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WNYE-TV, channel 25, is an independent, non-commercial television station located in New York City. WNYE-TV is part of the NYC Media Group with studios in Manhattan. Its transmitter is located at the Empire State Building.
History
WNYE-TV first signed-on-the-air on April 3, 1967. The station's original licensee was the New York City Board (now Department) of Education, and it was co-owned with WNYE-FM (91.5 MHz.). It was New York's second educational television station, but it operated with the city's original noncommercial license. Four and-a-half years earlier, through the approval of the Federal Communications Commission, the Educational Broadcasting Corporation converted Newark, New Jersey-based commercial independent WNTA-TV (channel 13) into noncommercial WNDT, which would become New York's main educational outlet.
While WNDT (now WNET) was affiliated with National Educational Television, WNYE-TV was primarily focused on providing instructional programming that could be used in classrooms. In its early years, channel 25's programming hours were exclusively limited to school hours (roughly from 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on weekdays), with limited programming on weekends and during the summer. The operational hours were extended gradually during the 1970s, as the station began to add programming from the Public Broadcasting Service to its schedule.
The instructional/PBS format would carry WNYE-TV through its first three and-a-half decades of service. Along with the instructional shows, channel 25 aired programs that focused on the individual school districts located within the Board of Education, featuring participation from students as well as educators. Some titles included: District 2 Schoolvision, District 6 Speaks, District 9 at a Glance, District 10 Presents, and Bronx High School Magazine. As the station's on-air hours increased, ethnic, foreign-language programming (from outside producers) was also added to the schedule. By the middle 1990s, more (second-hand) PBS and other instructional shows replaced the local school district programs, and when WNYC-TV (channel 31, now WPXN-TV) was sold by the City of New York in 1996, WNYE-TV picked up additional hours of ethnic programs that were previously aired on WNYC-TV.
In December 2004, the Department of Education transferred the licenses of the WNYE stations to the New York City Dept. of Information Technology and Telecommunications. The transfer integrated WNYE-FM-TV's operations with those of the city-owned cable television services CUNY-TV and Crosswalks Television Network, combining them to form the NYC Media Group. A few months prior to the transfer, the NYC Media Group began replacing WNYE-TV's PBS and instructional programs with locally-themed programming, and within the next year all educational shows were completely gone. Today, as "NYC-TV 25", WNYE-TV's offerings range from shows distributed by American Public Television, various ethnic programs, and (as of 2006) a primetime lineup comprised of "hip" shows aimed at a young, affluent urban audience. These shows, most of which are produced by the NYC Media Group, include NY 360, Cool in Your Code, Full Frontal Fashion, The Bridge, Inside the Archives, and Eat Out NY.
With the format change, WNYE-FM and Television also moved from its longtime studio home in downtown Brooklyn, in a building located between a high school and New York City College of Technology (a branch of the City University of New York). The WNYE stations now operate from the NYC Media Group's headquarters in lower Manhattan.
References
"WNYE-TV"