WNYE-TV

WNYE-TV

New York, New York
Branding	NYCTV 25
Slogan	Everything New York
Channels	Digital: 24 (UHF) Virtual: 25 (PSIP)
Affiliations	Noncommercial independent
Owner	NYC Media Group (New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications)
Founded	April 3, 1967
Call letters' meaning	New York Education
Sister station(s)	WNYE-FM
Former channel number(s)	Analog: 25 (UHF, 1967-2009)
Former affiliations	NET (1967-1970) PBS (1970-2002)
Transmitter power	151 kW
Height	309.7 m (1,016 ft)
Class	DT (Digital Television)
Facility ID	6048
Transmitter coordinates	40°45′21.5″N 73°59′8.6″W / 40.755972°N 73.985722°W / 40.755972; -73.985722
Website	NYCTV website

WNYE-TV, channel 25 is an non-commercial educational, independent television station located in New York City, USA. WNYE-TV is part of the NYC Media Group and has its studios located in Brooklyn and Manhattan, and transmitter at the Conde Nast Building.

History

Instructional use

WNYE-TV first signed-on-the-air on April 3, 1967. The station's original licensee was the New York City Board (now Department) of Education, and it was co-owned with WNYE-FM (91.5 MHz.). It was New York's second educational television station, but it operated with the city's original non-commercial license. Four and-a-half years earlier, through the approval of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the Educational Broadcasting Corporation converted Newark, New Jersey-based independent commercial broadcasting WNTA-TV (channel 13) into non-commercial WNDT, which would become New York's main educational outlet.

While WNDT (now WNET) was affiliated with National Educational Television (NET), WNYE-TV was primarily focused on providing instructional television programming that could be used in classrooms. In its early years, channel 25's broadcast programming hours were exclusively limited to school hours (roughly from 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on weekdays), with limited programming on weekends and during the summer. The operational hours were extended gradually during the 1970s, as the station began to add programming from the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) to its schedule.

WNYE-TV's 1990s logo

The instructional/PBS format carried WNYE-TV through its first three and-a-half decades of service. Along with the instructional shows, channel 25 aired programs that focused on the individual school districts located within the Board of Education, featuring participation from students as well as educators. (Some titles included: District 2 Schoolvision, District 6 Speaks, District 9 at a Glance, District 10 Presents, and Bronx High School Magazine.) As the station's on-air hours increased, leased-time foreign-language programming (from outside producers) was also added to the schedule. By the middle 1990s, more (second-hand) PBS and other instructional shows replaced the local school district programs, and when municipally-owned WNYC-TV (channel 31, now WPXN-TV) was sold by the City of New York in 1996, WNYE-TV picked up additional hours of leased-time ethnic programs that were previously aired on WNYC-TV.

NYC-TV

The former WNYE-TV studios, on Tillary Street in downtown Brooklyn

In December 2004, the Department of Education transferred the licenses of the WNYE stations to the New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications. The transfer integrated WNYE-FM-TV's operations with those of the city-owned cable television services CUNY-TV and Crosswalks Television Network, combining them to form the NYC Media Group. A few months prior to the transfer, the NYC Media Group began replacing WNYE-TV's PBS and instructional programs with locally-themed programming, and within the next year the primetime lineup was composed entirely of NYC TV original productions. Today, WNYE-TV's offerings range from shows distributed by American Public Television, various ethnic programs, and a primetime lineup of "hip" shows aimed at a young, urban audience. These shows, most of which are produced by the NYC Media Group, include $9.99, NY 360, Cool in Your Code, Full Frontal Fashion, The Bridge, Inside the Archives, New York Noise, and Eat Out NY. Among other WNYE-related productions, Secrets of New York has been syndicated nationally to public stations, and it and Blueprint: New York City have been offered to the U.S. cable station and digital network the Documentary Channel, which in turn has provided some programming to WNYE from its library.

With the format change, WNYE-TV also moved from its longtime studio home in downtown Brooklyn, in a building located between George Westinghouse High School and New York City College of Technology (a branch of the City University of New York). Both WNYE television and radio (which was housed within Brooklyn Technical High School) now operate from the NYC Media Group's headquarters within the Manhattan Municipal Building in lower Manhattan.

Digital television

The station's digital channel is multiplexed:

Channel	Name	Video	Aspect	Programming
25.1	WNYE-DT	480i	4:3	NYCTV Life (main WNYE-TV programming)
25.2	WNYE-DT2	480i	4:3	NYCTV Gov (municipal government)

Analog-to-Digital Conversion

On June 12, 2009, WNYE-TV discontinued regular analog programming on channel 25. ^[1] The station remained on its pre-transition channel 24 ^[2], using PSIP to display its virtual channel as 25.

References

1. ^ http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-06-1082A2.pdf
2. ^ CDBS Print blank form

External links

• WNYE-TV Website
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WNYE-TV