WEDQ

WEDQ

Tampa–St. Petersburg, Florida United States
City	Tampa, Florida
Channels	Digital: 13 (VHF), shared with WEDU Virtual: 3.4
Branding	WEDQ PBS
Programming
Affiliations	3.4: PBS 3.5: WEDU PBS Kids 3.6: Create
Ownership
Owner	Florida West Coast Public Broadcasting, Inc.
Sister stations	WEDU
History
First air date	September 11, 1966 (58 years ago) (1966-09-11)
Former call signs	WUSF-TV (1966–2017)
Former channel number(s)	Analog: 16 (UHF, 1966–2009) Digital: 34 (UHF, 2004–2017) Virtual: 16 (until 2017)
Former affiliations	NET (1966–1970)
Technical information[1]
Licensing authority	FCC
Facility ID	69338
ERP	25 kW 38 kW (CP)
HAAT	470.9 m (1,545 ft) 471.9 m (1,548 ft) (CP)
Transmitter coordinates	27°50′51.5″N 82°15′49.4″W / 27.847639°N 82.263722°W / 27.847639; -82.263722
Links
Public license information	Public file LMS

WEDQ (channel 3.4) is a secondary PBS member television station licensed to Tampa, Florida, United States, serving the Tampa Bay area. Owned by Florida West Coast Public Broadcasting, it is a sister station to primary PBS member WEDU (channel 3). The two stations share studios on North Boulevard in Tampa and transmitter facilities in Riverview, Florida.

For most of its history, this license was WUSF-TV (channel 16), which was built by the University of South Florida (USF) in 1966. WUSF served as a secondary educational and public TV station for the Tampa Bay area with an emphasis on college telecourses and how-to programming, with WEDU providing primary PBS service and children's programs. It broadcast from studios on the USF campus, first in the library basement and later in dedicated facilities completed in 2001. Relations between WEDU and WUSF-TV were usually cooperative but occasionally deteriorated.

In 2015, the Federal Communications Commission opened an opportunity for broadcast stations to surrender their spectrum in a reverse auction to clear frequencies for wireless service. The USF Board of Trustees voted to include channel 16 in the auction; in the preceding years, it had routinely lost money, and trustees were skeptical of the continued value of a TV station with a growth in new media technologies. The university sold its spectrum for $18.8 million and ceased broadcasting on October 15, 2017. The broadcast license remained and was sold to Florida West Coast Public Broadcasting, which moved it onto the same channel as WEDU and incorporated WUSF-TV's former subchannels and programming into its offerings as WEDQ.