WBTS-CD

WBTS-CD (channel 15) is a Class A television station licensed to Nashua, New Hampshire, United States, serving as the NBC outlet for the Boston area. It is owned and operated by the network's NBC Owned Television Stations division alongside Merrimack, New Hampshire–licensed Telemundo station WNEU (channel 60); it is also sister to regional cable news channel New England Cable News (NECN) and regional sports network NBC Sports Boston. The four outlets share studios at the NBCU Boston Media Center on B Street in Needham, Massachusetts.

This article is about the television station currently known as WBTS-CD. For the low-power station that formerly held the WBTS call letters, see WYCN-LD.
WBTS-CD
CityNashua, New Hampshire
Channels
BrandingNBC 10 Boston (cable channel)
Programming
Affiliations
Ownership
Owner
History
FoundedAugust 5, 1985
First air date
January 29, 1988 (1988-01-29)
Former call signs
  • W13BG (1985–1996)
  • WYCN-LP (1996–2014)
  • WYCN-CD (2014–2019)
Former channel number(s)
  • Analog: 13 (VHF, 1988–2014)
  • Digital: 36 (UHF, 2014–2018), 43 (UHF, 2018–2019)
  • Virtual: 13 (2014–2018)
Call sign meaning
Boston Television Station
Technical information[1]
Licensing authority
FCC
Facility ID9766
ClassCD
ERP
  • 922 kW
  • 1,000 kW (CP)
HAAT388.3 m (1,274.0 ft)
Transmitter coordinates42°18′37″N 71°14′12″W
Links
Public license information
Websitewww.nbcboston.com

Under a channel sharing arrangement, WBTS-CD shares transmitter facilities with Boston-licensed PBS member station WGBX-TV (channel 44) on Cedar Street, also in Needham, on a tower also used by several other TV and radio stations. Despite WBTS-CD legally holding a low-power Class A license, it transmits using WGBX-TV's full-power spectrum. This ensures complete reception across the Boston television market.

WBTS-CD is carried on channel 10 by most local cable television providers;[2][3] hence the station's on-air branding (since 2018) as NBC 10 Boston.

History
For further details on the creation of NBC Boston, see WYCN-LD § History.

TV13 Nashua

The station came to the air at 8 p.m. on January 29, 1988, as W13BG on VHF channel 13 in Nashua;[4] its license was granted on July 29.[5] Founded by Robert Rines[6] and owned by Center Broadcasting Corporation of New Hampshire, a non-profit partnership between the Concord–based Franklin Pierce Law Center and the Boston–based Academy of Law Sciences, the station aired local community programming for the Nashua area, along with programming that was already being sold to cable stations though the Yankee Communications Network.[4] Channel 13 changed its callsign to WYCN-LP on April 8, 1996.[7] Its analog-era tower was located on the Rivier University campus between two above-ground reservoirs and Brassard Hall, with studios located in Memorial Hall on the same campus.[8]

WYCN-LP was nearly dropped by Harron Cable on its Nashua-area systems in October 1999 to accommodate a must-carry request by WMFP (channel 62),[9] a move that could have led to the closure of channel 13[10] even though its carriage on MediaOne in Nashua itself was not affected.[9] Its carriage was ultimately continued by Adelphia Communications following its purchase of Harron,[11] though the station was dropped for a time in 2000 after an additional must-carry request, from WYDN (channel 48), while Adelphia rebuilt the systems.[12] By August 11, 2000, WYCN-LP had been authorized to carry programming from FamilyNet.[13]

WYCN-LP, along with three co-owned translators in Nashua, Manchester, and Concord, was sold by Center Broadcasting Corporation of New Hampshire to New Hampshire 1 Network, a company controlled by William H. Binnie, in 2010;[14] by this point, control of the stations had passed to longtime WYCN staffers Gordon Jackson and Carolyn Choate[6] following the death of Robert Rines.[15] The deal was completed January 3, 2012;[16] in the meantime, Binnie would also acquire WBIN-TV (channel 50, now WWJE-DT) in Derry. As a result of the sale, much of WYCN's community programming, including aldermatic debates, was discontinued.[17] In December 2012, the station's studios moved from Rivier University to a location shared with sister station WFNQ (106.3 FM).[18]

New Hampshire 1 Network filed to sell WYCN-LP to OTA Broadcasting, a company controlled by Michael Dell's MSD Capital, on January 14, 2013; the three translators were not included in the deal,[19] and began to simulcast WBIN-TV. Operation of WYCN continued to be handled by New Hampshire 1.[20] At the time of the sale, WYCN was affiliated with My Family TV.[21] The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved the sale on March 22,[22] and it was completed on May 20.[23]

WYCN-LP resumed producing local programming soon after the sale to OTA Broadcasting, rehiring Gordon Jackson and Carolyn Choate as station managers;[6] however, in June 2013, Comcast (successor to both Harron/Adelphia and MediaOne) informed the station that it would be dropped from its lineup as of August 15 due to the earlier cessation of local programming, as well as its limited broadcast reach and continued analog broadcasting, even though WYCN had a construction permit to convert to digital operations and increase its broadcast range.[24][25][26][27] Comcast subsequently pushed back the date of the removal to September 3, despite protests from viewers, politicians, and Nashua's public access station.[28]

Due to its low power, WYCN's analog signal reached only portions of Nashua, its city of license. In contrast, its digital signal was expected to reach Manchester and Boston. The digital facility was planned to sign on by December 2013;[29] construction was held up by the need to use a helicopter to remove a former antenna for WNDS (now WWJE-DT) from the tower on Merrill Hill in Hudson that WYCN planned to use, an operation that was delayed to May 2014 by winter weather.[30] The conversion to digital was licensed by the FCC on October 23, 2014; concurrent with the launch of the digital signal, the analog channel 13 signal was shut down.

Until January 2018, WYCN-CD's original digital transmitter was located 625 feet (0.191 km) off Trigate Road in rural Hudson, southeast of Nashua. The station's pre-auction digital signal broadcast on UHF channel 36. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers displayed the station's virtual channel as its former VHF analog channel 13.

As WBTS-CD

WYCN-CD sold its frequency rights as part of the FCC's spectrum auction for $80.4 million. OTA Broadcasting entered into a channel sharing agreement with WGBX-TV (channel 44) for the station; NBC agreed to purchase the channel share agreement[31] and the WYCN-CD license in October 2017.[32] In December 2017, the station announced on its website that it would "cease broadcasting on its current frequency on January 16, 2018 and begin broadcasting NBC Boston on a new frequency."[33] As WYCN's signal overlaps with WGME-TV in Portland, Maine, which also uses virtual channel 13, WYCN began using virtual channel 15 following the commencement of channel sharing, as WGME's post-auction physical channel is 15 (WGME's pre-auction channel, 38, was not available to WYCN as virtual channel 38 is assigned to WSBK-TV).[34]

The sale to NBC was completed on January 18, 2018;[35] the station began channel sharing with WGBX the same day. Prior to this transition, WYCN-CD was affiliated with Heroes & Icons (H&I),[32] which also maintained a full-market affiliation on the second subchannel of WSBK-TV; that station continues to carry H&I, though the network lost the low channel number cable carriage it held with WYCN-CD.

On August 8, 2019, WBTS-LD (channel 8) and WYCN-CD swapped call signs, with channel 8 becoming WYCN-LD and channel 15 changing to WBTS-CD.[36][37] On August 31, 2019, WYCN-LD left the air in advance of its October 2019 transmitter move to Norton, Massachusetts, and city of license change to Providence, Rhode Island;[38] WYCN-LD now serves as a Telemundo station for Providence, leaving WBTS-CD as the sole NBC station for the Boston area.

News operation

WBTS-CD broadcasts 43 hours, 55 minutes of locally produced newscasts each week (with 7 hours, 5 minutes each weekday, 3½ hours on Saturdays and five hours on Sundays); in addition, the station produces the half-hour lifestyle program The Hub Today, which airs weekday afternoons, and the weekly half-hour public affairs program This is New England, which airs Sunday mornings. It also utilizes a news helicopter (SkyRanger), a storm-chaser satellite truck (Weather Warrior), mobile weather radar vehicles (StormRanger), a consumer affairs unit (NBC 10 Boston Responds) and an investigative reporting unit (The Investigators).[2]

Notable current on-air staff

Technical information

Subchannels
See also: WGBX-TV § Subchannels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed via sharing of WGBX's spectrum:

Subchannels of WBTS-CD on the WGBX-TV multiplex[39]
Channel Res. Aspect Short name Programming
15.1 1080i16:9WBTS-CDMain WBTS-CD programming / NBC
15.2 480iCoziCozi TV

Coverage in Canada

WBTS-CD is one of several Boston television stations uplinked to provide U.S. network programming to television providers in Canada, particularly in Atlantic Canada.[40] On November 11, 2016, Canadian telecommunications company Bell Canada, which distributes Boston's broadcast network affiliates on its satellite, IPTV, and cable TV services in much of eastern Canada and via satellite uplink to other providers, filed a request with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to add WBTS' main feed to the CRTC's list of foreign television channels authorized for distribution in Canada, which was additionally supported by Rogers Cable for their systems in Atlantic Canada.[41] The request was approved by the CRTC on December 20, 2016; television providers who carried WHDH, including Bell, Eastlink, TELUS Optik TV, Nor-Del Cablevision, Rogers, and CommStream among others, replaced the station with WBTS on January 1, 2017, coinciding with the launch of "NBC Boston" and the end of WHDH's NBC affiliation.[40] On January 1, 2019, Bell MTS' cable television systems in Altona, Carman, Morden, Morris, and Winkler, Manitoba, replaced Detroit's WDIV-TV with WBTS entirely.[42]

See also

References
  1. "Facility Technical Data for WBTS-CD". Licensing and Management System. Federal Communications Commission.
  2. "NBC's New Boston O&O, WBTS, Sets Lineup". TVNewsCheck. November 2016. Archived from the original on September 24, 2017. Retrieved November 2, 2016.
  3. Littleton, Cynthia (December 30, 2016). "NBCUniversal Gambles in Beantown With NBC Boston Launch". Variety. Archived from the original on December 31, 2016. Retrieved December 30, 2016.
  4. Welych, Maria T. (January 29, 1988). "New TV station hits air today". The Telegraph. Retrieved September 22, 2023.
  5. "Application Search Details". CDBS Public Access. Federal Communications Commission. Archived from the original on December 23, 2017. Retrieved December 22, 2017.
  6. "Sept. 3 slated as date Comcast will drop Nashua channel WYCN TV-13". Nashua Telegraph. August 16, 2013. Retrieved September 23, 2023.
  7. "Call Sign History (WYCN-CD)". CDBS Public Access. Federal Communications Commission. Archived from the original on December 23, 2017. Retrieved December 22, 2017.
  8. "WYCN tv13 Nashua Studio (Google Maps pinpoint provided by former ownership)". Google Maps. Google LLC. Retrieved 25 January 2018.
  9. Milbouer, Stacy (August 22, 1999). "Local station is losing out to shopping channel". The Boston Globe. Retrieved July 31, 2013.
  10. Spiller, Karen (August 17, 1999). "Operators of station may shut down business". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on November 29, 2014. Retrieved July 31, 2013.
  11. Spiller, Karen (October 30, 1999). "Company plans channel shuffle to preserve local station". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on November 29, 2014. Retrieved July 31, 2013.
  12. Spiller, Karen (March 21, 2000). "Cable carrier to shut off service to most towns outside of Nashua as of July 1". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on November 29, 2014. Retrieved July 31, 2013.
  13. "Family Net Additional Systems List" (PDF). July 14, 2010. Retrieved September 22, 2023.
  14. "Binnie buy to lead to something bigger for the Granite State?". Television Business Report. December 28, 2010. Archived from the original on December 31, 2010. Retrieved January 18, 2011.
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  16. Jackson, Gordon T. (July 5, 2011). "Extension of Consummation". CDBS Public Access. Federal Communications Commission. Archived from the original on October 26, 2012. Retrieved July 6, 2011.
  17. McKeon, Albert (October 30, 2011). "Nashua...From the inside". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved December 25, 2011.
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  22. http://licensing.fcc.gov/prod/cdbs/pubacc/Auth_Files/1541195.pdf
  23. "Consummation Notice". CDBS Public Access. Federal Communications Commission. May 20, 2013. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved May 26, 2013.
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  35. "Consummation Notice". CDBS Public Access. Federal Communications Commission. January 18, 2018. Archived from the original on January 19, 2018. Retrieved January 19, 2018.
  36. WBTS-CD Call Sign History
  37. WYCN-LD Call Sign History
  38. "Request for Special Temporary Authority to Remain Silent (WYCN-LD)" (PDF). Licensing and Management System. Federal Communications Commission. October 3, 2019. Retrieved January 9, 2020.
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  41. "Interventions to CRTC Application 2016-1170-8". Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. 2016-12-02. Retrieved 2016-12-03.
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