WGVU-TV (channel 35) is a PBS member television station in Grand Rapids, Michigan, United States. It operates a full-time satellite station, WGVK (channel 52) in Kalamazoo. The two stations are owned by Grand Valley State University, and maintain studios in the Meijer Public Broadcast Center, located in the Eberhard Center on the GVSU Pew Campus in downtown Grand Rapids. WGVU's transmitter is located near the GVSU main campus in Allendale, while WGVK's transmitter is based in Kalamazoo's Westwood neighborhood.

History

The station signed on the air on December 17, 1972, as WGVC, owned by what was then Grand Valley State College. Channel 35 originally operated from the basement of Manitou Hall on GVSC's Allendale campus. WGVC's signal was somewhat marginal in the southern portion of the vast West Michigan market (Kalamazoo and Battle Creek). It must conform its signal to protect fellow PBS member WNIT in South Bend, Indiana, on adjacent channel 34. In much of this area, WGVC could only be seen on cable. This was very similar to what the area's main ABC affiliate, WZZM-TV (channel 13), faced due to the presence of WTVG in Toledo, Ohio. To make up for this shortfall in coverage, Grand Valley State signed on WGVK as a satellite station in 1984. In 1986, the station relocated to its current studio facility at the Meijer Public Broadcast Center. The station's callsign was changed to WGVU-TV in 1987, when Grand Valley State was elevated to university status.

Programming

WGVU produces numerous local programs. It also carries national shows from PBS, American Public Television, and the National Educational Telecommunications Association. NPR and PRX programming heard on WGVU-FM is aired on the fifth digital subchannel's SAP channel.

Weekly

Specials

Documentaries

Notable documentaries produced by WGVU include LZ Michigan (A "Landing Zone" to Remember, Honor, and Celebrate our Community's Veterans and Their Families), Time and Chance: Gerald Ford's Appointment with History, Surviving Auschwitz: Children of the Shoah and Defying Hitler.

Technical information

Subchannels

The stations' signals are multiplexed:

Analog-to-digital conversion

Both stations shut down their analog signals respectively, on June 12, 2009, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television: