WKBS-TV

Last updated

WKBS-TV
City Altoona, Pennsylvania
Channels
BrandingCornerstone Network
Programming
Affiliations
Ownership
Owner Cornerstone Television, Inc.
History
FoundedOctober 9, 1984
First air date
November 2, 1985(39 years ago) (1985-11-02)
Former channel number(s)
  • Analog: 47 (UHF, 1985–2009)
  • Digital: 46 (UHF, 2002–2019)
  • Virtual: 46 (January–February 2021)[ citation needed ]
Call sign meaning
Kaiser Broadcasting System (original call letters of the former Philadelphia station that went dark in 1983)
Technical information [1]
Licensing authority
FCC
Facility ID 13929
ERP 3.1 kW [2]
HAAT 305 m (1,001 ft)
Transmitter coordinates 40°34′3.7″N78°26′25.2″W / 40.567694°N 78.440333°W / 40.567694; -78.440333
Links
Public license information
Website www.ctvn.org

WKBS-TV (channel 47) is a religious television station in Altoona, Pennsylvania, United States, owned and operated by Cornerstone Television. The station's transmitter is located in Logan Township.

Contents

WKBS-TV operates as a full-time satellite of Cornerstone's flagship station, Greensburg-licensed WPCB-TV (channel 40), whose studios are located in Wall, Pennsylvania. WKBS-TV covers areas of West-Central Pennsylvania that receive a marginal to non-existent over-the-air signal from WPCB-TV, although there is significant overlap between the two stations' contours otherwise. WKBS-TV is a straight simulcast of WPCB-TV; on-air references to WKBS-TV are limited to Federal Communications Commission (FCC)-mandated hourly station identifications during programming. Besides the transmitter, WKBS-TV does not maintain any physical presence in Altoona, and unlike its parent station, it does not broadcast in high definition and has a different subchannel lineup encompassing the Ion Media networks carried in Pittsburgh by Ion owned-and-operated station WINP-TV (channel 16).

History

In 1983, Cornerstone Television was granted a construction permit for channel 47 in Altoona, Pennsylvania, to serve the Johnstown–Altoona market. It bought the transmitter used by the original WKBS-TV (channel 48) in Philadelphia when that station went dark in 1983, and used this transmitter to put channel 47 on the air November 2, 1985, reusing the WKBS-TV call sign.

Technical information

Subchannels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:

Subchannels of WKBS-TV [3]
Channel Res. Aspect Short nameProgramming
47.1 480i 4:3 WKBS Cornerstone
47.2 16:9 CourtTV Court TV
47.3Bounce Bounce TV
47.44:3Ion Ion Television
47.5DABL Dabl
47.616:9Defy Ion Plus
47.7TruRealBlank (formerly TrueReal)
47.8 Scripps News
47.94:3PFFCPittsburgh Faith & Family Channel

Analog-to-digital conversion

WKBS-TV shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 47, 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 station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 46, using virtual channel 47. [4] [5]

References

  1. "Facility Technical Data for WKBS-TV". Licensing and Management System. Federal Communications Commission.
  2. "TV Query Results -- Video Division (FCC) USA".
  3. "RabbitEars TV Query for WKBS". RabbitEars . Retrieved February 2, 2025.
  4. "DTV Tentative Channel Designations for the First and the Second Rounds" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on August 29, 2013. Retrieved March 24, 2012.
  5. CDBS Print