WENH-TV: The Flagship of New Hampshire PBS
WENH-TV, channel 11, is the flagship station of New Hampshire PBS, the public television service for the state of New Hampshire. Licensed to Durham, the station is operated by New Hampshire Public Broadcasting, a community-based nonprofit organization that holds the licenses to all of the PBS member stations licensed in the state. Its studios are located at the NHPBS Broadcast Center on Mast Road in Durham, just outside the campus of the University of New Hampshire.
WENH signed on in 1959, making it one of the pioneering educational television stations in New England. From a single VHF transmitter in Durham, the service grew into a statewide network with satellite stations in Keene and Littleton and translators reaching New Hampshire's North Country. For more than six decades, WENH has been the originating station for public television in New Hampshire: first as the New Hampshire Network, then for decades as New Hampshire Public Television, and since 2017 under the New Hampshire PBS name.
The station's programming combines the PBS national schedule with productions rooted in New Hampshire life — its landscapes, its history, its politics and its communities. Its stated slogan in its nonprofit era captures that mission: "Engaging minds. Connecting Communities. Celebrating New Hampshire."
Overview
WENH broadcasts on virtual channel 11, the VHF position it has occupied since its first day on the air. In the digital era the station's signal carries a multiplex of program services: the main PBS channel, NH Explore, World, Create and PBS Kids — five free over-the-air channels in all. That multiplex is the modern expression of what WENH has always been: an educational broadcaster using one license to serve many audiences, from preschool children to viewers of documentary, lifestyle and world programming.
As the flagship, WENH originates the service that its sister stations relay. WEKW-TV in Keene and WLED-TV in Littleton operate as satellites of WENH, extending the signal into the southwest and north of the state, and low-power translators fill in coverage in places such as Pittsburg and Hanover.
History
On July 6, 1959, the University of New Hampshire signed on WENH-TV, VHF channel 11, as the first educational television station in New Hampshire and one of the first educational stations in New England outside Boston. The operation was named the New Hampshire Network. In the late 1960s, several UHF satellite stations and translators signed on in northern and western New Hampshire, including stations in Hanover in 1968 and Berlin in 1969, as the network pushed toward statewide coverage.
The service adopted the name New Hampshire Public Television in 1976. Initially broadcasting in black and white, NHPTV converted its Durham studio to color in 1972, and the number of locally produced programs increased at that time. The early 1970s saw a burst of local production: The State We're In, a nightly newscast focusing on state issues; A Time for Music, featuring live performances by New England-based musicians; live coverage of most University of New Hampshire men's hockey home games; and Your Time, which gave representatives of nonprofit groups a half-hour of airtime to showcase their organizations. A Time for Music and Your Time — the latter later renamed Public Access 11 — stayed on the air for several years.
The 1981 Budget Crisis
The defining crisis of WENH's first half-century came in 1981. Steep budget cuts forced NHPTV to cancel its nightly news program — The State We're In, by then renamed Channel 11 News, went off the air in July 1981 — and to shut down its satellite transmitters in Hanover and Berlin, reducing service to the western and northern parts of the state.
The recovery was leaner and more inventive. A lower-budget weekly news review, New Hampshire Journal, was launched in place of the nightly newscast. The same year, a feature magazine series titled New Hampshire Crossroads premiered; its original host was Tom Bergeron, who would go on to a long national television career. Crossroads was allowed to go ahead despite the cuts because it had received funding from outside sources, and the UNH men's hockey telecasts continued for the same reason, carried by outside underwriters. Hockey remained a fixture of the schedule for decades, with UNH men's hockey on the network until 2008.
Ownership and Independence
For its first 52 years, WENH was owned by the University of New Hampshire, the institution that had founded it. That changed in 2011, when the service separated from the university and became a community-supported nonprofit organization in its own right, governed by a board of directors. The separation resulted in the loss of state funding, and the network rebuilt its finances around its audience, supported by the donations of roughly 22,000 members.
In 2017 the organization took its present identity. New Hampshire Public Television became New Hampshire PBS on October 1, 2017, and the licensee, New Hampshire Public Broadcasting, operates the service as a community-based organization holding the licenses to all of the state's PBS member stations. The papers documenting the station's first decades — programming files, membership records and board material from 1959 to 1996 — are preserved in the archives of the University of New Hampshire library, a record of its university era.
Affiliation and Programming
WENH is a PBS member station, and the PBS schedule forms the backbone of its broadcast day: national news and public affairs, documentaries, science and nature series, drama, arts programming and the PBS Kids lineup for children. Digital subchannels broaden that offer — NH Explore provides an additional home for PBS and local content, while World, Create and PBS Kids serve documentary, lifestyle and children's audiences around the clock.
Local programming remains a defining part of the mix, in a tradition that runs from the music and public-affairs shows of the 1970s through New Hampshire Crossroads and the weekly journalism that followed Channel 11 News. University of New Hampshire hockey, carried for roughly four decades, embedded the station in the state's sporting life in a way few public stations anywhere have matched.
Market and Audience
Although WENH is licensed to Durham and based in the state's southeast, its mission is statewide, and its audience reflects New Hampshire's geography: the Seacoast, the Merrimack Valley, the Lakes Region, the White Mountains and the North Country. The satellite stations in Keene and Littleton and the translator network exist because New Hampshire's terrain and dispersed population put much of the state beyond the reach of a single transmitter.
Administratively, WENH sits within the Boston–Manchester television market, one of the largest markets in the country, but its identity is distinctly New Hampshire's. It is the only PBS service licensed to and focused on the state, and its local programming addresses New Hampshire communities, institutions and landscapes in a way that Boston-based stations do not.
Technical Details
WENH operates on virtual channel 11, having broadcast from that VHF position since 1959. Its studios and broadcast centre stand at 268 Mast Road in Durham, just outside the University of New Hampshire campus, the institution from which the station sprang. The full-power satellite stations WEKW-TV, Keene, and WLED-TV, Littleton, rebroadcast WENH, and translators extend service further, including into the state's far north. The station's five digital services — PBS, NH Explore, World, Create and PBS Kids — are carried within its single broadcast signal for antenna viewers.
Notable People
The best-known name associated with WENH's local programming is Tom Bergeron, the original host of New Hampshire Crossroads when it premiered in 1981. Bergeron, a Massachusetts native, used the magazine series as an early platform in a broadcasting career that would later make him one of the most familiar hosts in American entertainment television. His presence in the station's history is a reminder that, even in its leanest budget year, NHPTV was producing original local television with talent that would travel far beyond New Hampshire.
Recent Developments
The station's modern era has been shaped by two changes: its 2011 independence from the University of New Hampshire, which converted it into a member-supported community nonprofit, and its 2017 rebranding as New Hampshire PBS. Both moves tightened the station's identity around its state and its audience rather than its founding institution.
Today WENH continues as the flagship of a small statewide network, broadcasting five program services from Durham and relying on the membership model that has sustained it since independence. More than sixty-five years after a university in Durham put New Hampshire's first educational station on the air, channel 11 remains what it was designed to be: New Hampshire's own public television station.
