WFWA
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Fort Wayne, Indiana United States |
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| Branding | PBS39 |
| Channels |
Digital: 40 (UHF) Virtual: 39 () |
| Subchannels | 39.1 PBS 39.2 Kids 39.3 Create 39.4 Explore |
| Affiliations | PBS (1970–present) |
| Owner | Fort Wayne Public Television, Inc. |
| First air date | December 5, 1986 (originally low-power W39AA 1964–1986) |
| Call letters' meaning |
Fort WAyne (possibly related to the IATA code of Fort Wayne International Airport, FWA) |
| Former channel number(s) |
Analog: 39 (UHF, 1964–2009) |
| Former affiliations | NET (1964–1970; as W39AA) |
| Transmitter power | 90 kW |
| Height | 221 m |
| Facility ID | 22108 |
| Transmitter coordinates | 41°6′13.4″N 85°11′26.9″W / 41.103722°N 85.190806°W |
| Licensing authority | FCC |
| Public license information: |
Profile CDBS |
| Website | www.wfwa.org |
WFWA, virtual channel 39 (UHF digital channel 40), is a PBS member television station located in Fort Wayne, Indiana, United States. The station is owned by Fort Wayne Public Television, Inc. WFWA maintains studios located at the Dr. Rudy and Rhonda Kachmann Teleplex at the corner of Coliseum Boulevard and Crescent Avenue on the campus of Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, and its transmitter is located at its former studio facility on Butler Road in Fort Wayne. Bruce Haines is the current president and general manager of WFWA.
In 1964, W39AA, a translator of WBGU-TV in Bowling Green, Ohio, signed on the air on channel 39. Prior to 1974, Fort Wayne had been the only area of Indiana without access to PBS programming even on cable (it was standard practice for PBS to offer programs to commercial stations in markets without PBS-member stations, but no evidence concerning carriage of the network's programs in Fort Wayne has yet surfaced); the coverage of W39AA was generally restricted to the immediate Fort Wayne area, as its coverage was not powerful enough to cover the entire market. This low-powered repeater station was merely a placeholder, as channel 39 was allocated as a full-powered educational channel in Fort Wayne. By the early 1980s, the station became a translator of Indianapolis PBS station WFYI.
On March 12, 1985, a local public television group was granted the channel 39 slot from the FCC, and licensed the station under the WFWA call letters; WFWA signed on the air on December 5, 1986, bringing northeast Indiana its own PBS station for the first time ever.
In 2003, WFWA became the first television station in the Fort Wayne market to broadcast a digital signal, originally carrying the national PBS HDTV feed on a separate subchannel from its regular programming; funding issues would later cause the national HD feed to be pulled, leaving all programming in standard definition for several years. It was announced that WFWA's main channel 39.1 would broadcast in high-definition full-time at some point during summer 2010. During a summer 2010 pledging break, general manager Bruce Haines announced that the change would occur on July 4, 2010 at 7:30 p.m. Due to advancements in video compression, the station was able to upgrade its main channel to HD without sacrificing the video quality of its other three SD subchannels.
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Wikipedia