| Coordinates | 44°56′38.76″N93°05| longs = 34.08′6.72″N |
|---|---|
| Call letters | WGBH-TV |
| Station logo | |
| Station slogan | Produced in Boston, Shared with the World |
| Station branding | 'GBH 2 (general)WGBH Boston (national productions) |
| Digital | 19 (UHF)Virtual: 2 (PSIP) |
| Subchannels | 2.1 PBS HD2.2 PBS SD |
| Affiliations | PBS |
| Airdate | May 2, 1955 |
| Location | Boston, Massachusetts |
| Callsign meaning | Great Blue Hill — see below |
| Former channel numbers | Analog:2 (VHF, 1955-2009) |
| Owner | WGBH Educational Foundation |
| Sister stations | WGBH, WGBX-TV, WCAI, WNAN, WCRB, WGBY |
| Former affiliations | NET (1955-1970) |
| Effective radiated power | 700 kW |
| Haat | 374 m |
| Facility id | 72099 |
| Coordinates | | |
WGBH is a non-commercial television and radio broadcast service located in Boston, Massachusetts. WGBH is a member station of the Public Broadcasting Service, and produces more than two-thirds of PBS's national primetime programming. Programs produced for PBS include Masterpiece, NOVA, Frontline, American Experience, The Victory Garden and This Old House. WGBH is also well-known for having co-produced numerous period dramas and has collaborated for years with British production companies.
WGBH operates several radio and television stations in Boston and the surrounding area, including sister stations WGBX-TV (Boston) and WGBY-TV (Springfield), and the radio stations WGBH, WCAI, WZAI, WNAN, and WCRB.
WGBH is also considered a leader in accessible media services for people who are deaf, hard-of-hearing, blind, or visually impaired. WGBH invented television closed captioning, audio description (Descriptive Video Service), and created the Rear Window Captioning System for films they provide these access services to commercial and public TV producers, and to home video, Web sites, and movie theaters nationwide.
WGBH Educational Foundation received its first broadcasting license (for radio) 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 manufacturer John Lowell, Jr. calling for free public lectures for the citizens of Boston.
WGBH Radio Boston signed on at 89.7 MHz FM on October 6, 1951, with a live broadcast of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
The original construction permit for Channel 2 in Boston went to Raytheon, an electronics company based in neighboring Waltham, Massachusetts, who would have launched a commercial television station under the call letters WRTB-TV (for Raytheon Television Broadcasting). WRTB never made it on the air, opening the way for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to allocate Channel 2 for noncommercial purposes and for WGBH to receive a license to operate on that channel.
WGBH-TV Channel 2 went on the air on May 2, 1955, at 5:20 p.m. with studios located at 84 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge. When a fire destroyed the studios in the early morning hours of October 14, 1961, WGBH-TV Channel 2 and WGBH 89.7 FM signed on from the studios of other broadcasting stations until they were able to build their new studios located at 125 Western Avenue in Allston, and sign on there on August 29, 1963. WGBH moved to a new studio complex on Guest Street in Brighton in June 2007.
WGBH was New England's first non-commercial television station and a pioneer in what is now known as Public Television. Many programs seen on National Educational Television and later, the Public Broadcasting Service, originated at the facilities of WGBH or were otherwise produced by the station.
Today WGBH is known around the U.S. as PBS's flagship station due to its great production for PBS primetime programming and PBS Kids programming.
As of November 8, 2009, WGBH is now running on cable TV with the following cable services. (Boston metropolitan area ONLY) They are: RCN (Channels 2, 14, 93, 94, 95, and 602. (Channel 3 for Boston area ONLY) Comcast (Channels 2, 16, 209, 217, 237, and 802. (Channel 22 for Boston area ONLY) Verizon Fios (Channels 2, 44, 470-474, and 502.)
WGBH operates a Shaw Broadcast Services satellite uplink facility which provides Boston broadcast television stations to Canadian cable and satellite TV distributors. As a Canadian company, Shaw is not legally entitled to operate an uplink facility in the United States. Hence, it pays WGBH to perform this service on its behalf. This facility is also located at the CBS (WBZ-TV) tower in Needham. Other people call the WGBH logo the flsh of doom.
As WGBH's operations grew, the 125 Western Avenue building proved inadequate; some administrative operations were moved across the street to 114 Western Avenue, with an overhead pedestrian bridge connecting the two buildings. By 2005, WGBH had facilities in more than a dozen buildings in the Allston area. The station's need for more studio space dovetailed with Harvard Business School's desire to expand its adjacent campus; Harvard already owned the land on which the WGBH studios were located. WGBH built a new studio complex, designed by James Polshek & Partners, in nearby Brighton, spanning the block of Market Street from Guest Street to North Beacon Street, with radio studios facing pedestrian traffic on Market Street. The postal address and lobby entrance of the new studio building is 1 Guest Street; it was inaugurated in June 2007. Television shows and radio programs continued to shoot at the Western Avenue studios until migration to the new facility reached completion in September 2007. The old Western Avenue studios are currently empty except for a substation of the Harvard University police department which moved in in June 2008.
WGBH's callsign is occasionally jokingly expanded as "God Bless Harvard", although the station's connections with the university are at best indirect. (Harvard was one of several Boston-area universities which took part in the Lowell Institute Cooperative Broadcasting Council, and provided land on Western Avenue in Allston for the station's studios.)
The music is also used in the current ID. The "circle outline" ident, featuring two little lights forming the WGBH logo in orange began in late 1977 at the beginning of WGBH's national shows. Its jagged electronic tune and dark neon lighting had been reported to have frightened younger viewers, (indeed, many people who viewed this logo as children recollect how they feared it) and in wake of this, was shortened to just the latter part of the animation in 1986, and eventually to the end of shows in 1993, when the sound effect was shortened to conform to PBS's desire for shorter station ID's. It is also edited out on some shows with a program's closing credits music playing over the WGBH Boston production card, such as on Arthur and Between the Lions.
The full seven-second music appears in the "neon" station IDs on WGBH itself, along with different animation for the outline logo; one version features the 1977-style version flashing out to reveal the PBS logo, while the other features the outline done at first from the point of view of the tracing line, then zooming out to reveal the 'WGBH' logo rendered as a neon sign with the matching numeral 2 illuminating in white from behind.
Many programs produced today have a voiceover stating, "Produced in Boston...shared with the world."
Beginning in 2002, a series of WGBH promotional announcements began airing that feature the station's "spokesnumeral", the 2 Guy. The character, portrayed by actor and comedian Brian Frates, is an affable, quick-witted figure with a royal blue torso shaped like WGBH's iconic "2" logo. The 2 Guy engages in improvisational man-on-the-street interviews with WGBH viewers, as well as pre-written, narrative pieces. Since 2008, the 2 Guy has also served as a co-host of the station's annual WGBH Auction broadcast.
WGBH also owns and manages WGBY, the PBS affiliate in the Springfield, Massachusetts market; it however has its own branding and logo and is run separately from the Boston operation. Its digital channel carries similar programming to WGBX.
At one point, WGBH operated a Hyannis translator on channel 8 that had the W08CH call sign, which later ceased operations. It was deleted by the FCC in 2004.
Formerly WGBH HD showed a separate slate of programming from the analog channel to showcase PBS's high definition content; however, in 2008 it switched to a high-definition simulcast of the analog channel, with standard-definition programming presented in windowbox or letterbox format.
WGBH now exclusively broadcasts a digital signal on UHF channel 19, retaining its Channel 2 branding and mapping on digital tuners as virtual channel 2 via PSIP technology. After the June 12, 2009 transition to digital TV mandated by the FCC, WGBH's analog signal broadcast nightlight service information at a lower power before permanently ceasing transmission. Eventually the channel 2 frequency (54-60 megahertz) will be available for other uses.
In early 2010, the station became the first mobile DTV provider in the Boston area. It transmits two free-to-air channels using the ATSC-M/H standard.
WGBH alum maintain a website where stories and photographs can be shared. Occasional reunions are held, including ones in 2000 and 2006.
Category:PBS member stations Category:Culture of Boston, Massachusetts Category:Peabody Award winners Category:Television stations in Massachusetts Category:DuPont-Columbia Award recipients Category:Cultural history of Boston, Massachusetts Category:Channel 19 digital TV stations in the United States Category:Channel 2 virtual TV stations in the United States Category:Television channels and stations established in 1955
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
| Coordinates | 44°56′38.76″N93°05| longs = 34.08′6.72″N |
|---|---|
| Name | Andre Dubus II |
| Birthdate | August 11, 1936 |
| Birthplace | Lake Charles, Louisiana, United States |
| Deathdate | February 24, 1999 |
| Deathplace | Haverhill, Massachusetts, United States |
| Occupation | short story writer, novelist, teacher |
| Period | 1967-1998 |
| Genre | Literary fiction |
| Nationality | American |
| Influences | Anton Chekhov, Ernest Hemingway, John Cheever, Richard Yates |
| Influenced | Raymond Carver, Richard Ford, Tobias Wolff, Andre Dubus III, Jay Sheckley, Jhumpa Lahiri |
Andre Dubus, II (August 11, 1936 - February 24, 1999) was an American short story writer, essayist, and autobiographer. He is recognized as one of the best American short-story writers in the 20th century.
Dubus experienced a personal tragedy late on the night of July 23, 1986, when he was seriously injured in a car accident. He was driving from Boston to his home in Haverhill, Massachusetts, and he stopped to assist two disabled motorists—brother and sister Luis and Luz Santiago. As Dubus assisted the injured Luz to the side of the highway, an oncoming car swerved and hit them. Luis was killed instantly; Luz survived because Dubus had pushed her out of the way. Dubus himself was critically injured. As a result of the accident, both Dubus's legs were crushed. His left leg had to be amputated above the knee, and Dubus would eventually lose the use of his right leg. Dubus would spend three painful years undergoing a series of operations, and extensive physical therapy. Despite his efforts to walk with a prosthesis, chronic infections confined him to a wheelchair for the remainder of his life. Dubus continued to battle the pain imposed by his condition, and with clinical depression. Over the course of these struggles Dubus's third wife left him, taking with her their two young daughters.
Dubus also found a deeper religious faith at this time. A practicing Catholic all his life, Dubus found that the loss of his mobility drew him closer to God, and renewed his Catholic faith at a deeper level.
Dubus spent his later years in Haverhill, until his death from a heart attack in 1999, at age 62. He is buried in Greenwood Cemetery, near where he lived, in Haverhill, Massachusetts. He married three times, and fathered six children. His son Andre Dubus III is also an author, whose most noteworthy book is the novel House of Sand and Fog (1999), both a finalist for the National Book Award and basis for the Academy award nominated film of the same title.
Dubus's collections include: Separate Flights (1975), Adultery and Other Choices (1977), Finding a Girl in America (1980), The Times Are Never So Bad (1983), Voices from the Moon (1984), The Last Worthless Evening (1986), Selected Stories (1988), Broken Vessels (1991), Dancing After Hours (1996), and Meditations from a Movable Chair (1998). His writing awards include the PEN/Malamud, the Rea Award for the Short Story for excellence in short fiction, the Jean Stein Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations. Several writing awards are named after Dubus. His papers are archived at McNeese State University and Xavier University in Louisiana.
The 2004 movie, We Don't Live Here Anymore is based upon two of Dubus' novellas, "We Don't Live Here Anymore" and "Adultery."
Category:1936 births Category:1999 deaths Category:American short story writers Category:American essayists Category:MacArthur Fellows Category:American memoirists Category:Deaths from myocardial infarction Category:Iowa Writers' Workshop alumni
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
