WIPB
WIPB, virtual channel 49, is a Public Broadcasting Service member television station licensed to Muncie, Indiana, United States. Owned by Ball State University, it is a sister station to National Public Radio member WBST. The two stations share studios at the E. F. Ball Communication Building on the university's campus in northwestern Muncie; WIPB's transmitter is located on County Road 50 in rural southern Delaware County.
On cable, the station is available in standard definition on Comcast Xfinity channel 2 in Muncie and channel 19 in Indianapolis, and in high definition on digital channel 1023 in both cities.
History
UHF channel 49 in Central Indiana
The UHF channel 49 allocation in Central Indiana was originally occupied by WLBC-TV, which signed on the air on June 14, 1953, as a primary CBS affiliate with secondary affiliations with ABC, NBC and DuMont. The station was founded by Don Burton, owner of Muncie radio station WLBC. During the late 1950s, the station was also briefly affiliated with the NTA Film Network. WLBC-TV dropped CBS programming in the early 1960s, becoming a primary NBC and secondary ABC affiliate. Burton expanded the WLBC radio facility on 29th Street in southeast Muncie and constructed a tower outside the building.Although WLBC served as the NBC and ABC affiliates of record for the Muncie area in the 1960s, the city and surrounding areas received at least Grade B signal coverage from television stations out of Indianapolis, located about southwest of Muncie—including NBC affiliate WFBM-TV, and ABC affiliate WLWI-TV —as well as stations from Dayton, about to the east, and Fort Wayne, roughly to the north. To make matters worse, WLBC-TV was hampered by low viewership as only a small percentage of Central Indiana area television sets were even capable of receiving UHF stations since set manufacturers were not required to equip televisions with UHF tuners until the Federal Communications Commission passed the All-Channel Receiver Act in 1961; even then, UHF tuners were not included on all newer sets until 1964 and the retail prices for standalone UHF tuners at the time were high. The station eventually started a news department in the 1960s.
WIPB station history
Burton sold the UHF channel 49 license in 1971 to Eastern Indiana Community Television, a local ad hoc nonprofit group led by Gretchen Huff and Sunny Spurgeon, which had been working to apply for a license to operate an educational television station in Muncie. The group converted it into a non-commercial educational license, and changed the station's call letters to WIPB. Eastern Indiana Community Television subsequently sold the license to Ball State University, which signed on the station on the afternoon of October 31, 1971 as a PBS member station; as part of PBS' Program Differentiation Plan, the network's programming was divided between it and two other PBS members in the Indianapolis market—WFYI and Bloomington-based WTIU ; they were joined in 1992 by WTBU in Indianapolis. WIPB, as a non-commercial outlet, briefly operated a news department during the 1980s, producing a daily newscast titled On-Line 49.Digital television
Digital channels
The station's digital signal is multiplexed:| Channel | Video | Aspect | PSIP Short Name | Programming |
| 49.1 | 720p | WIPB-DT | Main WIPB programming / PBS | |
| 49.2 | 480i | WIPB-D2 | Indiana Channel / Create | |
| 49.3 | 480i | WIPB-D3 | Weather radar and audio simulcast of WBST-FM |
Analog-to-digital conversion
WIPB began broadcasting a digital signal on October 31, 2005. The station shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 49, on February 18, 2009, the day after the original target date for full-power television stations in the United States to transition from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal continued to broadcast on its pre-transition UHF channel 23. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 49.Following the transition, WIPB decommissioned its original East 29th Street tower that formerly occupied its analog transmitter, which was dismantled in January 2013; its digital signal operates from a separate tower located to its south.