WNDU-TV

WNDU-TV (channel 16) is a television station in South Bend, Indiana, United States, affiliated with NBC. Owned by Gray Media, it maintains studios on the campus of the University of Notre Dame, the station's founding owner, along State Road 933 on South Bend's north side; its transmitter is located southeast of the St. Joseph County Fairgrounds on the city's south side.

The station's studios also house production facilities for the syndicated agricultural news programs AgDay and U.S. Farm Report, the former of which is broadcast locally by WNDU-TV; WNDU-TV's weather department provides the forecasts seen on those shows.

History

The station first signed on the air on July 15, 1955, as a project of Notre Dame president Theodore Hesburgh,[1] originally broadcasting on UHF channel 46. WNDU-TV was owned by the Michiana Telecasting Corporation,[2] a subsidiary of the University of Notre Dame.

Programming

As an NBC affiliate, WNDU-TV is the home station for the network's broadcast of Notre Dame football home games. It produces and airs its own pregame show, Countdown to Kickoff, which airs prior to every Notre Dame football home game broadcast on NBC. The station also airs reruns of Inside Notre Dame Football and Inside Notre Dame Basketball, a review show of Notre Dame athletic teams that is produced by Fighting Irish Media at the University of Notre Dame.[18]

Due to an increased focus on news programming, WNDU-TV made room for a three-hour Saturday morning newscast in 1994,[19] by airing NBC's teen-oriented program block TNBC in early hours of Saturday and Sunday mornings to fulfill E/I guidelines. WNDU currently airs the network's The More You Know programming block for two of the three hours on Saturday with the final hour airing on Sundays at 7 a.m. In addition, the station's primary channel preempts the Saturday edition of Today for its Saturday morning newscast with the program airing on its second digital subchannel instead; the primary channel airs the Sunday edition of Today on a one-hour delay in order to accommodate its Sunday morning newscast. Prior to its move to Peacock on September 12, 2022, WNDU aired the soap opera Days of Our Lives one hour later than most NBC affiliates at 2 p.m. local time.

Programming controversies

Under Notre Dame's ownership, WNDU opted not to air certain NBC programs out of concerns over inappropriate content. Such shows included the animated series God, the Devil and Bob (for content offensive to the religious values of the university) and the American version of the British sitcom Coupling (due to the program's sexual content). The latter series instead aired on WSBT-DT2, then South Bend's UPN affiliate, on Thursday nights after UPN programming. Neither show was renewed for a second season. The station also aired the Notre Dame commencement address of President Barack Obama in full on May 17, 2009 (four years after the university sold the station), in lieu of the first half of a Stanley Cup Playoff game.

News operation

WNDU-TV broadcasts a total of 38 1/2 hours of local newscasts each week (with 6 1/2 hours each weekday, four hours on Saturdays and two hours on Sundays). WNDU-TV used a helicopter for its news-gathering purposes from the 1980s through 2006. Past news anchors include Mike Collins[20] and siblings Maureen and Terry McFadden.[21]

Technical information

Subchannels

The station's signal is multiplexed:

WNDU began broadcasting its digital signal on channel 42 in December 1998, becoming the first TV station in the South Bend market to do so.[35][36][37]

WNDU's second digital subchannel formerly carried a standard-definition simulcast of the station's main channel (with limited programming substitutions for shows preempted on the main channel for local programming); the subchannel became affiliated with Antenna TV on July 1, 2013.

On October 1, 2024, WNDU announced that Chicago Sports Network, the television home of the Chicago Bulls, Chicago Blackhawks, and Chicago White Sox, would affiliate with its second and fourth subchannels.[38] On June 6, 2025, following Comcast's carriage agreement with CHSN, it was announced that the network would leave the station on June 9 at midnight.[39] At that time, a static card was displayed on both CHSN subchannels informing the viewer that the network had shut down its over-the-air service (interrupting a replay of an NBA game between the Los Angeles Lakers and Chicago Bulls from March 27 of that year), and the main CHSN subchannel switched to 365BLK a day later (despite WSJV already carrying the network at the time; following the station's sale to Sinclair Broadcast Group, the latter's 365BLK subchannel was replaced with The Nest on July 30). The card continued to be seen on the overflow subchannel until a week later when it was changed to a "New Programming Coming Soon" card, with the EPG title being "WNDU Programming".

Analog-to-digital conversion

WNDU-TV ended regular programming on its analog signal, over UHF channel 16 on February 17, 2009, the original target date on which full-power television stations in the United States were to transition from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate (which was later pushed back to June 12, 2009). The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 42,[40][41] using virtual channel 16.

As part of the SAFER Act,[42] WNDU-TV kept its analog signal on the air until March 3 at 7 p.m. to inform viewers of the digital television transition through a loop of public service announcements from the National Association of Broadcasters.

callsign	WNDU-TV
city	South Bend, Indiana
branding	WNDU 16; 16 News Now
digital	27 (UHF)
virtual	16
affiliations	16.1: NBC for others, see
owner	Gray Media
licensee	Gray Television Licensee, LLC
location	South Bend–Elkhart, Indiana
country	United States
airdate	July 15, 1955
callsign meaning	Notre Dame University (former owner)
former channel numbers	Analog: 46 (UHF, 1955–1957), 16 (UHF, 1957–2009) Digital: 42 (UHF, 1998–2019)
former affiliations	United (secondary, 1967) PBS (per program, 1970–1974)
erp	650 kW
haat	310.4 m
facility id	41674
coordinates	41.60556°N, -86.21278°W
licensing authority	FCC
website	https://www.wndu.com/