City Tampa, Florida Affiliations PBS | Branding WEDU | |
Slogan West Central Florida's PBS Station Channels Digital: 13 (VHF)
Virtual: 3 (PSIP) Owner Florida West Coast Public Broadcasting, Inc. | ||
WEDU, virtual channel 3 (VHF digital channel 13), is a PBS member television station located in Tampa, Florida, United States and serves the Tampa Bay Area including St. Petersburg, Clearwater, Sarasota and Lakeland. The station is owned by Florida West Coast Public Broadcasting. WEDU's studio facilities are located on North Boulevard in Tampa, and its transmitter is located in Riverview. WEDU is one of two PBS stations in the Tampa Bay market. It carries the main PBS schedule, while WUSF-TV, channel 16, carries alternate PBS programming.
Contents
History
The station first signed on the air on October 17, 1958. For many years, WEDU has been one of the highest-rated stations in the PBS system. At one point, it was the third most-watched PBS member station in the country.
On February 8, 2017, USF announced that the license for secondary PBS outlet WUSF-TV had been sold for $18.8 million in the FCC spectrum auction, and that it will cease operations later in the year. WEDU will become the Tampa Bay Area's sole PBS station after WUSF-TV goes dark.
Digital channels
The station's digital channel is multiplexed:
Analog-to-digital conversion
WEDU shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 3, on February 17, 2009, to conclude the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television. The station moved its digital signal from its pre-transition UHF channel 54. That channel was among the high band UHF channels (52-69) that were removed from broadcast service. On June 12, 2009, it moved to VHF channel 13. Channel 13 originally was the analog channel for Fox owned-and-operated station WTVT but that station vacated Channel 13 on the rescheduled date of the digital television transition, using PSIP to display WEDU's virtual channel as 3 on digital television receivers.