Early history
The Nassau County Board of Supervisors voted on February 14, 1968, to provide funding to set up an educational television station on Long Island, thereby also accessing matching funds from the New York state government.[2] The Long Island Educational Television Council then applied for and, in June, received a construction permit for channel 21 at Garden City.[3] Facilities were established on the campus of Nassau Community College, while a 60-hour broadcast week evenly split between in-school instructional and general cultural offerings was slated.[4] Test programming from Long Island's first TV station was aired beginning on January 14, 1969,[5] with the station still not completely set up and technicians using screwdrivers to adjust audio levels including a series of hearings on the Long Island Rail Road.[6] Official broadcasting did not begin until January 27.[7]
WLIW operated on a very tight budget—so tight that its founding general manager, public television veteran William Pearce, resigned after four months to return to his prior employer, WXXI-TV in Rochester. It lacked a full studio of its own or its own mobile broadcasting equipment, and it spent seven months without a new leader as other public television managers turned down the post.[8] Color telecasts only began with the installation of color video tape machines in December 1972, nearly four years after the station started up.[9] The station finally got studio space when it moved in to the New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) in Westbury in 1974, but that arrangement lasted two years. Station operations were then moved into a mobile van, which some employees claimed was due to a vote by technicians to unionize.[10] As the station investigated studio space at Stony Brook University, it also received federal approval and matching grants to move its transmitter to Plainview and increase power to cover all of Long Island.[11]
A year of major change would mark 1979 for WLIW. In February, the new Plainview transmitter site and studios, at the highest point on Long Island, was activated, significantly improving reception and extending channel 21's reach and capabilities.[12] However, internal strife dominated the second half of the year. Charles R. Bell, who had been general manager since Pearce's departure, accused some of the station's trustees with interfering in programming decisions to further political ambitions and the goals of a political strategy firm which one of them headed.[13] The trustees responded by voting not to renew Bell's contract.[14]
John Wicklein assumed the manager post in February 1980 and sought to give the station an identity independent from that of WNET and additional local programming and support.[15] He was also tasked with erasing a $250,000 deficit from the building programs of the late 1970s that had forced layoffs and program suspensions.[16] When other public television stations in the state visited WLIW, their leaders assessed additional non-financial problems at the station: an acceptance of living in the shadow of WNET and a "defeatist" attitude. Its ability to attract local support was eclipsed by stations serving far fewer people, such as WCFE-TV in Plattsburgh.[17] Wicklein left after three months[18] and soon was replaced by Arthur Gillick of Syracuse.[19] Gillick was able to steady the station's financial picture and restore the lost local programs as a result,[20]
The 1980s would bring expanded coverage for WLIW in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, thanks to increased carriage on cable systems. A station that in 1985 was still trying to recover from its attempt to be a "junior Channel 13" in the eyes of William Renn, a professor at Hofstra University,[22] had by 1990 leaned into its growing reach, with 62 percent of its members coming from outside Long Island and a viewership that put it in the top ten nationally among public TV stations. It also was profitable for the first time in its history.[23] Despite this, political leaders on Long Island continued to clamor for increased local programming.[24] The station also had to fight for its expanded cable carriage after must-carry rules were abolished in 1985. Some cable providers dropped the station citing duplication to WNET and to the station's over-the-air broadcast.[25] Paragon Cable's Manhattan system dropped WLIW in 1987 and replaced it with the Cable Value Network, a home shopping channel, only to restore it weeks later after protests from subscribers.[26]
The early 1990s saw funding cutbacks that once again prompted the cancellation of local productions as the economy took a nosedive; state support of public television declined, and New York state instituted cutbacks across government.[27] This spurred the further evolution of WLIW into a regional service as well as a reduced reliance on PBS programs to differentiate the station from WNET. WLIW was a founder of the Program Resources Group, a 13-station alliance consisting of secondary public TV stations formed to buy programs, and reduced the proportion of PBS programming on its schedule from between 80 and 90 percent to 30 percent while debuting more British programming.[28] In 1998, the station began a 10-year association with the BBC to distribute BBC World News to public television stations in the United States; WLIW had previously offered news from ITN.[29][30]
By 2001, WLIW had an office in Manhattan, at which 15 of its 65 employees worked.[32] It also increased its production efforts to the point that 20 percent of its $11 million budget was attributed to selling its output—including ethnic documentaries such as A Laugh, a Tear, a Mitzvah—to other public TV stations.[33] These were particularly popular for station pledge drives; by the time WLIW and WNET merged in 2003, channel 21 was the leading distributor of such programs, including versions complete with pledge breaks seen nationally, and WLIW manager Terrel Cass attributed the station's continued survival to its foray into national program production.[34] The station also maintained distribution of CNBC's program Louis Rukeyser's Wall Street for public television stations, which ran from 2002 to 2004.[35][36]
Merger with WNET
Stimulated by the impending conversion to digital television and necessary equipment expenditures, as well as a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to explore shared master control functions, WLIW and WNET began engaging in discussions on how to pool primarily technical resources in 2000.[37] At the initial suggestion of WNET,[38] these conversations soon blossomed into outright merger talks, which lasted months as board members expressed reservations over potential changes and the loss of WLIW's Long Island identity.[39][40]
A merger agreement was approved by the WLIW board on July 31, 2001, under which WNET would assume WLIW's operations and eight members of the WLIW board would join WNET's. The move would save WLIW $5 million in digital conversion costs and reduce duplication of shows between the stations, which would "retain their distinct public identities".[41] It also was met with some opposition on Long Island.
