WYCC 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) memebr public television in Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

, Illinois

Illinois

Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...

 which broadcasts over digital channel 21, also reached as 20.1, and two other digital channels, 20.2 and 20.3. Owned and operated by the City Colleges of Chicago

City Colleges of Chicago

The City Colleges of Chicago is a system of seven community colleges which provide learning opportunities for Chicago residents at the schools or online, and also members of the US military through the Navy Campus to enhance their knowledge and skills. Student enrollment was 115,000 in 2007...

, the station's studios are based at Kennedy-King College

Kennedy-King College

Kennedy-King College is a two-year community college in Chicago, Illinois, United States. It is part of the City Colleges of Chicago, a system of two-year education that has existed in Chicago, Illinois since Crane Technical College began to accept adult students in 1911...

 and the transmitter is atop the John Hancock Center

John Hancock Center

John Hancock Center at 875 North Michigan Avenue in the Streeterville area of Chicago, Illinois, is a 100-story, 1,127-foot tall skyscraper, constructed under the supervision of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, with chief designer Bruce Graham and structural engineer Fazlur Khan...

.

WYCC is in a market which features two other member stations of PBS, WTTW

WTTW

WTTW channel 11 is one of three Public Broadcasting Service member public television stations serving the Chicago, Illinois market; the others are WYCC and WYIN. WTTW began broadcasting on September 6, 1955 and it is owned and operated by Window to the World Communications, Inc., a not-for-profit...

 in Chicago and WYIN

WYIN

WYIN, virtual channel 56, is a public television station in Gary, Indiana, serving the Indiana side of the Chicago, Illinois market on channel 17 as a Public Broadcasting Service member television station. Transmitting from Cedar Lake, Indiana, and with studios and offices in Merrillville,...

, which is based in nearby Gary, Indiana

Gary, Indiana

Gary is a city in Lake County, Indiana, United States. The city is in the southeastern portion of the Chicago metropolitan area and is 25 miles from downtown Chicago. The population is 80,294 at the 2010 census, making it the seventh-largest city in the state. It borders Lake Michigan and is known...

 and targets viewers in Northwest Indiana

Northwest Indiana

Northwest Indiana, also known as the South Shore and The Calumet Region or simply The Region, comprises Lake, Porter, LaPorte, Newton and Jasper counties in Indiana. This region neighbors Lake Michigan and is part of the Chicago metropolitan area...

. As the Chicago market is well-served by PBS national programming by those two stations, WYCC focuses more on airing adult education

Adult education

Adult education is the practice of teaching and educating adults. Adult education takes place in the workplace, through 'extension' school or 'school of continuing education' . Other learning places include folk high schools, community colleges, and lifelong learning centers...

al and other instructional programming, along with other programming obtained by producers outside of PBS, which provides only 13% of WYCC's weekly schedule. On its digital channel 20.3, it offers a wide variety of international news programs in English.

Funding for the station is provided by the usual mix of member donations, pledge drive

Pledge drive

A pledge drive is an extended period of fundraising activities, generally used by public broadcasting stations to increase contributions. The term "pledge" originates from the promise a contributor makes to send in funding at regular intervals for a certain amount of time...

s, and CPB

Corporation for Public Broadcasting

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is a non-profit corporation created by an act of the United States Congress, funded by the United States’ federal government to promote public broadcasting...

 funding, along with that of the State of Illinois and the City of Chicago via the City Colleges division.

The station makes the claim of being the largest public television station run by a minority operation, and reaches the 3.5 million households of Chicago, along with 6 million households in a four-state area.

Local

As part of the City Colleges of Chicago

City Colleges of Chicago

The City Colleges of Chicago is a system of seven community colleges which provide learning opportunities for Chicago residents at the schools or online, and also members of the US military through the Navy Campus to enhance their knowledge and skills. Student enrollment was 115,000 in 2007...

, the television station provides distance learning courses in the late night schedule. These courses, when viewed, may be credited towards an associate degree at any of the city colleges. The city colleges also use WYCC to air informational programs for neighborhood outreach and community service

Community service

Community service is donated service or activity that is performed by someone or a group of people for the benefit of the public or its institutions....

. Also, locally produced, is the political talk show Beyond the Beltway

Beyond the Beltway

Beyond the Beltway with Bruce DuMont is a political talk show based in Chicago. It airs from 7-9PM every Sunday night on 38 stations, including its flagship WLS-AM 890/Chicago, Sirius-XM Satellite Radio and online at http://www.beyondthebeltway.com....

, which also airs nationally on radio. In the last two years, WYCC has altered the program line-up, picking up new BBC offerings and making good use of the English language international news shows to offer news and views not available elsewhere, particularly for viewers who watch broadcast television over the air in the Chicago area market.

How To

In 2010, weekday afternoons and Saturday midday include many "how to" shows, on sewing, quilting, cooking, art/painting, gardening and home improvement programs.

British and Irish

WYCC is the Chicago-area carrier for Out of Ireland. It formerly carried "Tartan TV," which focuses on Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

. In addition, it carried Monarch of the Glen, Last of the Summer Wine

Last of the Summer Wine

Last of the Summer Wine is a British sitcom written by Roy Clarke that was broadcast on BBC One. Last of the Summer Wine premiered as an episode of Comedy Playhouse on 4 January 1973 and the first series of episodes followed on 12 November 1973. From 1983 to 2010, Alan J. W. Bell produced and...

, Are You Being Served?

Are You Being Served?

Are You Being Served? is a British sitcom broadcast from 1972 to 1985. It was set in the ladies' and gentlemen's clothing departments of Grace Brothers, a large, fictional London department store. It was written mainly by Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft, with contributions by Michael Knowles and John...

, and Monty Python's Flying Circus

Monty Python's Flying Circus

Monty Python’s Flying Circus is a BBC TV sketch comedy series. The shows were composed of surreality, risqué or innuendo-laden humour, sight gags and observational sketches without punchlines...

. In 2010, it carries reruns of the Canadian program The Red Green Show

The Red Green Show

The Red Green Show is a Canadian television comedy that aired on various channels in Canada, with its ultimate home at CBC Television, and on Public Broadcasting Service stations in the United States, from 1991 until the series finale April 7, 2006 on CBC...

.

It has also carried Ballykissangel

Ballykissangel

Ballykissangel is a BBC television drama set in Ireland, produced in-house by BBC Northern Ireland. The original story revolved around a young English Roman Catholic priest as he became part of a rural community. It ran for six series, which were first broadcast on BBC One in the UK from 1996 to 2001...

, an Irish comedy

Comedy

Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...

 soap opera

Soap opera

A soap opera, sometimes called "soap" for short, is an ongoing, episodic work of dramatic fiction presented in serial format on radio or as television programming. The name soap opera stems from the original dramatic serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers, such as Procter & Gamble,...

. As of this writing, WYCC and WTTW

WTTW

WTTW channel 11 is one of three Public Broadcasting Service member public television stations serving the Chicago, Illinois market; the others are WYCC and WYIN. WTTW began broadcasting on September 6, 1955 and it is owned and operated by Window to the World Communications, Inc., a not-for-profit...

 show a similar number of scripted British shows. Both broadcast Antiques Roadshow

Antiques Roadshow

Antiques Roadshow is a British television show in which antiques appraisers travel to various regions of the United Kingdom to appraise antiques brought in by local people. It has been running since 1979...

and Masterpiece, though on different dates. In 2010, it showed Touching Evil

Touching Evil

Touching Evil is a British television drama serial, which began airing in 1997. It was produced by United Productions for Anglia Television, and screened on the ITV network. The first series consisted of six fifty-minute episodes. It was created by Paul Abbott, and written by Abbott with Russell T...

. It is airing Lark Rise to Candleford

Lark Rise to Candleford

Lark Rise to Candleford is a trilogy of semi-autobiographical novels about the countryside of north-east Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, England, at the end of the 19th century. They were written by Flora Thompson and first published together in 1945...

since 2009, which began in the UK in 2008. This series is from BBC One, which anticipates a fourth season. It began Midsomer Murders

Midsomer Murders

Midsomer Murders is a British television detective drama that has aired on ITV since 1997. The show is based on the books by Caroline Graham, as originally adapted by Anthony Horowitz. The lead character is DCI Tom Barnaby who works for Causton CID. When Nettles left the show in 2011 he was...

Episode 1 in November 2010. Midsomer Murders first aired in the UK in 1997. The show has programs in 14 series. Series 14 is airing in the UK in fall 2010.

With its large variety of mystery programs, WYCC runs Mystery Marathons on some holiday weekends, tied with fund raising.

Children

As a Public Broadcasting Service television station, WYCC provides children's programming. Favorites include Clifford the Big Red Dog

Clifford the Big Red Dog

Clifford the Big Red Dog is an American children's book series first published in 1963. Written by Norman Bridwell, the series helped establish Scholastic Books as a premier publishing company....

, whose lead character was voiced by the late John Ritter

John Ritter

Jonathan Southworth "John" Ritter was an American actor, voice over artist and comedian perhaps best known for having played Jack Tripper and Paul Hennessy in the ABC sitcoms Three's Company and 8 Simple Rules, respectively...

. Weekday mornings are filled with children's programming.

News

WYCC offers comprehensive international news coverage and national news discussion. It offers Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

's DW TV

Deutsche Welle

Deutsche Welle or DW, is Germany's international broadcaster. The service is aimed at the overseas market. It broadcasts news and information on shortwave, Internet and satellite radio on 98.7 DZFE in 30 languages . It has a satellite television service , that is available in four languages, and...

 Journal, France 24

France 24

France 24 is an international news and current affairs television channel. The service is aimed at the overseas market, similar to BBC World News, DW-TV, NHK World and RT, and broadcast through satellite and cable operators throughout the world. During 2010 the channel started broadcasting through...

, "NHK Newsline"

Newsline (NHK)

NHK Newsline or simply referred as Newsline is the flagship news program, aired on Japanese International English language news and information TV channel NHK World TV. This program broadcasts on the hour, 24 hours a day for 10 or 30 minutes.-History:...

, "RT News"

RT (TV network)

RT, previously known as Russia Today, is a global multilingual television news network based in the Russian Federation run by the state-owned state-run RIA Novosti....

, formerly called Russia Today , and Euronews

EuroNews

Euronews is an international multilingual news television channel.It covers world news from what it claims to be a 'European' perspective.Criticisms are that the perspective is in fact that of the European Commission - a major and growing funder of Euronews....

on digital channel 21/20.1. Popular news talk shows include those hosted by Charlie Rose

Charlie Rose

Charles Peete "Charlie" Rose, Jr. is an American television talk show host and journalist. Since 1991 he has hosted Charlie Rose, an interview show distributed nationally by PBS since 1993...

 and Tavis Smiley

Tavis Smiley

Tavis Smiley is a talk show host, author, liberal political commentator, entrepreneur, advocate and philanthropist. Smiley was born in Gulfport, Mississippi and grew up in Kokomo, Indiana. After attending Indiana University, he worked during the late 1980s as an aide to Tom Bradley, the mayor of...

. The greatest variety of international news programs airs only on digital channel 20.3.

Some programs aired on digital channel 20.3 are in English, while others are broadcast in foreign language with subtitles, Spanish without subtitles. MHz Networks

MHz Networks

MHz Networks is a Northern Virginia based independent, non-commercial educational broadcaster operated by Commonwealth Public Broadcasting Corporation. The legal broadcast callsigns for the two stations of MHz Networks are WNVC and WNVT...

 originates from Washington DC. Programs include news from Asia, South America, and the Middle East (e.g., Al Jazeera English, Bolivian News, Arab Net News, South Asia News). The full schedule of programs is shown at the WYCC web page. This digital channel, in addition to the programs aired on digital channel 20.1, greatly expands the news broadcasts available to viewers without cable or satellite, who rely on "over the air" broadcasting in the service area.

Additionally, local news programming produced by undergraduate and graduate students at Northwestern University

Northwestern University

Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....

's Medill School of Journalism airs on WYCC. Students from the City Colleges of Chicago contribute to the production of these shows, too. WYCC produced programs for the Illinois elections in fall 2010.

The public affairs and editorial program "Off 63rd with Garrard McClendon" airs on WYCC on Thursdays at 6:30 p.m. The show is funded by the McCormick Foundation and the Field Foundation. Professor and author, Dr. Garrard McClendon, hosts the show.

Digital

On April 16, 2009 at 6:00AM CDT, WYCC switched to all-digital broadcasting, becoming Chicago's first television station to stop broadcasting in an analog signal. At the same time, the "WYCC" callsign was legally transferred from the now-defunct analog channel 20 to digital channel 21 and channel 21's pre-transition callsign "WYCC-DT" was officially discontinued. Through the use of 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...

, digital television receivers display its virtual channel

Virtual channel

In telecommunications, a logical channel number , also known as virtual channel, is a channel designation which differs from that of the actual radio channel on which the signal travels....

 as 20.

Channel 20.3 offers international programming from MHz Networks

MHz Networks

MHz Networks is a Northern Virginia based independent, non-commercial educational broadcaster operated by Commonwealth Public Broadcasting Corporation. The legal broadcast callsigns for the two stations of MHz Networks are WNVC and WNVT...

' Worldview

MHz Worldview

MHz WorldView is an independent, non-commercial Public television network that broadcasts newscasts and other programs from around the world. It is owned and operated by Commonwealth Public Broadcasting Corporation who also run MHz Networks....

.

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...

WYCC's signal is multiplexed:

Channel	Resolution Display resolution The display resolution of a digital television or display device is the number of distinct pixels in each dimension that can be displayed. It can be an ambiguous term especially as the displayed resolution is controlled by all different factors in cathode ray tube , flat panel or projection...	Aspect Ratio Aspect ratio The aspect ratio of a shape is the ratio of its longer dimension to its shorter dimension. It may be applied to two characteristic dimensions of a three-dimensional shape, such as the ratio of the longest and shortest axis, or for symmetrical objects that are described by just two measurements,...	Name	Programming
20.1	1080i 1080i 1080i is the shorthand name for a high-definition television mode. The i means interlaced video; 1080i differs from 1080p, in which the p stands for progressive scan. The term 1080i assumes a widescreen aspect ratio of 16:9, implying a frame size of 1920×1080 pixels...	16:9	WYCC-HD	Main WYCC programming / PBS HD High-definition television High-definition television is video that has resolution substantially higher than that of traditional television systems . HDTV has one or two million pixels per frame, roughly five times that of SD...
20.2	480i 480i 480i is the shorthand name for a video mode, namely the US NTSC television system or digital television systems with the same characteristics. The i, which is sometimes uppercase, stands for interlaced, the 480 for a vertical frame resolution of 480 lines containing picture information; while NTSC...	4:3	WYCC-SD	Main WYCC programming / PBS SD Standard-definition television Sorete-definition television is a television system that uses a resolution that is not considered to be either enhanced-definition television or high-definition television . The term is usually used in reference to digital television, in particular when broadcasting at the same resolution as...
20.3	480i 480i 480i is the shorthand name for a video mode, namely the US NTSC television system or digital television systems with the same characteristics. The i, which is sometimes uppercase, stands for interlaced, the 480 for a vertical frame resolution of 480 lines containing picture information; while NTSC...	4:3	MHZ	MHz Worldview MHz Worldview MHz WorldView is an independent, non-commercial Public television network that broadcasts newscasts and other programs from around the world. It is owned and operated by Commonwealth Public Broadcasting Corporation who also run MHz Networks....

External links

• Public Broadcasting Service