WMUM
WMUM, generally styled WMUM-TV, is a non-commercial educational television station licensed to Cochran, Georgia, in the United States. Broadcasting on virtual channel 29, it is a member station of Georgia Public Broadcasting, the statewide public television and radio service operated by the Georgia Public Telecommunications Commission, and it carries programming from PBS. WMUM serves the geographical center of Georgia, including the city of Macon and the wider Middle Georgia region, from its transmitter in Cochran. The station signed on January 1, 1968, originally as WDCO-TV, and it was the tenth and last public television station established in the state of Georgia, as well as the last television station built and signed on by the state network. Its history contains two distinctions no other station in the network shares: in 1990 it moved from channel 15 to channel 29, the only time a Georgia Public Broadcasting station changed channels before the digital transition, and in 2006 it changed its call sign to honor Mercer University in Macon. Its signal travels in roughly a 40-mile radius from the Cochran transmitter site.
Middle Georgia and the Macon Market
Cochran is a small city in Bleckley County, southeast of Macon, and WMUM's transmitter there was placed to serve the center of the state. Macon is the principal city of Middle Georgia and the market the station exists to serve; network-era identifications paired the two communities as Cochran and Macon, in line with Georgia Public Broadcasting's convention of naming two cities for each station. The station's coverage, about a 40-mile radius from the transmitter, takes in Macon and the surrounding Middle Georgia counties, a region of farms, small cities and the major Air Force installation at Warner Robins, whose presence would later reshape the station's own technical history. For viewers across this territory, WMUM is the over-the-air source of the statewide Georgia Public Broadcasting service, in a market whose commercial stations are all licensed to Macon itself. The television station also has a radio sister at the same site: WMUM-FM on 89.7 FM, the network's Macon-area public radio station, shares its tower with the television station in Cochran.
The Final Station of the Georgia Network
WMUM completed a construction program that had begun at the start of the 1960s. The University of Georgia signed on WGTV in Athens on May 23, 1960, and from 1960 to 1964, in a separate initiative, the Georgia Board of Education launched four educational television stations across the state to provide in-school instruction, an effort that evolved into the Georgia Educational Television Network. Additional stations followed through the middle of the decade, at Waycross, Savannah, Columbus, Wrens, Pelham, Chatsworth and Dawson, until only the center of the state lacked its own transmitter. The Cochran station, signed on at the start of 1968, filled that last gap. Reference works describe it consistently as the tenth and last public television station established in Georgia and the last television station to be built and signed on by the network, a status it still holds: the nine full-power stations of today's Georgia Public Broadcasting are the survivors of that 1960s build-out, and WMUM was the final piece.
Sign-On as WDCO-TV on Channel 15
The station first signed on the air on January 1, 1968, as WDCO-TV, broadcasting on UHF channel 15. Its original call letters honored M. D. Collins, a former Georgia state superintendent of schools, continuing the young network's practice of naming its stations for figures in Georgia education leadership; several of its sister stations carried similar commemorative call signs from the same period. As a Board of Education station, WDCO-TV's original purpose centered on in-school instruction, carrying classes produced by the Board of Education alongside evening programming supplied by the University of Georgia's WGTV. It began as an affiliate of National Educational Television, the national educational service of the era, and became a PBS member station when PBS replaced NET in 1970. In its early identification announcements the station presented itself as Georgia Public Television from historic Cochran, on channel 15, a service of the state telecommunications commission.
Consolidation Into Georgia Public Broadcasting
WDCO-TV's network changed around it in the early 1980s. WGTV had remained a separate University of Georgia station for its first twenty-two years, even while supplying most of the non-instructional programming shown on the state transmitters. In November 1980, Governor George Busbee proposed consolidating WGTV with the state's network into a new Georgia Public Telecommunications Council; the bill stalled in the House of Representatives, but the governor revived the plan by executive order after the legislative session ended. On January 1, 1982, the new council took operational control of WGTV, and the combined service rebranded as Georgia Public Television; by June 1982 WGTV was fully incorporated and the university became a program supplier. The Cochran station passed through this reorganization under its WDCO call letters, emerging as part of the unified statewide service that later took the Georgia Public Broadcasting name. Its license, like those of the other network stations, is held by the Georgia Public Telecommunications Commission.
The 1990 Move From Channel 15 to Channel 29
In 1990 the station undertook the most unusual technical change in the Georgia network's analog history. It moved its signal from UHF channel 15 to UHF channel 29 in order to avoid interference with a United States Department of Defense early-warning ballistic missile detection facility at Robins Air Force Base, the PAVE PAWS radar site near Warner Robins. The change was paid for by the United States Air Force, whose radar operations the channel 15 transmission threatened to disturb. It was the only instance before the 2009 digital transition in which one of Georgia Public Broadcasting's television stations changed its channel frequency, and the station has identified itself as channel 29 ever since, first in analog and now as its virtual channel. The episode tied the station's history directly to Middle Georgia's largest institution: the same Air Force base that anchors the region's economy required its public television station to move, and funded the move itself.
The 2006 Call Sign Change to WMUM
In the summer of 2006 the station changed its call letters from WDCO-TV to WMUM-TV after thirty-eight years. The new call sign stands for Mercer University Macon, and it was adopted in reference to the Macon-based university, reflecting Mercer's involvement in Georgia Public Broadcasting's operations in the Macon market, particularly in radio. The parallel radio station at Cochran, which had signed on in 1984 as WDCO-FM and originally simply simulcast the network's radio service, likewise became WMUM-FM, so that the network's Macon-market television and radio outlets share the Mercer-referencing identity and the same Cochran tower. The change replaced a call sign honoring a state schools superintendent of the 1960s with one honoring a living local institution, a shift that matched the network's deepening partnerships with Georgia universities in the markets it serves.
Programming
WMUM carries the same programming as every other Georgia Public Broadcasting television station. All nine stations in the network air identical schedules on each of their four channels, combining the national PBS lineup of news, documentary, cultural and children's programming with Georgia Public Broadcasting's own productions for Georgia audiences, including public affairs and documentary programs about the state and educational content for Georgia schools. That educational strand descends from the in-school instruction service for which the Cochran transmitter was originally built in 1968, when Board of Education-produced classes filled the school day. The network also operates an extensive public radio service, in which WMUM's Cochran sister station WMUM-FM participates from the same tower site, giving Middle Georgia listeners the network's radio schedule of news, talk and music alongside the television service.
Digital Transition
WMUM was early into digital broadcasting among the network's stations in one respect: it signed on its digital signal, on VHF channel 7, in April 2008, before the analog era ended. Reference sources differ on the analog end date for this station; the detailed station history records that it discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over UHF channel 29, on June 12, 2009, the official date on which full-power stations in the United States completed the federally mandated transition, while network summaries list the Georgia Public Broadcasting stations as shutting down analog on February 17, 2009. In either account, the station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition VHF channel 7 afterward, using program and system information protocol to display virtual channel 29, the number Macon-area viewers had known since 1990. The network deliberately placed most of its stations on VHF after the transition because the lower effective radiated power required there, in the range of tens of kilowatts rather than up to a thousand on UHF, reduces transmitter purchase and electricity costs.
Repack and Technical Information
The spectrum repack that followed the national incentive auction moved WMUM once more. Network listings now show the station broadcasting on RF channel 9 while retaining virtual channel 29. Older technical references for the station record an analog-era effective radiated power of 5,000 kilowatts and digital operation in the range of 22 kilowatts from a height above average terrain of about 369 meters on its VHF facility, together with the facility identification number 23935; a station directory listing describes its current digital educational operation at 136 kilowatts, figures that reflect successive authorized facilities at the Cochran site rather than a single static plant. The transmitter coordinates place the tower at approximately 32 degrees 28 minutes north latitude and 83 degrees 15 minutes west longitude, in Cochran, where the television antenna shares the structure with WMUM-FM. The station's protected service is that of a full-power educational licensee in the Macon market.
Subchannels and Present Service
WMUM's digital signal is divided into the Georgia Public Broadcasting network's four standard streams. Channel 29.1 carries the main GPB and PBS service in high definition. Channel 29.2 carries Create, the lifestyle channel of cooking, travel and how-to programming. Channel 29.3 carries GPB Knowledge, the network's educational and documentary stream presented with World Channel programming. Channel 29.4 carries PBS Kids, the children's service. The network's headquarters and principal production facilities are in Atlanta, and its website is gpb.org. Nearly six decades after it signed on as the last station of the original Georgia educational build-out, WMUM continues its original assignment, carrying a unified statewide public broadcasting service to Macon and Middle Georgia from its tower in Cochran, under call letters that now honor the region's university.
