W17EY-D
Television station in Charlotte, North Carolina
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
W17EY-D (channel 16) is a low-power television station in Charlotte, North Carolina, United States, affiliated with Estrella TV and owned by Norsan Media. The station broadcasts from studios on East Independence Boulevard and a transmitter near Reedy Creek Park in the Newell section of Charlotte.
- 16.1: Estrella TV
- for others, see § Subchannels
- Norsan Media
- (Norsan Consulting and Management, LLC)
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| History | |
First air date | March 1, 1985 |
Former call signs |
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| Technical information[1] | |
Licensing authority | FCC |
| Facility ID | 67967 |
| Class | LD |
| ERP | 15 kW |
| HAAT | 187 m (614 ft) |
| Transmitter coordinates | 35°15′7″N 80°41′11″W |
| Links | |
Public license information | LMS |
History
Satellite Entertainment Network, Inc., won the right to build low-power channel 68 in Charlotte in a lottery in May 1984.[2] The win was a surprise to company president George Stein, who found out when a reporter contacted him seeking comment.[3] On March 1, 1985, this station began broadcasting as W68BL on channel 68.[4] It broadcast from an antenna atop Charlotte's First Union Plaza.[5] W68BL offered Premiere, a subscription television service available with the rental of a decoder and a monthly subscription. It was a major bust and folded a month later, after a reported $1 million investment.[4]
W68BL was out of service for three months until returning with programs from the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN). TBN simultaneously filed to acquire the license from Satellite Entertainment Network.[6] The station moved in the late 1990s to channel 52 as W52CW and relocated again in 2004 to channel 16.[7]
Regal Media purchased 36 TBN translators in 2012. Norsan Consulting and Management purchased W16CF from Regal Media in 2013 to add to its complement of Hispanic-oriented radio stations in the market.[8] the station went back on the air on October 23, 2014, in digital as an affiliate of Estrella TV. It was the first Spanish-language TV station in Charlotte, joined in 2017 by a Telemundo subchannel of WSOC-TV.[9]
Norsan's Estrella TV stations in Charlotte; Charleston, South Carolina; and Jacksonville, Florida, share an evening news program.[10]
On February 23, 2026, an FCC rule change required stations licensed as broadcast translators and not low-power TV stations, including this one, to be assigned translator-type call signs. As a result, this station was changed to W17EY-D.[11]
