WLNE-TV
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New Bedford, Massachusetts - Providence, Rhode Island United States |
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| City | New Bedford, Massachusetts |
| Branding | ABC 6 |
| Slogan | Your town, your life, your news |
| Channels |
Digital: 49 (UHF) Virtual: 6 () |
| Subchannels | (see article) |
| Affiliations | ABC (since 1995; also from 1963–1977) |
| Owner |
Citadel Communications (Citadel Communications, LLC) |
| Founded | January 1, 1963 |
| Call letters' meaning | We Love New England |
| Sister station(s) | KLKN, WSNN-LD |
| Former callsigns | WTEV (1963–1980) |
| Former channel number(s) |
Analog: 6 (VHF, 1963–2009) |
| Former affiliations | CBS (1977–1995) |
| Transmitter power | 350 kW |
| Height | 284 m |
| Facility ID | 22591 |
| Transmitter coordinates | 41°51′55.4″N 71°17′12.7″W / 41.865389°N 71.286861°W |
| Licensing authority | FCC |
| Public license information: |
Profile CDBS |
| Website | www.abc6.com |
WLNE-TV, channel 6, is an ABC-affiliated television station licensed to New Bedford, Massachusetts, USA and serving the Providence, Rhode Island television market. WLNE is owned by Bronxville, New York-based Citadel Communications (unrelated to the former Citadel Broadcasting Corporation, which owned several stations in the Providence market before being acquired by Cumulus Media in 2011), and has its studios and offices located in the Orms Building in downtown Providence; its transmitter is based in Rehoboth, Massachusetts.
The station began broadcasting on January 1, 1963 as WTEV from studios on 430 County Street in New Bedford. and transmitter located in Little Compton, Rhode Island, with the antenna mounted on a 500-foot (150 m) tower; a few years later, WTEV moved to a 950-foot (290 m) tower in Tiverton. The Tiverton transmitter was still 20 miles away from the transmitter sites in Rehoboth used by the existing stations in the Providence market, WJAR-TV (channel 10) and WPRO-TV (channel 12, now WPRI-TV). However, WTEV could not build a tower in Rehoboth due to the risk of interference with WRGB in Schenectady, New York and WCSH-TV in Portland, Maine, which also broadcast on channel 6 in the analog era. Before cable arrived in Rhode Island in the early 1970s, viewers experienced reception problems with WTEV. This was because for its first four decades on the air, its transmitter was located in Newport County, resulting in its signal being sent from a different direction than WJAR-TV and WPRO/WPRI. This forced viewers to mount their outdoor antennas on rotators to get a passable signal from the station. Signal issues associated with channel 6 would be an incurable problem for the station for 45 years.
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Wikipedia