WVAN-TV


WVAN-TV, virtual channel 9 and VHF digital channel 8, is a Public Broadcasting Service member television station licensed to Savannah, Georgia, United States. Owned by the Georgia Public Telecommunications Commission, it is a sister station to National Public Radio member WSVH ; the two stations share transmitter facilities in Pembroke, west of Savannah and north of Fort Stewart. WVAN-TV is operated as part of the statewide Georgia Public Broadcasting television network. Although the call letters could be mistaken as a reference to SaVANnah, they are a tribute to former Georgia governor Ernest VANdiver.
Like other stations in the Savannah media market, WVAN-TV also serves the southern tip of South Carolina including Beaufort and Hilton Head Island, giving that area a second option for PBS programming alongside SCETV station WJWJ-TV.

History

On September 17, 1963, WVAN-TV broadcast its first program as the fourth educational television station of the Georgia state.

Station ID

In legal identifications for GPB's television stations, each station lists two cities: one where the station is licensed, which is often a small community where the transmitter is located, and a second a typically larger city that it serves. WVAN is unusual in that it is licensed to Savannah, with its much smaller second city, Pembroke, housing the transmitter. A similar station is WJSP-TV, which is licensed to Columbus with its transmitter in Warm Springs.

Digital television

Analog-to-digital conversion

WVAN-TV's temporary digital signal on channel 13 was activated in 2000, making it one of the first for GPB TV. The station discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over VHF channel 9, at midnight on February 17, 2009. This was the original deadline for the federal mandate requiring full-power television stations in the United States to transition from analog to digital broadcasts. The station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition VHF channel 13 to channel 9; requiring viewers to re-scan ATSC tuners to find the station's channels again. GPB did the same with at least two other stations.