WPBS/WNPI is a non-profit public television station, serving Northern New York and Eastern Ontario, Canada. Our mission is to educate, entertain & inform our two-nation audience through superior local and national content and media engagement in order to enhance the lives of those we serve.

WPBS/WNPI continually strives to be the peoples choice and indispensable resource for broadcast programming and production of outstanding local and national content. WPBS will make great efforts to be renowned as the two-nation link and the voice that connects and cultivates cross-border partnerships and to transcend generations with innovative content through the use of advanced, multi-media technology.

WPBS/WNPI-TV is licensed as St. Lawrence Valley Educational Television Council, Inc. and was founded in 1958 as a non-profit educational corporation established under an absolute Charter from the NYS Board of Regents.

For the first 13 years, the Council produced educational programs that were broadcast by WWNY-TV, a local commercial station. In August 1971, WNPE/WNPI-TV began operation as a public television station. Two transmitters were installed which serve a broadcast area throughout Northern New York and Eastern Ontario. In 1978, the staff and equipment outgrew their facilities on Champion Hill and moved to the existing location on Arsenal Street in Watertown, New York. In September 1998, the FCC granted permission for WNPE to change its call letters to WPBS-DT.

Today, WPBS-DT employs the equivalent of 20 full-time employees. WPBS-DT is the producer of local content and nationally syndicated programs and is widely recognized for it’s children’s programming, which is commercial-free, educational and entertaining.

As part of a Ready To Learn grant program, WPBS-DT conducts workshops, distributes free resources to childcare providers and parental groups and broadcasts over 40 hours each week of educational programming. WPBS hosts five major literacy based events each year reaching thousands of children.

WPBS-DT produces Whiz Quiz, a high school academic quiz programming featuring competitors from among 32 high schools, and in 2001 Whiz Quiz Canada was added for international flavor.

A producer of national programs for PBS stations, WPBS has delighted viewers with Xpedition Outdoors, Fishing Behind the Lines, Painting with Wilson Bickford and the annual Crane Candlelight Concert at SUNY Potsdam. In 2017, WPBS will unveil their new digital platform for content on demand, WPBS ShortFlix.

Since 1958, WPBS-DT has been providing excellence in public media to you, our viewers, with programs of the highest quality – in that they are educational, entertaining, and informational.