BOULDER, Colo.—The Public Media Venture Group (PMVG) has negotiated a donation of W29EN-D, a low-power television (LPTV) station in Beaufort, South Carolina and has announced that it will construct the station as an ATSC 1.0 facility and provide bandwidth to South Carolina ETV (SCETV) for its groundbreaking educational datacasting services and other public service content.
The station will provide expanded television service to 280,000 people in the Beaufort and Hilton Head regions of South Carolina.
PMVG, which is a nonprofit business development consortium of 33 public media organizations, reached an agreement for the donation of W29EN-D from Lowcountry 34 Media, an LPTV owner based out of Beaufort, South Carolina. The FCC approved the assignment of the station to PMVG as the new licensee on March 28, 2022. PMVG will act quickly to build this station since, according to a limitation on the station’s authorization, it must begin on-air broadcast service by August 2022, the consortium said.
The FCC has also approved the assignment of LPTV station W35DZ-D in Cookeville, TN, to PMVG from Lowcountry34. PMVG will build that station in conjunction with local public television station WCTE.
Once built, the two new stations will bring new broadcast assets with combined market values of nearly $1 million to PMVG and public television.
"PMVG is thrilled to coordinate and close on the donation of these stations to benefit WCTE and SCETV," said PMVG CEO Marc Hand. “The additional broadcast capacity will enable these two leading public television organizations to better serve their communities, an outcome that exemplifies our purpose and value as an organization."
“SCETV always seeks to find ways to best utilize our resources and to expand services to our local communities,” said SCETV president & CEO Anthony Padgett. “This could potentially be one of those opportunities. PMVG continues to be an innovative partner for SCETV and public media. We are excited to continue to explore the benefits associated with this license and as appropriate seek ways to leverage this opportunity to benefit the region and extend our services through datacasting.”
"Our company helps broadcasters achieve the highest and best use of their license assets," said Jeff Winemiller, owner and general manager of Lowcountry 34 Media. "Our partnership with public television has brought important resources to communities in Tennessee, South Carolina, and Pennsylvania. We're proud to be working with the Public Media Venture Group to advance the important service that public television stations provide.”
Lowcountry 34 Media LLC is a broadcast engineering firm building infrastructure to support both LPTV and full-power stations nationwide. Lowcountry 34 Media owns 80 LPTV CPs in 27 states.
