WITF-TV is a Public Broadcasting Service

Public Broadcasting Service

The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....

 (PBS) member Public television station available on digital channel 36 (and formerly available on analog channel 33), based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

Harrisburg is the capital of Pennsylvania. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 49,528, making it the ninth largest city in Pennsylvania...

. WITF broadcasts throughout the Susquehanna Valley viewing area, and is a sister station to the area's NPR

NPR

NPR, formerly National Public Radio, is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to a network of 900 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting...

 member station, WITF-FM

WITF-FM

WITF-FM is a public radio station based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, located on the FM dial at 89.5 MHz. Since its debut on April 1, 1971, it has aired classical music and NPR news throughout central Pennsylvania, including the Susquehanna Valley, which includes Harrisburg Lancaster, Lebanon and...

. Its transmitter is co-located with WHP-TV

WHP-TV

WHP-TV is the CBS-affiliated television station for South Central Pennsylvania licensed to Harrisburg. It broadcasts a high definition digital signal on UHF channel 21. Its transmitter on a ridge north of Linglestown Road in Susquehanna Township...

 in Susquehanna Township

Susquehanna Township, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania

Susquehanna Township is a township in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 24,036 at the 2010 census. This represents a 9.8% increase from the 2000 census count of 21,895. Susquehanna Township has the postal ZIP codes 17109 and 17110, which maintain the Harrisburg place...

, with studios at the WITF Public Media Center in Swatara Township

Swatara Township, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania

Swatara Township is a township in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 22,611 at the 2000 census.-Geography:According to the United States Census Bureau, the township has a total area of 15.8 square miles , of which, 13.2 square miles of it is land and...

 (though with a Harrisburg address). The station's programming can also be seen on low-powered translators W33CR-D, channel 33 in Chambersburg and W24CS, channel 24 in Reading

Reading, Pennsylvania

Reading is a city in southeastern Pennsylvania, USA, and seat of Berks County. Reading is the principal city of the Greater Reading Area and had a population of 88,082 as of the 2010 census, making it the fifth most populated city in the state after Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Allentown and Erie,...

.

History

Channel 33 began as WEEU-TV, a commercial television station licensed to Reading in the 1950s. The station failed after the Philadelphia stations boosted their signals to cover Reading, and the channel was reallocated to the Harrisburg area for Non-commercial educational

Non-commercial educational

The term non-commercial educational applies to a radio station or TV station that does not accept on air advertisements , as defined in the United States by the Federal Communications Commission . NCE stations do not pay broadcast license fees for their non-profit uses of the radio spectrum...

 use. The South Central Educational Broadcasting Council was formed in 1963, and it quickly snapped up the channel 33 license. WITF-TV signed on for the first time on November 22, 1964 from "temporary" studios in Hershey

Hershey, Pennsylvania

Hershey is a census-designated place in Derry Township, Dauphin County in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The community is located 14 miles east of Harrisburg and is part of the Harrisburg–Carlisle Metropolitan Statistical Area. Hershey has no legal status as an incorporated municipality...

, near the Hershey Theatre

Hershey Theatre

Hershey Theatre is a 1904-seat theater in downtown Hershey, Pennsylvania.The theater owes its existence to chocolate magnate and philanthropist Milton S. Hershey. Hershey Theatre was opened in September, 1933, as part of Hershey's Great Building Campaign of the Depression.- External links :...

. In 1982, it moved to studios in northeast Harrisburg. In 2007, it moved to its first-ever purpose-built home in Swatara Township.

In 1998, WITF-TV made history in Pennsylvania by launching the Commonwealth's first digital television

Digital television

Digital television is the transmission of audio and video by digital signals, in contrast to the analog signals used by analog TV...

 channel. As broadcasters across the country switch from 50-year old analog

Analog television

Analog television is the analog transmission that involves the broadcasting of encoded analog audio and analog video signal: one in which the message conveyed by the broadcast signal is a function of deliberate variations in the amplitude and/or frequency of the signal...

 technology to the federally mandated digital format, WITF became one of the first in the nation to meet the technological, financial and educational challenges.

Locally produced programming

• Our Town
• Explore PA
• Virtual Field Trips
• Smart Talk
• Life Styles
• Health Smart

Digital television

The station's digital channel is multiplexed.
Analog service on channel 33 was shut down on February 17, 2009, during the United States' DTV transition. PSIP

Program and System Information Protocol

The Program and System Information Protocol is the protocol used in the ATSC digital television system for carrying metadata about each channel in the broadcast MPEG transport stream of a TV station and for publishing information about television programs so that viewers can select what to watch...

 is in use so the digital signal will appear as channel 33 on receivers. Digital channels>

Channel	Programming
33.1	main WITF-TV/PBS programming

PBS HD channel

WITF was offering the "PBS-HD channel" on channel 33.3; however, that channel no longer exists.

External links

• http://www.witf.org/