WSRE


WSRE, virtual channel 23, is a Public Broadcasting Service member television station licensed to Pensacola, Florida, United States. The station is owned by Pensacola State College. WSRE's studios are located at the Kugelman Center for Telecommunications on the Pensacola State main campus, and its transmitter is located near Robertsdale, Alabama.

Production facilities

WSRE is licensed to the Board of Trustees of Pensacola State College, and operates as a department of the college affiliated with the Public Broadcasting Service. A foundation established in 1990 administers its finances.
WSRE's studios are located at the Kugelman Center for Telecommunications at PSC's main campus in Pensacola, Florida. There are several studios. The Jean & Paul Amos Performance Studio is a fully featured television soundstage offering stadium-style seating, which is retractable to allow for more soundstage space. Studio B provides the same technical capabilities but with moderate floor space not designed for a live audience. Most of the station's local programming is produced in Studio B. Studio C is a smaller studio which is almost exclusively used for television programs and segments designed for satellite uplinks. MSNBC's Scarborough Country was often produced in Studio C when former representative Joe Scarborough was in Pensacola.

Digital television

Digital channels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:
ChannelVideoAspectPSIP Short NameProgramming
23.11080iWSRE-HDMain WSRE programming / PBS
23.2480iWSRE-2World
23.3480iWSRE-3The Florida Channel
Create
23.4480iWSRE-4PBS Kids

Analog-to-digital conversion

WSRE discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over UHF channel 23, on February 17, 2009, in compliance with the transition from analog to digital broadcasts in the United States. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 31. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as channel 23.
The analog close-down was marked with a special retrospective, featuring portions of the previous WSRE sign-offs and sign-ons, an explanation of sign-offs, vintage studio photos and a final farewell; the special was broadcast on both analog and digital signals. After the analog signal closed, the digital transmission went to color bars and signed back on a couple of hours later.
WSRE's analog signal had operated from a transmitter on Fairfield Drive in Pensacola. In 2006, it activated its full-power digital transmitter in Robertsdale, the transmitter site of most stations in the Mobile–Pensacola market. Recently, the station has begun branding itself as a full-market PBS station, claiming to be the only PBS station that provides a full-power signal to the entire market, challenging Alabama Public Television's Mobile outlet, WEIQ.

Local programming

The station produces many local and regional programs, including:
WSRE was the home of the nationally televised French cooking program, Gourmet Cooking, which was hosted by Earl Peyroux. It began as a local program in 1977, and was syndicated on national public television from 1982 to the early 1990s.

WLNE

WLNE was a local educational-access television channel operated by WSRE and targeted towards young children and teachers. The channel's "callsign" was the acronym "Where Learning Never Ends". The channel was only available on Cox Cable channel 19 in Pensacola.
WSRE discontinued WLNE on September 30, 2008, because the Annenberg Foundation discontinued its satellite service.