WINM


WINM, virtual and VHF digital channel 12, is a TCT owned-and-operated television station serving Fort Wayne, Indiana, United States that is licensed to Angola. The station is owned by Marion, Illinois-based Tri-State Christian Television. WINM's transmitter is located in unincorporated Williams County, Ohio, midway between Butler, Indiana and Edgerton, Ohio. Though most of the city proper is adequately covered by the main signal, WINM's signal is relayed in Fort Wayne on digital translator WEIJ-LD.
The station maintained studios at 3632 Butler Road in Fort Wayne until TCT ended local operations in June 2018.
In Fort Wayne, WINM is available on Comcast Xfinity channel 10, Dish Network channel 63 and Verizon FIOS channel 12. Outside of the Fort Wayne area, WINM is carried on Mediacom channel 11, and on various channels on Charter Spectrum on the Ohio side of the market. The station itself is not available on DirecTV, though TCT's national feed is carried on channel 377.

History

The station first signed on the air as WXJC-TV on April 22, 1983, originally affiliated with the Trinity Broadcasting Network. In 1984, the station's call sign was changed to WBKZ; it was changed again to WINM in 1986, when the station was purchased by Manna for Modern Man Ministries. Quad M Productions, as it was called, was fully owned by Calvary Temple Worship Center and solely run by the family of Paul Paino. The studio facilities were located in the old Calvary Temple location on Clinton Street in Fort Wayne. After encountering financial problems, the station filed for bankruptcy and shut down. The license was purchased in 1991 by Tri-State Christian Television, who began producing their own part-time network feed of religious programming, and began airing it on their owned-and-operated stations. TCT fully disassociated with TBN in April 2007.
On February 27, 2004, the call letters of WINM's Fort Wayne translator, previously W66BD, were changed to W43CF and correspondingly, was moved to UHF channel 43. The repeater later moved to digital channel 38 and had its callsign changed to W38EA-D.

Digital television

Digital channels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:
ChannelVideoAspectPSIP Short NameProgramming
12.1 / 38.1480iWINM-SDMain WINM programming / TCT
12.2 / 38.21080iWINM-HDMain WINM programming / TCT
12.3 / 38.3480i4:3WINM-SD2Light TV

Analog-to-digital conversion

WINM shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 63, on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition VHF channel 12. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers originally displayed the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 63, which was among the high band UHF channels that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition, but remapped it to virtual channel 12 in 2011.