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WNYB (channel 26) is a religious television station licensed to Jamestown, New York, United States, serving the Buffalo area as an owned-and-operated station of Tri-State Christian Television (TCT). Its transmitter is located on Center Road in Arkwright. WNYB maintained studios on Big Tree Road in Orchard Park until TCT ended local operations in June 2018.

WNYB operates a digital replacement translator on channel 27 to cover Buffalo proper. The station is also relayed on low-power translator WNIB-LD (channel 42) in Rochester.

History

CTV invades America

The first license for channel 26 in Jamestown was granted to WNYP in 1966. The station's majority shareholder was Lowell W. "Bud" Paxson, who at the time owned Jamestown's WKSN radio and later co-founded the Home Shopping Network (HSN). It was the first American television station to affiliate with a Canadian network, signing a deal with CTV. Since the station could not afford a direct feed, station engineers switched to and from the signal of CTV's flagship CFTO-TV (channel 9) in Toronto whenever network programming was airing. WNYP was Paxson's first venture into television.

WNYP quickly became notorious and almost legendary among Western New York's broadcast community for technical gaffes and programming mishaps. For instance, the station showed the same episode of The Aquanauts several times, every day at the same time, over a two-week period. Also, the equipment used to pick up the off-air signal from CFTO would sometimes relay the video from another station broadcasting on VHF channel 9 instead (such as ABC affiliate WNYS-TV in Syracuse or CBS affiliate WWTV in Cadillac, Michigan) due to tropospheric propagation overwhelming CFTO's signal. Often, when CFTO programming actually was being rebroadcast, the station switcher failed to drop CFTO's identification to display the WNYP callsign, which was considered a violation of Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules. Inexplicably, the audio line from a Jamestown radio station could sometimes be heard in the background when CTV programming was airing. Paxson also earned significant animus for airing programming from CHCH-TV (channel 11) and CBC Television's CBLT (channel 5) without permission. Although it had been legal to broadcast foreign programming in the United States without permission as a result of laws passed during World War II, he forgot to secure copyrights for the Canadian shows, and the programs' copyright holders won judgments against WNYP for infringement.

Since CTV, then as now, relies largely on American programming, Buffalo's "Big 3" U.S. network affiliates—WBEN-TV (channel 4, now WIVB-TV); WGR-TV (channel 2, now WGRZ); and WKBW-TV (channel 7)—threatened legal action in early 1969. Faced with the loss of its primary source of programming, WNYP cut back its local newscasts, laid off staff, and briefly attempted to use a prototype of what would become HSN's on-air product sales strategy to stay afloat. It briefly started to identify as WJTV, but quickly reverted to WNYP because a station in Jackson, Mississippi, already had those call letters. The death knell for the station sounded with the announcement that WUTV would sign on from Buffalo in 1970. Buffalo was not big enough at the time to support two independent stations, so Paxson opted to take the station off the air. (Paxson later started the Pax TV network, now known as Ion, which broadcasts on WPXJ-TV (channel 51) in the market; coincidentally, Pax/Ion has also imported much of its programming from CTV over the course of its history.)

Later incarnations

After going dark, the station's equipment was sold to Elmira ABC affiliate WENY-TV (channel 36), who used much of it to aid in its launch. The channel 26 allocation was used for much of the 1970s and 1980s by a low-power experimental Appalachian Television Service "translator" relay station (W26AA) of WNED-TV from Buffalo, operated by the regional Board of Cooperative Educational Services, which was able to originate local programming from studios in Fredonia. Channel 26 is the last remaining survivor of WNED-TV's once massive translator network that had several repeaters scattered throughout the Southern Tier of Western New York; all of the others were shut down by 2012.

A new license was re-issued to a new group years later, and channel 26 signed on again on September 24, 1988, under the new call letters WTJA. Part of the station's programming lineup duplicated those on the Buffalo stations. It operated on a low budget, heavily relying on public domain material, and the station was virtually ignored by local advertisers. Buffalo-area cable providers refused to carry the station because its signal was barely acceptable even under the best conditions; its "Grade B" signal coverage barely reached the southern Buffalo suburbs. Under the circumstances, the station never thrived, and once again went dark in 1991.

TCT arrives

Grant Broadcasting purchased the license in 1995. Rather than immediately putting the station back on the air, Grant negotiated with Marion, Illinois–based Tri-State Christian Television, owner of WNYB (channel 49), for the channel 49 license, in exchange for the channel 26 license, cash and a new, more powerful broadcasting facility in Arkwright. The facility featured one of the tallest towers in the region, atop one of the highest hills of western New York State. This changed channel 26 from having a very poor signal to one of the largest coverage areas in the Northeast. It provided at least secondary coverage from Erie, Pennsylvania, to the southwest suburbs of Toronto. Tri-State accepted and on January 10, 1997, it took over the channel 26 license and moved the WNYB intellectual unit there. Grant in turn took over channel 49, which became WB affiliate WNYO-TV; it became a MyNetworkTV affiliate in 2006 when The WB merged with UPN to form CW.

End of local operations

In June 2018, after more than 21 years, TCT announced it had ceased local programming and was placing its former studios on Big Tree Road in Orchard Park up for sale. The change came with the elimination of the FCC's Main Studio Rule earlier in the year and a decision by TCT to consolidate all programming operations at the network's headquarters in Marion, Illinois.

Technical information

Subchannels

The station's signal is multiplexed:

Analog-to-digital conversion

WNYB ended regular programming on its analog signal, over UHF channel 26, in early May 2009. The station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition UHF channel 27 to channel 26. The station switched to low VHF channel 5 on August 2, 2019, as part of the FCC's spectrum incentive auction.

Translators

Former translator

WNYB was previously relayed on Class A station WBNF-CD (channel 15) in Buffalo; in 2023, this station switched to Spanish-language religious programming.

References

1. "Facility Technical Data for WNYB". Licensing and Management System. Federal Communications Commission.
2. ^ Television & Cable Factbook Stations Volume 1968–69 Edition. 1988. p. 473-b.
3. "1968 Broadcasting Yearbook" (PDF). Broadcasting Publications, accessed via davidgleason.com/americanradiohistory.com. 1968. p. A-38. Archived from the original (PDF) on February 6, 2011. Retrieved September 24, 2009.
4. Fybush, Scott (January 12, 2015). Salary Controversy Ousts Public TV Exec. NorthEast Radio Watch. Retrieved January 12, 2015. Fybush placed a free copy of this column on his Facebook account.
5. "WNYB-TV ends local productions, station site is for sale". The Buffalo News. July 2, 2018. Retrieved July 2, 2018.
6. "RabbitEars.Info". www.rabbitears.info. Retrieved December 29, 2023.
7. "Digital TV Market Listing for WNIB-LD". rabbitears.info. Retrieved December 14, 2022.
8. "DTV Tentative Channel Designations for the First and Second Rounds" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on August 29, 2013. Retrieved March 24, 2012.
9. "FCC Broadcast Television Spectrum Incentive Auction. Winning Bids" (PDF). fcc.gov. Retrieved December 29, 2023.

External links

• Official website

• 1988 establishments in New York (state)
• Buzzr affiliates
• Get (TV network) affiliates
• Jamestown, New York
• MeTV Toons affiliates
• Television channels and stations established in 1988
• Television stations in Buffalo, New York
• Tri-State Christian Television stations