WCFE-TV
PBS member station in Plattsburgh, New York, United States
WCFE-TV (channel 57) is a PBS member television station licensed to Plattsburgh, New York, United States, serving the Champlain Valley and Greater Montreal areas. Owned by the Mountain Lake Public Telecommunications Council, the station maintains studios at One Sesame Street in Plattsburgh, and its transmitter is located atop Lyon Mountain, between Plattsburgh and nearby Malone. WCFE-TV is branded as Mountain Lake PBS; this name was adopted to reflect Plattsburgh's location between the Adirondacks and Lake Champlain.
WCFE-TV services northeastern New York, most of Vermont, Eastern Ontario, Canada (including Cornwall and parts of Ottawa), and parts of Southern Quebec (including Montreal) on cable, and parts of New Hampshire and northern New York east of Massena on satellite.
History
WCFE-TV signed on March 6, 1977, from its studios at SUNY Plattsburgh. In 1993, it rebranded itself as "Mountain Lake PBS" to reflect its growing viewership.
From 1990 to 1996, WCFE-TV had a sister NPR station, WCFE-FM 91.9. However, in a case of exceptionally bad timing, WCFE-FM signed on just as North Country Public Radio began building a number of satellites and repeaters in the WCFE-TV service area. It did not help matters that much of the area got a strong signal from Vermont Public Radio flagship WVPS in Burlington. It soon became apparent that Plattsburgh was too small for a standalone NPR station to be viable.
“WCFE-TV” enters the record as pBS member station in Plattsburgh, New York, United States. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what WCFE-TV, member and station can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“WCFE-TV” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, WCFE-TV, member and station provides the most credible route into that argument.
Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q657938. VIAF identifies the subject as 122449977. The Library of Congress control number is nr2001027965. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1977, 1993, 1990 and 1996.
A single description cannot reconcile every naming convention, rebuilding phase or administrative transfer associated with a place. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
- Historic place names
- Jurisdictional context
- Routes into maps and plans
Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “WCFE-TV”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow WCFE-TV primary sources, WCFE-TV archive and WCFE-TV research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “WCFE-TV”?
- What physical evidence or contemporary plan supports the description?
- Which earlier names or jurisdictions may reveal additional records?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “WCFE-TV” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.