WQED-TV takes over WBPA-LD

Alert reader Scott checked in Saturday morning with a question to the whereabouts of WBPA-LD (digital channel 12). WBPA started out as W29AH in 1989 and has been owned by Venture Technologies ever since. My initial response to Scott was one of a simple “I dunno”. That was until yesterday. As I was flipping through channels and saw something on Channel “13”, I saw the legal ID as “WQED-TV/WBPA-LD Pittsburgh”. Both stations broadcast from the same tower (belonging to WQED) in Oakland

“Aha!” I responded to Scott immediately and told him of my finding.

Scott now receives an honorary position as Deputy Cub Reporter here at PBRTV. He acted as a sleuth this morning when he found the announcement from this past Thursday with scanty details.

The note confirms many over-the-air viewers had issues since the station shifted its frequency in 2019. As we reported a few weeks ago, the FCC approved the stations request to go back to its full power (effectively tripling the output by more than 3 times). This after dealing with a reported frequency overlap with a station in Ohio (which the note fails to mention).

“To reach even more homes,” the note says, “we’ve just taken over another, higher-frequency channel. Depending on where you live, you may see two listings for 13.1 PBS, 13.2 Create, 13.3 World, and so on – simply choose the one that comes in strongest.”

Of course, rescan your TV… yadda… yadda…

No word on what will happen to all of the programming the digital station carried.