WNYI

WNYI

Ithaca/Syracuse, New York United States
Channels	Digital: 20 (UHF Virtual: 52 (PSIP)
Subchannels	52.1 Daystar
Affiliations	Daystar (O&O) (2009–present)
Owner	Daystar (Word of God Fellowship, Inc.)
First air date	2002 (2002)
Call letters' meaning	New York Ithaca
Former channel number(s)	Analog: 52 (UHF, 2002-2009)
Former affiliations	Univision (until 2009)
Transmitter power	60 kW
Height	244 m
Facility ID	34329
Transmitter coordinates
Website	daystar.com

WNYI is a television station in Ithaca, New York, serving the Elmira and Syracuse television markets. The station, now owned by Daystar, had formerly broadcast on analogue UHF channel 52 before going silent in 2009 as a result of the US digital TV transition. WNYI is rebroadcast in Syracuse on WDSS-LP 38.1, a 15,000-Watt low-power digital television station that broadcasts on UHF Channel 38.

History

The original construction permit was issued to "Ithaca 52 Inc." in December 1999, valid for three years, with the first program tests run in late 2002 to meet an FCC deadline. The initial broadcast consisted of 26 kW of color bars from a tower location near Ithaca College.

The station was sold to Caroline Pawley in June 2003 and to Equity in 2004; as a Univisión affiliate it had been fed remotely via satellite from Equity Broadcasting's central automated satellite hub in Little Rock, Arkansas since 2004. WNYI, licensed as a full service station despite its low signal power terrestrially, had applied for must-carry access to Time Warner Cable in Syracuse, New York in May 2005. While Ithaca is nominally in the Syracuse market area, the terrestrial WNYI signal had always been inadequate to reach Syracuse or other communities outside of Ithaca itself. The station had made various applications for an increase in licensed power but no decisions had been made by the Federal Communications Commission on these requests.

WNYI was the only full-service television station in upstate New York to provide Spanish language programming.

At auction on April 16, 2009, Daystar bought WNYI, pending approval by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court. Daystar changed programming to its namesake network. Univision programming briefly moved to WOBX-LP channel 35, formerly a local The Box affiliate, in the Syracue market; it has since switched affiliations to AMGTV, leaving the region (and, for that matter, all of upstate New York with no local Spanish-language television station.. Univision was later restored to Time Warner Cable systems in the area using the network's default national cable feed.

Digital television

While WNYI was available nationally on Galaxy 18 DVB-S satellite television due to its use of the Equity C.A.S.H. centralcasting facility, the station has never had a terrestrial digital signal.

Because it was granted an original construction permit after the FCC finalized the DTV allotment plan on April 21, 1997, the station did not receive a companion channel for a digital television station. Instead, at the end of the digital TV conversion period for full-service stations, WNYI would be required to turn off its analog signal and turn on its digital signal on another channel (called a "flash-cut"). WNYI planned to move to channel 20. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 52, which was among the high band UHF channels (52-69) that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition.

Both the ability of WNYI to transition to digital and its ability to continue broadcasting were directly jeopardized as on December 8, 2008, the licensee's parent corporation filed a petition for bankruptcy relief under chapter 11 of the federal bankruptcy code, case #4:08-BK-17646-M, US district court for the district of Arkansas, notifying the FCC that "This station must obtain post-petition financing and court approval before digital facilities may be constructed. The station must cease analogue broadcasting on (the end of DTV transition in) 2009, regardless of whether digital facilities are operational by that date. The station will file authority to remain silent if so required by the FCC."

While the DTV Delay Act extended this deadline to June 12, 2009, Equity had applied for an extension of the digital construction permit in order to retain the broadcast license after the station went dark. WNYI could not continue analogue operations as it was a full service station on a frequency which is to be reallocated for non-broadcast use at the end of the digital television transition.

On June 12, 2009 a license to cover was granted to Word of God Fellowship for WNYI by the FCC. That firm was required to construct digital television facilities on an in-core frequency before WNYI could be returned to the air, which needed to occur before June 12, 2010, lest the license be automatically forfeited to the FCC. On the weekend of May 22–23, WNYI commenced digital broadcasts on channel 20, within weeks of its license deadline.

External links

• Query the FCC's TV station database for WNYI
• BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on WNYI-TV