| Satellite ofWCVE-TV,Richmond, Virginia | |
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| City | Staunton, Virginia |
| Channels | |
| Branding | VPM PBS |
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| Ownership | |
| Owner | VPM Media Corporation |
| History | |
First air date | September 9, 1968 (57 years ago) (1968-09-09) |
Former channel numbers |
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| NET (1968–1970) | |
Call sign meaning | Western Virginia Public Television |
| Technical information[2] | |
Licensing authority | FCC |
| Facility ID | 60111 |
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| HAAT |
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Public license information | |
| Website | vpm |
| Satellite ofWCVW, Richmond, Virginia | |
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| City | New Market, Virginia |
| Channels | |
| Branding | VPM Plus |
| Programming | |
| Affiliations | PBS |
| History | |
First air date | August 22, 1996; 29 years ago (1996-08-22) (inFront Royal, Virginia; license moved to New Market in 2018) |
Former channel numbers |
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| Technical information[3] | |
Licensing authority | FCC |
| Facility ID | 66378 |
| Links | |
Public license information | |
WVPT (channel 51) is aPBS membertelevision station inStaunton, Virginia, United States, serving theShenandoah Valley ofVirginia andWest Virginia. It is a full-timesatellite ofRichmond-licensedWCVE-TV (channel 23) which is owned by theVPM Media Corporation. WVPT's offices are located at Lakeview Hall near the campus ofJames Madison University on Port Republic Road inHarrisonburg, while its transmitters are located atopElliott Knob west of Staunton, on Carters Mountain south ofCharlottesville, and onMassanutten Mountain nearNew Market.Master control and most internal operations are based at WCVE-TV's studios at 23Sesame Street inBon Air, a suburb of Richmond.
WVPT operates a second station,WVPY, licensed to New Market. WVPY was formerly a full-time satellite of WVPT which servedWinchester and the upper Shenandoah Valley. Through a channel-sharing agreement, it now broadcasts from WVPT's transmitter as a satellite of Richmond'sWCVW, using virtual channel 51.2.
WVPT signed on for the first time on September 9, 1968, under the ownership of the Shenandoah Valley Educational Television Corporation. It is the third-oldest educational station in Virginia, behindHampton Roads'WHRO-TV and Richmond's WCVE-TV. WVPY, originally licensed toFront Royal, Virginia, was added in 1996, replacinglow-poweredtranslator W42AC, which had served the area since the 1980s.
WVPT also doubled as the default PBS station forCharlottesville (via translators W50CM in the city and W58DK inRuckersville) until future sister station WCVE signed on WHTJ as a full-powered satellite in 1989.
On October 1, 2001, WVPT began broadcasting in digital with WVPY following in October 2002, withHD.
In November 2017, Shenandoah Valley Educational Television Corporation agreed to merge with Commonwealth Public Broadcasting Corporation (nowVPM Media Corporation), owner of WCVE-TV, WCVW, WHTJ,WNVT, and WNVC.[4] The merger took effect on June 11, 2018. On August 5, 2019, CPBC rebranded all of its stations under the "VPM" banner (for Virginia Public Media), with WVPT becoming "VPM PBS" and WVPY becoming "VPM Plus".[5] Upon the rebranding, WVPT began simulcasting WCVE-TV.
| License | Channel | Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WVPT | 51.1 | 1080i | 16:9 | WVPT-HD | PBS |
| 51.3 | 480i | CREATE | Create | ||
| 51.4 | PBSKIDS | PBS Kids | |||
| 51.5 | WORLD | World Channel (WNVT) | |||
| WVPY | 51.2 | 1080i | WVPY-HD | PBS |
During its days as a separately programmed PBS station, WVPT was the smallest PBS station licensed to Virginia. It primarily serves 22 counties andindependent cities in Virginia and nine counties in West Virginia, one of the largest coverage areas in the PBS system. Much of this area is very mountainous. Largely because most of its service area is located in theUnited States National Radio Quiet Zone, its two main transmitters operated at only 525,000watts and 141,000 watts in analog—in both cases, fairly modest for a full PBS member on the UHF band. Even in digital, they are not nearly strong enough to cover this vast and rugged area.
WVPT'sdistributed transmission system allows the Charlottesville and New Market translators to rebroadcast digitally on the same frequencies as the parent stations under an experimental license. Digital DTScall signs are based on those of the respective main stations, suffixed with a sequential number. For instance, the transmitter in Charlottesville is seen on UHF channel 15, virtual channel 51.1, and with the callsign WVPT1-DT.[7]
WVPY operated translators inFulks Run,Luray and Ruckersville; these were discontinued when WVPY moved its transmitter to WVPT's tower.
As part of theFederal Communications Commission's (FCC) 2016–17 spectrum reallocation auction, WVPY's channel 21 allocations were sold for $19,851,752.[8] The station and its distributed transmitters were to go off the air July 23, 2018, but the main transmitter is allowed to continue over-the-air operations by sharing the channel of another station. WVPY received two three-month extensions of the original January 23 deadline as it had difficulty finding a channel-sharing partner.[9][10][11]
WVPY filed a channel-sharing agreement with sister station WVPT on April 11, 2018. WVPY's over-the-air signal moved to WVPT's main transmitter in Harrisonburg and its distributed transmitters, effective June 11. Few in the area actually lost over-the-air PBS service, as the area is also covered byWETA-TV inWashington, D.C.,West Virginia Public Broadcasting's W08EE-D inMartinsburg, andMaryland Public Television's WWPB inHagerstown.[12] After the transfer, WVPY moved its license to New Market, as it would not cover Front Royal at all from WVPT's transmitter site.[13] As it now covers exactly the same areas as WVPT over-the-air, WVPY relays the programming of WCVW on virtual channel 51.2.[14][15]
Like most stations in the Shenandoah Valley, WVPT relies heavily oncable andsatellite for its viewership. These are all but essential for acceptable television in this region.
WVPT has long been available on cable inLynchburg. Additionally, the station is carried on the HarrisonburgDirecTV andDish Network feed. For decades, it was available onComcast cable and its predecessors in Charlottesville and central Virginia. However, it was never carried on satellite in Charlottesville, as FCC rules do not allow a station to be uplinked unless it has a full-power station licensed in the market. With WVPT adopting the same schedule as WCVE/WHTJ, WVPT disappeared from cable systems in Charlottesville in the summer of 2019.
WVPY was previously available over-the-air in large portions of the Virginia and West Virginia portions of theWashington, D.C.metropolitan area; Front Royal and Winchester are part of the Washington market. It was also available on the Washington DirecTV and Dish Network feeds until 2016, when the two satellite providers dropped it, claiming they could no longer receive an off-air signal from WVPY.
Broadcast television stations by affiliation in the Commonwealth ofVirginia | ||
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Includes stations in out-of-state TV markets, but reaching a portion of Virginia | ||
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| PBS | ||
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