WPTD
PBS member station in Dayton, Ohio, United States
WPTD (channel 16) is a PBS member television station in Dayton, Ohio, United States, serving the Miami Valley. The station broadcasts from studios at the ThinkTV TeleCenter on South Jefferson Street in downtown Dayton and a transmitter near South Gettysburg Avenue in the Highview Hills neighborhood in southwest Dayton. Its signal is relayed by translator station W25FI-D in Maplewood, Ohio, which broadcasts to Celina, Lima, and Wapakoneta.
WPTD and WPTO (channel 14), licensed to Oxford but primarily broadcasting to greater Cincinnati and providing secondary public TV service in the Dayton and Cincinnati areas, form ThinkTV (stylized as ThinkTV). ThinkTV, legally Greater Dayton Public Television, and WCET in Cincinnati are separate subsidiaries of Public Media Connect; master control for all three stations is located in Dayton.
Channel 16 in Dayton was originally allocated for educational use, but this changed in 1965. A commercial station—WKTR-TV, owned by Kittyhawk Television and licensed to nearby Kettering—was built on channel 16 in 1967. It operated as a money-losing independent station for nearly all of its four-year history, with one major exception. On January 1, 1970, in a surprise, WKTR was announced as the new ABC affiliate for Dayton. This was vigorously contested by WKEF (channel 22), which had been airing most of ABC's programming in the market and was widely expected to become the full-time affiliate.
“WPTD” enters the record as pBS member station in Dayton, Ohio, United States. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what WPTD, member and station can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“WPTD” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, WPTD, member and station provides the most credible route into that argument.
The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7954497. Authority coordinates are 39.721, -84.250. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1965, 1967 and 1970.
Architectural summaries often privilege surviving fabric and can understate demolished phases, contested use or displaced communities. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. 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 “WPTD”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow WPTD primary sources, WPTD archive and WPTD 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 “WPTD”?
- Which earlier names or jurisdictions may reveal additional records?
- What physical evidence or contemporary plan supports the description?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “WPTD” 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.