City Muskegon, Michigan Subchannels (see article) Affiliations TCT | Branding TCT 54 Translators WJGP-LD 26 Kalamazoo | |
Channels Digital: 24 (UHF)
Virtual: 54 (PSIP) | ||
WTLJ, virtual channel 54 (UHF digital channel 24), is a Tri-State Christian Television owned-and-operated television station serving Grand Rapids, Michigan, United States that is licensed to Muskegon. Its signal is relayed on translator station WJGP-LD (channel 26; originally W24BO channel 24) in Kalamazoo. WTLJ's studio/office facility and transmitter are co-located in Allendale Charter Township in Ottawa County, just southwest of Grand Valley State University.
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The station broadcasts its own locally produced programs from its Allendale studio, Ask The Pastor and Down Home.
History
The UHF channel 54 allocation in Michigan was originally assigned to Lansing. It was occupied by DuMont affiliate WILS, which later became WTOM-TV (call letters now used on channel 4 in Cheboygan), and was on the air from 1953 to 1956. The channel 54 allocation was then reassigned to Muskegon.[1] [2] Full-power station WMKG-TV broadcast in the late 1960s from the Occidental Hotel in downtown Muskegon. That station, which operated as an independent station and relied heavily on live, local programming, had left the air by the mid-1970s.
In the early-1980s, WTLJ was originally assigned the call letters WMKT with the intention of focusing on the Muskegon and Holland areas. That station was never built (Muskegon has its own station, WMKG-CD, which fulfills this purpose).
In November 1986, Springfield, Ohio-based Miami Valley Christian Television launched WTLJ, as a Christian-oriented independent station. The station would eventually be sold to its present-owners, Tri-State Christian Television. The history of its Kalamazoo repeater, WJGP-LD, is unknown, other than the fact that its application to move its signal from UHF channel 24 to channel 26 was approved in December 1998; the channel switch occurred in January 2002 to facilitate WTLJ's eventual digital channel 24.
The station was receivable in analog on the western shore of Lake Michigan in the Wisconsin cities of Sheboygan and Milwaukee because of channel 54's transmitter being close to the Lake Michigan shore, although TCT does not explicitly market to those cities or have any cable coverage. With the termination on March 4, 2009 of the analog channel 24 signal of Milwaukee's WCGV, the station's digital signal is also easily picked up in Wisconsin.
WTLJ is carried on AcenTek systems serving Buckley, Copemish, Hoxeyville, Mesick, Old Mission, South Boardman, and Thompsonville (all located in the Traverse City market).
WTLJ has collaborated with the Ottawa County Department of Corrections. This collaboration has led to the station taking in probationers to give them the opportunity to complete court ordered mandatory community service.
Digital channels
The station's digital channel is multiplexed:
Analog-to-digital conversion
WTLJ shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 54, on June 12, 2009, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 24, using PSIP to display WTLJ's virtual channel as 54 on digital television receivers, which was among the high band UHF channels (52-69) that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition.