WRBU

WRBU

East St. Louis, Illinois/St. Louis, Missouri
Branding	My46
Slogan	Total Variety
Channels	Digital: 47 (UHF) Virtual: 46 (PSIP)
Subchannels	(see article)
Affiliations	MyNetworkTV Me-TV (DT2)
Owner	Roberts Broadcasting Company
First air date	September 11, 1989
Call letters' meaning	Roberts Broadcasting UHF (channel position) or UPN (former affiliation)
Former callsigns	WHSL (1989-2003)
Former channel number(s)	Analog: 46 (UHF, 1989-2009)
Former affiliations	HSN (1989-2003) UPN (2002-2006)
Transmitter power	109.4 kw
Height	318 m
Facility ID	57221
Transmitter coordinates	38°23′18.3″N 90°29′16.6″W
Website	www.my46stl.com

WRBU (virtual channel 46.1, digital channel 47) is the MyNetworkTV television affiliate for the St. Louis, Missouri area. The station is licensed to East St. Louis, Illinois, and is the flagship station of Roberts Broadcasting. It is the only major St. Louis station that is licensed on the Illinois side of the market, though its studios are located in St. Louis.

History

The station debuted on September 11, 1989 as WHSL-TV. It showed the Home Shopping Network 24 hours per day.

WHSL added UPN prime time programming in the Fall of 2002. On April 1, 2003 (3 months after the station adopted the WRBU call sign), the station became a full UPN affiliate and added sitcoms, syndicated talk shows and reality shows to fill out the schedule. Until this switch, St. Louis had been the largest television market without a full UPN affiliate. Prior to channel 46 aligning with UPN, the network had been seen on KPLR-TV after primetime and even earlier on ABC station KDNL-TV also after hours. KPLR previously shared UPN with conservative religious station KNLC-TV, but KNLC turned down most UPN shows that it found offensive.

When CBS Corporation and Time Warner announced in January 2006 that the UPN and WB networks would merge to become The CW, the same announcement stated that Tribune-owned KPLR-TV would be St. Louis' affiliate for the new network. Channel 46 announced they would take the affiliation for the new MyNetworkTV network, which launched in September of the same year.

WRBU's transmitter is located in Jefferson County, Missouri (near Antonia, Missouri) at 38 23 18 North, 90 29 16 West. Antenna Height Above Average Terrain (HAAT) is 345 meters/1132 feet; the antenna structure itself is 250 meters/800 feet above ground level. East St. Louis is the official city-of-license. WRBU's digital signal on Channel 47 has an effective radiated power (ERP) of only 109 kilowatts (kW), making reception problematic over much of the metropolitan area. The station serves as a backup NBC affiliate whenever KSDK pre-empts national programming.

Until March 2010, Roberts Broadcasting did not wholly own WRBU. Although Roberts Broadcasting held the license since 2002, it merely leased the station facility from Univision Communications' TeleFutura subsidiary (this arrangement existed because neither Univision nor TeleFutura had any over-the-air presence at all in St. Louis due to the area's very small Hispanic population). Roberts acquired the station's facility outright from Univision that month.^{[citation needed]}

WRBU is scheduled to air a daily local newscast titled ,"News 46", weekdays at 6:30 PM starting on June 10.

Digital Television

Channel	Video	Aspect	Programming
46.1	480i	4:3	Main WRBU programming / MyNetworkTV
46.2			Me-TV

WRBU added Me-TV in 2011 on 46.2.

Analog-to-digital conversion

WRBU shut down its analog signal on January 21, 2009.^{[citation needed]}

External links

• Official website
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WRBU
• BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on WRBU-TV
• MyNetworkTV