WKBS-TV (channel 47) is a religious television station in Altoona, Pennsylvania, United States, owned and operated by Cornerstone Television. The station's transmitter is located in Logan Township.
WKBS-TV operates as a full-time satellite of Cornerstone's flagship station, Greensburg-licensed WPCB-TV (channel 40), whose studios are located in Wall, Pennsylvania. WKBS-TV covers areas of West-Central Pennsylvania that receive a marginal to non-existent over-the-air signal from WPCB-TV, although there is significant overlap between the two stations' contours otherwise. WKBS-TV is a straight simulcast of WPCB-TV; on-air references to WKBS-TV are limited to Federal Communications Commission (FCC)-mandated hourly station identifications during programming. Besides the transmitter, WKBS-TV does not maintain any physical presence in Altoona, and unlike its parent station, it does not broadcast in high definition and has a different subchannel lineup encompassing the Ion Media networks carried in Pittsburgh by Ion owned-and-operated station WINP-TV (channel 16).
History
In 1983, Cornerstone Television was granted a construction permit for channel 47 in Altoona, Pennsylvania, to serve the Johnstown–Altoona market. It bought the transmitter used by the original WKBS-TV (channel 48) in Philadelphia when that station went dark in 1983, and used this transmitter to put channel 47 on the air November 2, 1985, reusing the WKBS-TV call sign.
Technical information
Subchannels
The station's digital signal is multiplexed:
| Channel | Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 47.1 | 480i | 4:3 | WKBS | Cornerstone |
| 47.2 | 16:9 | CourtTV | Court TV | |
| 47.3 | Bounce | Bounce TV | ||
| 47.4 | 4:3 | Ion | Ion Television | |
| 47.5 | DABL | Dabl | ||
| 47.6 | 16:9 | Defy | Ion Plus | |
| 47.7 | TruReal | Blank (formerly TrueReal) | ||
| 47.8 | Scripps News | |||
| 47.9 | 4:3 | PFFC | Pittsburgh Faith & Family Channel |
Analog-to-digital conversion
WKBS-TV shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 47, on June 12, 2009, the official date on which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 46, using virtual channel 47.[4][5]
References
- ^ "Facility Technical Data for WKBS-TV". Licensing and Management System. Federal Communications Commission.
- ^ "TV Query Results -- Video Division (FCC) USA".
- ^ "RabbitEars TV Query for WKBS". RabbitEars. Retrieved February 2, 2025.
- ^ "DTV Tentative Channel Designations for the First and the Second Rounds" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on August 29, 2013. Retrieved March 24, 2012.
- ^ CDBS Print
External links
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