WTCI


WTCI, virtual channel 45, is a Public Broadcasting Service member television station licensed to Chattanooga, Tennessee, United States. The station is owned by the Greater Chattanooga Public Television Corporation. WTCI's studios are located on Bonnyshire Drive in Chattanooga, and its transmitter is located on Sawyer Cemetery Road in unincorporated Mile Straight.

History

The Tennessee Department of Education began WTCI on March 4, 1970 on channel 45, as the third in a series of public television stations that included WLJT in Martin and WSJK-TV in the Tri-Cities and Knoxville; WCTE-TV in Cookeville followed later in the decade. It is now operated by the Greater Chattanooga Public Television Corporation, a non-profit community organization, which assumed the station's broadcast license in 1984.
WTCI offers a diverse mix of programming and cultural entertainment shows from both local and PBS resources to viewers in portions of four states. However, some program duplication occurs with Georgia Public Broadcasting's North Georgia station, WNGH-TV, which operates at a much higher power and is seen in most of WTCI's broadcast range, including Chattanooga itself. This has been the case throughout the history of WTCI's existence and is simply the result of adjoining state boundaries, not of any deliberate action on GPB's part to encroach on WTCI's territory.
Shows created by WTCI include The A List, Tennessee Insider, First Things First, Southern Accents, and Chattanooga History Makers. It is also a member of The Tennessee Channel Network. It also carries the digital subchannel Create. WTCI Create and Tennessee Channel, airing on weekends, is on channel 45.2 and Comcast channel 208.

Digital television

Digital channels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:
ChannelVideoAspectPSIP Short NameProgramming
45.11080iWTCI-HDMain WTCI programming / PBS
45.2480iCREATECreate
45.3480iKIDSPBS Kids

Analog-to-digital conversion

WTCI shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 45, on February 17, 2009, the original target date in which full-power television stations in the United States were to transition from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 29. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 45.