Content area
Full Text
The City Colleges of Chicago and its licensed, station WYCC-TV20, have broken ground on a new $250 million multi-purpose HD facility. Not bad for a station that's currently housed in a basement of a building on the Daley College campus.
"It could barely be called a studio and limits the kinds of production we could take on," said Maria A. Moore, general manager, WYCC. "A television station is all about broadcasting. We'll be able to produce not only for our local constituents, but also for U.S. public broadcasting. Right now we're big consumers of global broadcasting initiatives, but we hope to become one of the providers."
The new facility, located on CCC's Kennedy-King College campus in South Side's Englewood neighborhood, is expected to not only expand production offerings and educational opportunities for the CCC's 150,000 enrolled students, but also foster economic growth and development in the urban area. Completion of the facility is scheduled for June 2007, when WYCC will sign on as a state-of-the-art HD broadcasting station.
The largest minority controlled PBS station in the nation, WYCC takes its mission seriously, said Moore. Two of its main focuses are on global voices and voices absent from mainstream broadcasting. Toward that end, the expansion will enable more original local programming and increase the capability of diverse programming both...