WGBH is Boston, Massachusetts' longtime public television and public radio station (PBS and NPR affiliates, respectively). WGBH also produces many shows for both networks, including nearly a third of PBS's prime-time TV. WGBH received its first broadcasting license in 1951 under the auspices of the Lowell Institute Cooperative Broadcasting Council, a consortium of local universities and cultural institutions, whose collaboration stems from an 1836 bequest by textile manufacturere John Lowell, Jr. calling for free public lectures for the citizens of Boston.

WGBH is also a leader in services for people who are deaf, hard of hearing, blind, or visually impaired. WGBH invented television closed captioning and the Descriptive Video Service (DVS), and they provide those access services to commercial TV programs as well as public TV, and to home video, web sites, and movie theaters nationwide.

The "GBH" stands for Great Blue Hill, the original location of its transmitter (and not "God Bless Harvard"). Great Blue Hill in Milton, Massachusetts has an elevation of 635 feet and is the highest point in the Boston area. Today, the FM transmitter remains in Milton, and WGBH's TV transmitters are located at the Viacom digital television facility in Needham, Massachusetts.

WGBH operates a CANCOM satellite uplink facility which provides Boston broadcast television stations to Canadian cable and satellite TV distributors. (As a Canadian company, CANCOM is not legally entitled to operate an uplink facility in the United States and so pays WGBH to perform this service on its behalf.) This facility is also located at the Viacom tower in Needham.

WGBH's studios are located on Harvard University property in the Allston neighborhood of Boston. In 2006, WGBH will move to new studios in Boston's Brighton neighborhood.

Channels and digital services

• WGBH-TV 2 Boston (DT 19)
• WGBX-TV 44 Boston (DT 43)
• WGBH World (WGBX-DT and digital cable)
• WGBH Create (WGBX-DT and digital cable)
• 'GBH Kids (WGBX-DT and digital cable)
• WGBH On Demand (digital cable)
• WGBH High Definition (WGBH-DT and digital cable)
• Boston Kids & Family TV (Boston cable)
• WGBY-TV 57 Springfield
• WGBH 89.7 Boston
  • in Nantucket heard on WNCK 89.5
  • in East Cambridge heard on W242AA 96.3
• WCAI 90.1 Woods Hole
• WNAN 91.1 Nantucket

Major WGBH Productions

• American Experience
• Antiques Roadshow
  • Antiques Roadshow FYI
• Arthur
• Between the Lions
• Evening at Pops
• Frontline
  • Frontline/World
• Masterpiece Theatre
• Mystery!
• Nova
  • Nova Science Now
• Peep
• Postcards from Buster
• Simply Ming
• The Victory Garden
• Zoom

Radio

• Says You
• Sound & Spirit
• The World (co-produced with the BBC)

External link

• WGBH (http://www.wgbh.org/)