WLVT-TV

WLVT-TV (channel 39) is a PBS member television station in Allentown, Pennsylvania, United States. Owned by Lehigh Valley Public Media, it is a sister station to Philadelphia-licensed PBS member WPPT (channel 35). WLVT-TV's studios are located in the south side of Bethlehem, and its transmitter is located south of nearby Allentown atop South Mountain.

History

20th century

The station first signed on the air on September 7, 1965, as a member station of National Educational Television (NET), and eventually joined PBS upon its 1970 founding. WLVT-TV is commonly known as "PBS39", a reference to the main virtual channel, 39.1.

The Lehigh Valley is part of the Philadelphia market, the fourth-largest television market in the United States. WLVT has expanded its programming focus to the entire Philadelphia television market. It is carried by many cable providers in the area, including Comcast, Service Electric, RCN, Blue Ridge Cable, and others. WLVT-TV is also available throughout the region on Philadelphia's DirecTV and Dish Network feeds.

WLVT's market is one of the largest potential audiences in the country with 6.7 million people in eastern Pennsylvania, western and southern New Jersey, and northern and central Delaware. The station's frequently competes with Philadelphia's main PBS member station, WHYY-TV (channel 12), one of the most-watched PBS stations in the country. To a lesser extent, WLVT-TV also competes with NJ PBS's two outlets in the market, WNJT-TV and WNJS-TV.

21st century

In 2011, WLVT-TV moved from its longtime studio on Mountain Drive North to a new studio facility, PPL Public Media Center, on the south side of Bethlehem. The new facility is adjacent to the ArtsQuest complex on the SteelStacks Campus, previously home to Bethlehem Steel.^[4] The new station is equipped with two large studios, where local productions, including Focus (a local magazine show), You Bet Your Garden (formerly on WHYY-FM), Scholastic Scrimmage, Faces of Jazz, and Behind the Guitar, are filmed.

WLVT also broadcasts PBS and American Public Television distributed programming.

Technical information

Subchannels

The station's signal is multiplexed:

Analog-to-digital conversion

WLVT shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 39, on January 31, 2009. The station's digital signal relocated on its pre-transition UHF channel 62, which was among the high band UHF channels (52-69) that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition, to its former analog-era UHF channel 39 for post-transition operations.^[6]

See also

• Media in the Lehigh Valley

References

External links

• Official website
• PBS39 at Twitter