WYDN


WYDN, virtual channel 48, is a Daystar owned-and-operated television station serving Boston, Massachusetts and Manchester, New Hampshire, United States that is licensed to Lowell, Massachusetts. The station is owned by the Educational Public TV Corporation, a subsidiary of Daystar sister company Word of God Fellowship, Inc. WYDN's studios are located on Sprague Street in Dedham, and it shares transmitter facilities with Concord, New Hampshire-licensed Ion Television owned-and-operated station WPXG-TV on Fort Mountain near Epsom, New Hampshire. On cable, WYDN is available on Comcast Xfinity digital channel 295 and on Verizon FiOS channel 25.

History

The station first signed on the air on May 5, 1999, as an affiliate of Prime Time Christian Broadcasting as a straight simulcast of KMLM in Odessa, Texas. Originally licensed to Worcester, Massachusetts, WYDN operated its analog transmitter atop Asnebumskit Hill in Paxton until the June 12, 2009, digital transition; its digital transmitter operated from the WBZ-TV tower in Needham. By the early 2000s, the station switched to Daystar after it was acquired by its Word of God Fellowship, Inc. licensing subsidiary, and Daystar immediately pushed for successful must-carry carriage from local cable providers.
WYDN sold its frequency rights as part of the Federal Communications Commission 's 2017 spectrum incentive auction and reached a channel sharing agreement with Ion Television O&O WPXG-TV; it began broadcasting from WPXG's transmitter on April 23, 2018. As WPXG's broadcasting radius does not cover Worcester, WYDN changed its city of license to Lowell, Massachusetts.

Digital television

Digital channel

Analog-to-digital conversion

WYDN shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 48, on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal continued to broadcasts on its pre-transition UHF channel 47. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 48.