WMWC-TV

WMWC-TV

Galesburg–Moline–Rock Island, Illinois Davenport–Bettendorf, Iowa United States
City	Galesburg, Illinois
Channels	Digital: 8 (VHF) Virtual: 53
Programming
Affiliations	53.1: TBN for others, see § Subchannels
Ownership
Owner	Trinity Broadcasting Network (Trinity Broadcasting of Texas, Inc.)
History
Founded	July 20, 2007
First air date	August 20, 2012 (2012-08-20)
Former call signs	WMWC (2012–2013)
Technical information
Licensing authority	FCC
Facility ID	81946
ERP	23 kW
HAAT	330 m (1,083 ft)
Transmitter coordinates	41°18′44″N 90°22′46″W
Links
Public license information	Public file LMS
Website	www.tbn.org

WMWC-TV (channel 53) is a religious television station licensed to Galesburg, Illinois, United States, serving the Quad Cities area as an owned-and-operated station of the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN). The station's studios are located on 44th Avenue in Moline, and its transmitter is located in Orion, Illinois.

History

WMWC originally planned to go on the air on September 1, 2001, as the UPN affiliate for the Quad Cities market. Although Northwest Television owned the station, operations were to have been handled by Second Generation of Iowa, owner of Fox affiliate KFXA in Cedar Rapids. However, Grant Broadcasting System II, then-owner of KLJB-TV and KGWB-TV, filed an petition to deny the application, and the construction permit was not granted until July 20, 2007—nearly a year after UPN (which affiliated with WBQD-LP in 2002) closed down.

WMWC never signed on an analog signal prior to June 12, 2009. As a result, when it took to the air on August 20, 2012, it became the first television station in the Quad Cities to have signed on as a digital-only station, more than three years after full-power stations ended analog broadcasts. On June 5, 2012, the station was assigned the call letters WMWC. A TBN affiliate from its sign-on, WMWC was acquired from Northwest Television by the network in December 2012. On June 13, 2013, TBN added the "-TV" suffix to the station's call sign.

Technical information

Subchannels

The station's signal is multiplexed:

Subchannels of WMWC-TV

Channel	Res.	Aspect	Short name	Programming
53.1	720p	16:9	TBN HD	TBN
53.2			Merit	Merit Street
53.3	480i	4:3	Inspire	TBN Inspire
53.4		16:9	SMILE	Smile
53.5			POSITIV	Positiv

Analog-to-digital transition

Because it was granted an original construction permit after the FCC finalized the DTV allotment plan on April 21, 1997, the station did not receive a companion channel for a digital television station. Instead, at the end of the digital TV conversion period for full-service stations, WMWC would have been required to turn off its analog signal and turn on its digital signal (called a "flash-cut"). WMWC's original analog allocation was UHF channel 67, though the application was subsequently amended to specify digital operation on channel 53; however, both channels were removed from the TV bandplan at the end of the digital television transition in the United States. Since WQAD-TV elected to stay on its pre-transition digital UHF channel 38 allocation after the digital transition, Northwest Television, the original owners of WMWC, elected WQAD's former analog channel allocation, VHF channel 8, as the channel on which to broadcast WMWC's post-transition digital signal. As WQAD uses virtual channel 8 because of its former analog allocation, WMWC legally could not use it; the station instead uses virtual channel 53.

See also

• WBQD-LP, the low power television station which ultimately ended up with the UPN affiliation for the Quad Cities market, and later became the area's MyNetworkTV affiliate; station is now defunct
• WQAD-DT3, the third digital subchannel of WQAD-TV which was previously a simulcast of WBQD-LP and is now the MyNetworkTV affiliate for the Quad Cities television market
• WQAD-TV, the ABC affiliate for the Quad Cities television market and the parent station of WQAD-DT3; also the former analog occupant of the VHF channel 8 allocation in the Quad Cities area

External links

• Official website