History
WMPB (licensed to Baltimore) first signed on in 1969 as the first station of the Maryland Center for Public Broadcasting; it gained satellite stations in Salisbury, Hagerstown, and Annapolis between 1971 and 1975, resulting in a formation of a statewide public television network. The network adopted its current name in 1984. Maryland Instructional Television (Maryland ITV), a division of the State Department of Education, was also housed at the network until 1991. On July 4, 1987, WFPT (licensed to Frederick) signed on to fill coverage gaps in the outer Washington market, while WGPT in Oakland began operations to cover the extreme west of the state, much of which previously had no local television service at all.
About 1999, the network launched an afternoon Britcom programming block, Afternoon Tea, replacing children's programming. By 2009, MPT was airing kids' programming during the day on its MPT Select channel. [1]
In September 2015, as part of budget cuts, MPT outsourced its master control operations to Public Media Management—a joint venture of Boston PBS member WGBH and Sony Corporation. [2]
The stations' signals are multiplexed:
Broadcast on behalf of another station
Analog-to-digital conversion
MPT's stations ended regular programming on their analog signals on June 12, 2009, the official date on which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The stations' digital channel allocations post-transition are as follows: [27]
- WMPB shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 67; the station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 29, [28] using virtual channel 67.
- WMPT ended regular programming on its analog signal, over UHF channel 22; the station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 42, [29] using virtual channel 22. As part of the SAFER Act, WMPT kept its analog signal on the air until June 26 to inform viewers of the digital television transition through a loop of public service announcements from the National Association of Broadcasters. [30]
- WCPB shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 28; the station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition UHF channel 56, which was among the high band UHF channels (52–69) that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition, to its analog-era UHF channel 28. [31]
- WWPB shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 31; the station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 44, [32] using virtual channel 31.
- WGPT shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 36; the station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition UHF channel 54, which was among the high band UHF channels (52–69) that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition, to its analog-era UHF channel 36. [33]
- WFPT shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 62; the station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 28, [34] using virtual channel 62.
Spectrum reallocation
As a part of the repacking process following the 2016–2017 FCC incentive auction, channels 38 through 51 were removed from television broadcasting. None of MPT's stations sold their allocations, but five of them moved channels within the UHF band: WMPT moved to channel 21, WMPB to channel 22, WWPB to channel 29, WGPT to channel 26, and WCPT to channel 16. [35]
ATSC 3.0
MPT joined the Baltimore market's ATSC 3.0 lighthouse station, hosted at WNUV, on June 24, 2021. [36] In return, WMPT and WMPB hosts WNUV's main channel (54.1) to preserve coverage for existing ATSC 1.0 TV sets. [37]
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