WMAB
WMAB, on air as WMAB-TV, is a public television station licensed to Mississippi State, Mississippi, in the United States. It broadcasts on virtual channel 2 and is a member station of PBS as part of Mississippi Public Broadcasting, or MPB, the statewide public television and radio network owned by the Mississippi Authority for Educational Television. The station's unusual city of licence, Mississippi State, refers to the community around Mississippi State University at Starkville, and WMAB serves the Starkville, Columbus, West Point, and Tupelo area of northeastern Mississippi. It was the second station built in Mississippi's state network, signing on July 4, 1971, and from its transmitter near Ackerman it provides the southern portion of the Tupelo-Columbus market and reaches into the northern part of the Meridian market. WMAB also shares its call sign and transmitter site with WMAB-FM, the MPB radio station for the same area.
Overview and Technical Details
WMAB's virtual channel is 2, the VHF channel it used in the analogue era, and its digital signal is broadcast on VHF channel 8 in current listings. In MPB's station table, WMAB is listed with Federal Communications Commission facility identification 43192, an effective radiated power of 7.6 kilowatts for its digital signal, and a height above average terrain of 350.5 metres, about 1,150 feet. Its transmitter coordinates are 33 degrees 21 minutes 14 seconds north latitude and 89 degrees 9 minutes 0 seconds west longitude. Older sign-off announcements for the network described WMAB operating on VHF channel 2 at 100 kilowatts visual power, with its transmitter located near Ackerman, Mississippi, southwest of Starkville. The station identification used by MPB lists the other cities it serves as Starkville, West Point, and Columbus. A commercial station directory described WMAB as a digital educational full-power station identifying itself simply as MPB, the uniform brand under which all of the network's stations present themselves to viewers.
Sign-On in 1971
WMAB first aired on July 4, 1971. It was the first expansion of Mississippi's educational television service beyond Jackson, where the network's founding station, WMAA, now WMPN-TV, had debuted on February 1, 1970. Six further stations began operation over the years after WMAA, and WMAB was the earliest of them, preceding the Biloxi, Bude, and Meridian stations that followed in January 1972, the Greenwood and Oxford stations later in 1972, and the Booneville station in 1974. The choice of Mississippi State as a licence community placed the network's second transmitter beside one of the state's major universities, in a part of northeastern Mississippi that had previously had no in-state educational television signal at all. Like its sister stations, WMAB added the -TV suffix to its call sign on February 1, 1982, the date on which all MPB stations made that change.
Mississippi's Late Start in Public Broadcasting
WMAB's network was a latecomer among state systems. By the late 1960s Mississippi was the only state east of the Mississippi River without an educational television station licensed within its borders; only the northwestern counties, served from Memphis, and the Gulf Coast counties, served from New Orleans and Mobile, could clearly receive an educational or PBS signal. In 1969 the Mississippi Legislature created the Mississippi Authority for Educational Television to build a locally focused service. After almost a year of planning, WMAA in Jackson signed on February 1, 1970, and immediately joined PBS. The young network received unwanted national attention four months later when it refused to carry Sesame Street because of the programme's racially integrated cast, a decision reversed twenty-two days later after a nationwide outcry. The network became known as Mississippi Educational Television, or ETV. Public radio arrived still later, in 1983, eventually expanding to eight stations. On November 20, 2003, the authority adopted Mississippi Public Broadcasting as the umbrella brand for all of its television and radio operations, the name WMAB carries today.
Service to Northeastern Mississippi
MPB's own coverage summary assigns WMAB a defined territory: the southern portion of the Tupelo-Columbus market and the northern portion of the Meridian market. The Tupelo-Columbus-West Point market, in the north of the state, is also served within MPB by WMAE-TV in Booneville, which covers the market's northern portion, so northeastern Mississippi receives the state network from two transmitters, WMAB from Mississippi State in the south of the market and WMAE in the north. WMAB's transmitter near Ackerman, in Choctaw County, sits between Starkville and the communities to the south, positioning its signal across Oktibbeha, Lowndes, Clay, Webster, and neighbouring counties and down toward the Meridian area. MPB television as a whole covers nearly all of Mississippi and parts of Alabama, Tennessee, and Louisiana, and WMAB is the network's contribution to the northeastern quadrant of that map.
Programming Carried by WMAB
WMAB broadcasts the single MPB television schedule: PBS national programming together with educational and instructional programmes produced by the network at its Jackson studios. MPB's productions over the years have included Tomes and Talismans, The Write Channel, The Clyde Frog Show, About Safety, Ticktock Minutes, Zebra Wings, Posie Paints, Project Survival, The Metric System, Media Mania, and Between the Lions. More recently, MPB's educational role through WMAB was visible in MPB Classroom TV, a service of broadcast instruction in school subjects launched on October 5, 2020, during the pandemic, developed with teachers and coaches from the Mississippi Department of Education so that students learning at home could continue to receive direct instruction. Classroom TV was carried statewide on the fifth subchannel of each MPB station, listed for WMAB as channel 2.5 at Mississippi State, and the programmes were also made available on demand through MPB's website and YouTube channel. For families in the Starkville and Columbus area, that service turned WMAB's transmitter into a statewide classroom, in the words of MPB's director of education at the launch.
Digital Television and Subchannels
WMAB's digital signal is multiplexed into five subchannels following the MPB pattern. The first carries PBS in high definition, the second carries PBS Kids, the third carries MPB Create, the fourth carries MPB's radio services, with Think Radio and Music Radio available on its audio tracks, and the fifth carries First Nations Experience. Viewers in northeastern Mississippi receive these as channels 2.1 through 2.5. The fourth subchannel also simulcasts the Radio Reading Service of Mississippi on its secondary audio channel, as MPB's radio stations do on their FM subcarriers. WMAB shut down its analogue signal over VHF channel 2 on February 17, 2009, the original date for the national transition, which was later postponed to June 12, 2009. At the transition its digital signal remained on its pre-transition VHF channel 10 while receivers displayed virtual channel 2; current network listings place its digital operation on VHF channel 8, following later channel changes in the repacking of the broadcast spectrum. The station thus kept the channel 2 identity viewers had known since 1971 while its underlying frequency changed around it.
A Shared Home with MPB Radio
WMAB is unusual among the stations in this network for sharing both its call sign and its site with a radio station. WMAB-FM, on 89.9 MHz, is MPB Radio's outlet for Mississippi State and Starkville, broadcasting with 64,300 watts from a height of 323.5 metres at the same transmitter coordinates as the television station. MPB Radio, which consists of eight stations covering most of Mississippi, airs news and talk programming from NPR and other public radio distributors alongside locally produced shows; its original service is branded Think Radio, and a 24-hour classical service on its second HD channel is branded Music Radio, including the nationally distributed programme Sounds Jewish. Both radio services are also carried on the fourth subchannel of WMAB-TV, so the television transmitter reinforces the radio network in its own area. The co-location at Mississippi State dates from the period when the state built out both networks under the same authority, and it makes the Ackerman-area tower a combined television and radio facility for northeastern Mississippi.
Ownership and Operation
WMAB is owned by the Mississippi Authority for Educational Television, the state agency that holds the licences for all PBS and NPR member stations in Mississippi and operates MPB from its headquarters on Ridgewood Road in northeast Jackson. The network's eight television stations are WMPN-TV in Jackson, WMAH-TV in Biloxi, WMAE-TV in Booneville, WMAU-TV in Bude, WMAO-TV in Greenwood, WMAV-TV in Oxford, WMAW-TV in Meridian, and WMAB itself, and all of them broadcast the same schedule under the MPB name. A planned ninth station at Columbus, authorised in 1998 as a digital-only facility, was never built; its permit expired in 2003, and MPB stated there were no plans or funding to build it, leaving WMAB as the MPB transmitter for the Columbus area from its Mississippi State licence. WMAB has no separate local studio or programming operation; its function, like that of its sister stations, is to distribute the network service produced in Jackson.
WMAB Today
WMAB remains on the air as the MPB and PBS station for Mississippi State, Starkville, Columbus, West Point, and the southern Tupelo-Columbus market, broadcasting on virtual channel 2 with five digital subchannels and sharing its tower with WMAB-FM radio. When MPB ended analogue broadcasting across its network in February 2009, news reports listed the eight stations making the switch, WMAB among them under its Starkville identity, marking the end of the analogue service that had begun on July 4, 1971. More than five decades after it became the second transmitter of a network created because Mississippi had fallen behind every neighbouring state in educational television, WMAB continues to provide northeastern Mississippi with public television, educational broadcasting for schools and homes, and access to the state's public radio services through a single, centrally operated state system.
