WRND-TV

For the unrelated radio station in Oak Grove, Kentucky, see WRND-FM.
WRND-TV, virtual and UHF digital channel 41, was a Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) member television station licensed to Richmond, Indiana, United States. It was owned by Indiana University East for most of its existence, and its transmitter was located just off Interstate 70 near its intersection with U.S. Route 27 on the north side of Richmond, a couple miles west of the state line with Ohio. Branded on-air as Ohioana PBS, the station was initially successful in its broadcast operations as a PBS member station, however found itself facing increased competition from PBS affiliates WPTD in Dayton, Ohio and WIPB in Muncie, Indiana, and its market share gradually dwindled in the early to mid 2000s.
The station's decline was further accelerated by the digital switchover in 2009, with IU East being unable to provide funding to WRND to provide programming of a similar quality to WPTD and WIPB. Many cable headends in eastern Indiana and western Ohio which had previously used WRND as their PBS affiliate switched to WPTD and WIPB in the early 2010s, and by 2014 not even the Comcast/Xfinity headend for Richmond itself had provided WRND for PBS programming, instead providing WPTD. By 2017, the continued operation of WRND was seen as unprofitable and unsustainable, and IU East announced that it would no longer provide financial support to the station starting January 1, 2018.
The managers of WRND attempted to break a deal with Daystar Television Network to continue the channel's operation as a Daystar affiliate, however Daystar would withdraw from the deal unexpectedly on December 22, 2017. Shortly after, the management of WRND announced that the channel would cease operations indefinitely on January 1, 2018. The channel went dark at 7:30 am EST on January 1, and its license was surrendered to the FCC and deleted on October 3, 2018, after multiple failed attempts to find a buyer for the channel.
== Technical information ==
===Subchannels===
The station's digital signal was multiplexed, allowing for the signal of Channel 41 to be split into 6 separate subchannels.
Channel	Video	Aspect	Short name	Programming
41.1 	720p 	16:9 	WRND-DT 	Main WRND programming / PBS
41.2 	480i 	4:3 	WRND-D2 	Create (6 a.m.-8 p.m.)/Off-air (8 p.m.-6 a.m.)
41.3 	480i 	4:3 	WRND-D3 	PBS Kids
41.4 	480i 	4:3 	WRND-D4 	Richmond Now (12 p.m.-8 p.m.)/Off-air (8 p.m.-12 p.m.)
41.5 	480i 	4:3 	WRND-D5 	Weather radar and audio simulcast of NOAA Weather Radio
41.6 	480i 	4:3 	WRND-D6 	Blank, was reserved for World prior to channel closure
=== Analog-to-digital conversion ===
WRND first began broadcasting in digital on July 14, 2004, and began gradually upgrading its equipment to that designed for primarily digital transmission. WRND shut down analog operations on its main channel on June 12, 2009, in line with the deadline set by the United States Congress, however would maintain analog broadcasts through several low-power transmitters through February 2013, making it one of the last PBS affiliates to broadcast in analog.
WRND's digital transmissions were at a substantially lower power than their analog transmission, leading to WRND losing nearly half of its broadcast area compared to before the conversion. The botched nature of WRND's transition to all-digital broadcasting is generally credited with having played a large role in its downfall, as many areas which once relied on WRND as their only PBS affiliate had now found themselves within either WIPB or WPTD's area over free-to-air television as opposed to WRND.
Category:Indiana
Category:Defunct
Category:PBS member stations