WDSC-TV

WDSC-TV
New Smyrna Beach-Daytona Beach-Orlando, Florida
United States
Branding Channel 15
Slogan Public television that matters
Channels Digital: 33 (UHF)
Virtual: 15 (PSIP)
Subchannels 15.1 Educational Ind.
15.2 Florida Channel
15.3 MHz WorldView
Owner Daytona State College
(Daytona State College, Inc.)
First air date February 8, 1988 (1988-02-08)
Call letters' meaning Daytona
State
College
Former callsigns WCEU (1988–2008)
Former channel number(s) Analog:
15 (UHF, 1988–2008)
Former affiliations PBS (1988–2011)
Transmitter power 308 kW
Height 491 m
Facility ID 12171
Transmitter coordinates 28°36′36.3″N 81°3′34.6″W / 28.610083°N 81.059611°W / 28.610083; -81.059611Coordinates: 28°36′36.3″N 81°3′34.6″W / 28.610083°N 81.059611°W / 28.610083; -81.059611
Licensing authority FCC
Public license information: Profile
CDBS
Website www.wdsctv.org

WDSC-TV Channel 15 is an independent non-commercial educational public television station located in Daytona Beach, Florida. The station is a former member station of the Public Broadcasting Service and it is owned and operated by The Daytona State College and has its studios at the Center for Educational Telecommunications on the DSC campus. It is licensed to nearby New Smyrna Beach.

History

In 1985, DSC (then known as Daytona Beach Community College), Bethune-Cookman College, Stetson University, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and the Atlantic Center for the Arts formed the Coastal Educational Broadcasters in order to bring a public television station to Volusia and Flagler counties. They felt WMFE-TV, the PBS station in Orlando was neglecting Daytona Beach. On February 8, 1988 Channel 15 signed on as WCEU with a limited schedule of three hours a day & three days a week. Support in the area was enough that within nine months, it was recognized by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. By January 1989, it was a full-fledged PBS member station, though it didn't expand to a fuller broadcast day until 1993.

In 1992, a signal expansion and must-carry rules expanded WCEU's audience to over 1.3 million viewers in Central Florida including Orlando itself. It moved to its current facility in 1999. DBCC became the sole licensee in 2002.

In 2005, WCEU rebranded itself as DBCC 15 to better reflect its relationship with DBCC. In January 2008, it rebranded itself again merely as Channel 15 after DBCC became Daytona Beach College. The college subsequently changed its name again to Daytona State College and to reflect this in November 2008, Channel 15 changed its own call letters into the present-day name called "WDSC-TV" named after purchasing the rights to the call letters from a radio station in Dillon, South Carolina.[1]

WDSC-TV shut down its analog signal on December 15, 2008, some two months before the end of full-service analog broadcasting; this came after the transmitter suffered a failure on September 25, forcing the station to broadcast at reduced power.[2]

With the advent of digital broadcasting, WDSC-TV began billing itself as a full-market PBS station, including Orlando. While it had been available on cable in Orlando for over a decade, its digital signal, located in Bithlo with most other television stations in the market, gives it an over-the-air coverage area comparable to the market's previous primary PBS station WMFE-TV. However, on June 16, 2011, WDSC and PBS announced that the station would leave PBS as Daytona State College could no longer afford to purchase its programming, following $4.8 million of funding to Florida's public radio and television stations vetoed by Governor Rick Scott in May 2011. WMFE also left PBS on July 1 due to its now-failed acquisition by Daystar).[3] These moves left WBCC of Cocoa, which began branding as WUCF-TV at that time as the only PBS station in the Central Florida television market.[3] (WUCF-TV moved to the former WMFE-TV in 2012 as a move that led to WBCC and now WEFS have itself departing PBS as well.)

Digital television

Digital channels

The station's digital channel is multiplexed:

Channel Video Aspect PSIP Short Name Programming[4]
15.1 1080i 16:9 WDSC-HD Main WDSC-TV programming
15.2 480i 4:3 WDSC-ED Florida Channel
15.3 WDSC-WV MHz WorldView

Analog-to-digital conversion

WDSC-TV shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 15, on December 15, 2008. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 33.[5] Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 15.

The station continues to air public television from other sources such as American Public Television and the National Educational Telecommunications Association.[6]

References

  1. ↑ Harper, Mark (October 28, 2008). "Public TV station to change call letters". The Daytona Beach News-Journal. Retrieved November 3, 2008.
  2. ↑ "Notification of Suspension of Operations". CDBS Public Access. Federal Communications Commission. November 14, 2008. Retrieved December 30, 2008.
  3. 1 2 Bodeker, Hal (June 17, 2011). "PBS: Daytona Beach station will stop PBS lineup July 1". The Orlando Sentinel. Retrieved June 20, 2011.
  4. ↑ RabbitEars TV Query for WDSC
  5. ↑ "DTV Tentative Channel Designations for the First and the Second Rounds" (PDF). Retrieved 2012-03-24.
  6. ↑ Boedeker, Hal (June 27, 2011). "What happens to programming at former PBS stations WMFE, WDSC?". Orlando Sentinel. Retrieved June 30, 2011.
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