WIWU-TV will be off-the-air for a few days beginning Tuesday, Sept. 24, but will return to the airwaves with a stronger broadcast signal for Grant County and North Central Indiana viewers.
WIWU-TV will move its digital broadcast signal from UHF channel 51.1 to 28.1 and hopes to be back on the air no later than Friday, Sept. 27. The change is due to FCC-mandated channel reassignments and is not related to the recent decision by WIWU-TV owner Indiana Wesleyan University to close station operations sometime later this academic year.
“We’ve been working on this change for over 2 years once the FCC announced stations at certain frequencies would be moved,” said Randall E. King, Director of WIWU-TV and IWU Professor of Communication. “For the remaining time WIWU-TV operates, we think the best choice for our viewers is to make this improvement and continue our local programming at a high level of excellence and broadcast quality,” King said.
The FCC is requiring nearly 1000 stations nationwide to change channels over a two year period to make room for wireless services such as 5G mobile data, using more of the public airwaves. Over-the-air viewers using antennas in the region will need to rescan their televisions and receivers by next Friday to pick up the new signal – 28.1 – for WIWU-TV. Cable customers using Spectrum in Marion or local systems elsewhere in the county will not be affected and will continue receiving WIWU-TV at the same cable channel setting once it returns to the air.
The WIWU-TV signal will also improve through this change, with a stronger broadcast footprint within and beyond Grant County. Viewers using antennas are encouraged to rescan their receivers frequently if they think they have lost a local channel they used to receive or want to discover new channels over the air. The FCC plans to complete all TV channel reassignments by July 2020.
Once WIWU-TV completes the change from 51.1 to 28.1, station leaders plan to continue local operations and community programming until the transition to an online streaming service, with programming to be determined.
“At this point, we don’t have a finalized timetable for the transition of our service. We want to make sure we are operating at peak efficiency at this new channel, and we have more programming to share with our local viewers through early 2020 while we migrate to streaming, Our communication students are also eager to continue the excellence WIWU-TV has established, serving our local broadcast viewers,” King said.
