WXEL-TV
PBS member station in Boynton Beach, Florida / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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WXEL-TV (channel 42) is a PBS member television station licensed to Boynton Beach, Florida, United States, serving the West Palm Beach area. Owned by South Florida PBS, it is a sister station to Miami-based flagship and fellow PBS member WPBT (channel 2) and Class A station WURH-CD (channel 13). The three stations share transmitter facilities on Northwest 199th Street in Andover; WXEL's studios are located on South Congress Avenue in Boynton Beach. WXEL, WPBT, and WURH-CD are also broadcast by a translator in Fort Pierce.[2]
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City | Boynton Beach, Florida |
Channels | |
Branding | South Florida PBS WXEL |
Programming | |
Affiliations | PBS |
Ownership | |
Owner | South Florida PBS, Inc. |
WPBT, WURH-CD | |
History | |
First air date | July 8, 1982; 41 years ago (1982-07-08) (in West Palm Beach; license moved to Boynton Beach in 2018) |
Former call signs |
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Former channel number(s) |
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Call sign meaning | Excellence |
Technical information[1] | |
Licensing authority | FCC |
Facility ID | 61084 |
ERP | 1,000 kW |
HAAT | 306 m (1,004 ft) |
Transmitter coordinates | 25°57′31″N 80°12′43″W |
Translator(s) | W31DC-D Fort Pierce |
Links | |
Public license information | |
Website | www |
The launch of a public television station to serve the West Palm Beach area gained steam in the late 1970s, after the Palm Beach County School Board abandoned its permit for channel 42. A group eventually known as South Florida Public Telecommunications won the construction permit in 1979 after a settlement with WPBT, which long claimed the Palm Beaches as part of its service area and had also sought channel 42. However, the construction process for what eventually launched as WHRS-TV was protracted, primarily by environmental issues with the tower site. WHRS-TV launched on July 8, 1982, and changed its call sign to WXEL-TV at the start of 1985; for its first 25 years, it was co-owned with WHRS (90.7 FM). Originally broadcast from the school board's former instructional television studios, WXEL moved to its present studios in 1990. It was still dwarfed by WPBT, which continued to have more members in Palm Beach County alone than WXEL had total.
In the early 1990s, an employee revolt that resulted in the resignation of the station president was followed by high turnover, a lightning strike on the transmitter, and financial issues. Barry University, a private Catholic institution in Miami Shores, successfully fought proposals forcing it to cede part or all of the WXEL stations to Florida Atlantic University and became the sole owner in 1997. Barry University brought much-needed financial stability and led the digitalization and professionalization of WXEL. However, after a change in president, Barry started what would be an eight-year-long station sale process that ended with the station's president leading a group to buy WXEL-TV.
In 2015, WXEL merged with WPBT, its longtime competitor for viewers and members. The station's spectrum was sold at auction in 2016; as a result, WXEL-TV is broadcast from WPBT's transmitter facility, south of the West Palm Beach market.