numerous times in the following days, helping the Boston area stay in peace.[14]
In 1970, longtime WGBH general manager Hartford N. Gunn Jr. resigned, to become founding President of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). This new organization was launched as an independent entity to supersede NET (which itself was integrated into itsNewark, New Jersey outlet, WNDT (nowWNET), per request by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting) and assumed many of the functions of its predecessor network. WGBH itself joined the new network. Over time, WGBH became a pioneer in public television, producing many programs that were seen on NET and later, PBS, that either originated at the station's studio facilities or were otherwise produced by channel 2.
On October 31, 2003, WGBH launched Boston Kids & Family TV, a PBS Kids Channel-affiliated local cable service that was developed in partnership with the City of Boston. Available toComcast andRCN subscribers, the service took over channel space previously occupied by one of the city's cable access channels, which carried a mix ofpublic affairs programs, footage of city-sponsored events, and mayoral press conferences (some of the aforementioned content was moved to the city-managed Educational Channel). Boston Kids & Family carried a mix of children's programs produced by WGBH and other distributors—which were scheduled to avoid simulcasts with WGBH-TV or WGBX-TV—daily from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., and a repeating block of telecourse programs aimed at adults from 8 p.m. to 7 a.m.[15][16] The channel intended to affiliate the subchannel with the plannedPBS Kids Go! network, which was scheduled to launch in October 2006; however, PBS scuttled plans to launch the Kids Go! network prior to its launch (opting only to launch the brand as an afternoon-only sub-block within PBS's existing children's program lineup).[17] After PBS Kids ceased network operations, Boston Kids & Family was replaced by The Municipal Channel, which carried much of the programming offered by the service prior to the WGBH partnership.
As WGBH's operations grew, the 125 Western Avenue building proved inadequate to support it and its sister stations; some administrative operations were moved across the street to 114 Western Avenue, with an overhead pedestrian bridge connecting the two buildings. By 2005, WGBH had facilities in more than a dozen buildings in the Allston area.[18] The station's need for more studio space dovetailed withHarvard Business School's desire to expand its adjacent campus; Harvard already owned the land on which the WGBH studios were located, which the university had donated to WGBH for use to construct the Western Avenue facility in 1962 at a value of $250,000.[19]
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WGBH built a new studio and headquarters complex, designed byJames Polshek & Partners, in the nearbyBrighton neighborhood of Boston. The building, inaugurated in June 2007, spans the block of Market Street from Guest Street to North Beacon Street (1 Guest Street, where the lobby entrance of the new studio building is located, is the building's postal address), with radio studios facing pedestrian traffic on Market Street. The outside of the building carries a 30-by-45-foot (9.1 m × 13.7 m) "digital mural" LED screen, which displays a different image each day to automotive and rail commuters along the nearbyMassachusetts Turnpike.[20]
Television and radio programs continued to be recorded at the Western Avenue studios until the WGBH stations completed the migration of their operations into the new facility in September 2007.[21][22] The old Western Avenue studios were renovated by Harvard University in 2011 to house theHarvard Innovation Lab.[23]
WGBH-TV ended regular programming on its analog signal, overVHF channel 2, 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 station's digital signal remained on its pre-transitionUHF channel 19, usingvirtual channel 2.[24][25] The FCC allowed WGBH-TV to run aDTV nightlight service until June 26, 2009.[26] The DTV nightlight program consisted of an episode ofThis Old House which provided information regarding the digital television transition, which looped until the analog signal was turned off.[27] However, the nightlight service had actually continued to run until around 12:07 a.m. on July 13, 2009, when its analog signal was turned off permanently.[28]
In 2016, WGBH opened a new remote television and radio studio on the first floor of the newly renovated Johnson Building of theBoston Public Library, located in theBack Bay neighborhood of Boston. The facilities included a dedicated area of approximately 800 square feet (74 m2)[29] for a news desk, three TV cameras, nine video monitors, radio microphones, and a news ticker, all open to public view.[30] The remainder of the 4,500 square feet (420 m2) space[29] is shared with the "Newsfeed Cafe", a fast-casual restaurant which is open during and outside of studio operational hours.[30] The facility is believed to be the first collaboration between a library and a permanent on-site news organization studio.[31] The space is used for twice-weekly live broadcasts ofBoston Public Radio withJim Braude andMargery Eagan, weekly taping ofGreater Boston, and various special events, such as live music performances, poetry recitals, and interviews with book authors.[32][33] Events are generally open to the public and free of charge.
On August 27, 2020, it was announced that the WGBH Educational Foundation would re-brand all of its operations as "GBH", with WGBH-TV subsequently re-branding from "WGBH 2" to "GBH 2". The organization felt that the inclusion of the "W" prefix was too synonymous with terrestrial broadcasting, and did not reflect its current multi-platform operations.[34] WGBH also cited that "GBH" was already commonly used as a shorthand name for the station.[35] Along with the rebrand came a modified version of its iconic wordmark logo, in use since 1974.
| External videos | |
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 1977 production credit | |
| 2013 station ID | |
| Current production credit since 2020 | |
| Mini-documentary on evolution of logo |
Since the early 1970s, WGBH has used a distinctivesoundmark created by composerGershon Kingsley in conjunction with creative director Sylvia Davis and general manager Michael Rice. It is anelectronic sound using aMoog synthesizer described as acrescendo. The sound has been updated periodically by manipulating the original recording with modern tools through the years, most recently in 2020.[34][36][37]
As a PBS member station, much of WGBH-TV's program schedule consists of educational and entertainment programming distributed by PBS to its member stations, including non-WGBH productions such as thePBS NewsHour, theNightly Business Report,Sesame Street,Peg + Cat, andNature; it also carries programs distributed byAmerican Public Television and other sources to fill its schedule, alongside programs produced for exclusive local broadcast in the Boston market.
WGBH features a mix of live-action and animated children's programs produced by the station and other distributors between 6 a.m. and 5 p.m., as well as on Saturday and Sunday mornings. The remainder of its weekday lineup includes a two-hour block of news and travel programs leading into prime time, with documentary, arts and entertainment programs provided by PBS shown Sunday through Fridays during prime time (encores of WGBH national productions typically air on Saturday evenings). Programming on Saturday afternoons focuses heavily on cooking and home improvement how-to shows (at one point, the station's Saturday afternoon lineup was branded as "How 2 Saturday"), while Sunday afternoons focus mainly on travel shows along with some how-to programs.
For the better part of its history, WGBH-TV has been a major producer of programming for PBS and its predecessor, NET. Channel 2 produces more than two-thirds of the programs that PBS distributes nationally to its member stations. Among them are longstanding PBS mainstays such asNova,Frontline,Masterpiece,American Experience,The Victory Garden, andThis Old House.
Other notable programs originated by WGBH have includedThe French Chef (a pioneering cooking show featuringJulia Child), andThe Scarlet Letter (a majorcostume drama miniseries produced on-location that was the first challenger to the British dominance in such programming in America, and was PBS's highest-rated series for many years). The station has co-produced many other period dramas in conjunction with British production companies. Broadcasts of concerts by the Boston Symphony established the genre as a staple on television.
WGBH has also engaged in several experiments in programming and technology that have become standard in television, including:
WGBH alumni maintain a website where stories and photographs are shared; reunions were held in 2000 and 2006.
| License | Channel | Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WGBH-TV | 2.1 | 1080i | 16:9 | WGBH-HD | PBS |
| 44.1 | WGBX-HD | PBS (WGBX-TV) | |||
| 66.5 | 480i | 16:9 | ON AIR | Infomercials (WUNI) | |
| WFXZ-CD | 24.1 | 480i | 16:9 | WFXZ | Biz Television |
The PBS subchannel is offered inATSC 3.0 (NextGen TV) format from the transmitter ofWUNI.[39]
Note that due to WGBX's channel share agreement withNBC'sWBTS-CD, WGBH instead carries the high definition feed identified as channel 44.1.
In 2010, WGBH-TV became the first television station in the Boston market to provide amobile DTV signal. It transmits twofree-to-air channels using theATSC-M/H standard, at 2.75 Mbit/s, with its first subchannel labelled as "WGBH CH 2".[40][41][42]
WGBH launched adigital subchannel on virtual channel 2.2 in December 2005, which initially served as an affiliate of thePBS World news and documentary service (the subchannel was branded as "WGBH World").[43] In 2007, World programming was moved to the 44.2 subchannel of WGBX; WGBH replaced the network with astandard definition simulcast of its analog feed. The station discontinued the SD simulcast of channel 2.1 on April 17, 2012, when WGBH-DT2 re-assumed the local affiliation rights to World, which was simulcast on WGBX-DT2 for several months after the switch, before the former subchannel became its exclusive Boston outlet.
WGBH launched a tertiary subchannel on virtual channel 2.3 in 2005, which offeredhigh definition program content separate from that seen on the station's analog signal via the PBS-HD satellite feed; in 2008, the subchannel switched to a high-definition simulcast of the analog signal, with standard-definition programming presented in awindowboxed orletterboxed format. WGBH decommissioned the DT3 feed in 2010.
In a list announcing the winning bids for stations which participated in the2016 United States wireless spectrum auction released by the FCC on April 13, 2017, WGBH-TV was disclosed to have agreed to sell a portion of the broadcast spectrum allocated to its UHF channel 19 digital signal for a bid of $161,723,929;[44] in a statement, the station said it would "use the proceeds to expand its educational services to children and students, further its in-depth journalism, and strengthen its modest endowment."[45] The station also consigned tomove its digital allocation to a low-band VHF channel; the FCC assigned VHF channel 5 (the former analog channel allocation of WCVB-TV) as the post-repack digital allocation to which WGBH was reassigned once the repacking of auction and repack participant stations were occurred on August 2, 2019. WGBH-TV's post repack facility on VHF 5 is located at the nearby American Tower owned facility on Cabot Street, also in Needham.[46]
Because the VHF channel 5 signal was significantly weaker than the prior UHF channel 19 signal, the repack initially left many over-the-air viewers in the Greater Boston area unable to receive the station's primary broadcasts on WGBH 2.1 and WGBX 44.1. A notice posted on the station's website in August 2018 stated that a power upgrade was forthcoming which would boost the signal from 6.9 kW to 34.5 kW, but that the upgrade was "temporarily on hold, pending the mitigation of theCOVID-19 pandemic".[47] In the spring of 2021, the upgrade to 34.5 kW was finally completed,[48] but aVHF antenna specifically designed to receivelow-band signals (channels 2-6), such as an FM dipole antenna, is now required for most viewers.
WGBH formerly operated alow-powertranslator inHyannis, W08CH (channel 8), which later ceased operations.[when?] The translator's license and callsign were deleted by the FCC in 2004.[49]
WGBH-TV operates a secondary station in the Bostonmarket, WGBX-TV (channel 44), which signed on the air on September 25, 1967. The station's schedule focuses on program genres not covered by WGBH-TV. Reruns of programs aired the previous evening on WGBX and WGBH-TV also make up a portion of the station's programming schedule. WGBX also maintains several digital subchannels that rebroadcast programs produced by WGBH and other PBS member stations, and serves as a multiplex station which also rebroadcastsNBC stationWBTS-CD throughout the entire Boston market.
GBH also ownsWGBY (channel 57), the PBS member station for theSpringfield, Massachusetts, market, which signed on the air on September 26, 1971. It was run separately from the Boston operations of WGBH television and radio and WGBX-TV.
In 2019, the station became part ofNew England Public Media, a joint venture with the local NPR stationWFCR.[50][51]
Since its creation in 1990, WGBH's Media Access Group is a leading provider ofaccessible media services to television producers, home video, websites, and movie theaters throughout the United States. The unit originated with the founding of The Caption Center in 1972, which invented the method ofclosed captioning to improve access to television programs for the deaf and hard-of-hearing (The French Chef was the first program to offer captioning provided by the unit), and created theRear Window Captioning System forfilms. Along with providing closed captions for television programs seen on channel 2 and its sister stations, the Media Access Group is a major captioning provider for programs on other broadcast television networks and severalcable channels. It also developed theDescriptive Video Service, and is the main provider foraudio description soundtracks that give blind and low-vision viewers details about events occurring on-screen within an individual program, which can be found on streaming services as well as PBS stations, select broadcast networks and cable channels.
The internet is WGBH's third platform; all radio and television programs produced by the stations have web components that are available at wgbh.org. The WGBH website also incorporates "web-only" productions:
gbh was invoked but never defined (see thehelp page).
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