WLIW (channel 21) is a secondary PBS member television station licensed to Garden City, New York, United States, and serving the New York City television market. It is owned by The WNET Group alongside the area's primary PBS member, Newark, New Jersey–licensed WNET (channel 13); two Class A stations which share spectrum with WNET, WNDT-CD (channel 14) and WMBQ-CD (channel 46); and WLIW-FM 88.3 in Southampton. Through an outsourcing agreement, The WNET Group also operates New Jersey's PBS state network NJ PBS and the website NJ Spotlight. WLIW and WNET share studios at One Worldwide Plaza in Midtown Manhattan with an auxiliary street-level studio in the Lincoln Center complex on Manhattan's Upper West Side. WLIW's transmitter is located at One World Trade Center; the station also maintains a production studio at its former transmitter site in Plainview, New York. WLIW was established in 1969 as the first television station on Long Island. Originally operated on a tight budget, the station had no permanent studio facilities for nearly a decade. In the 1980s and 1990s, increasing cable television coverage led to the expansion of WLIW into a regional service that was the smaller competitor to WNET, the nation's largest public TV station, and the station increased its own programming efforts. However, some critics felt that this shift deemphasized the station's Long Island identity. In 2003, after an 18-month process, WLIW and WNET merged. As part of the WNET Group, WLIW maintains a separate vice president and general manager, Diane Masciale, who is in charge of the entire group's locally oriented television production. History Early history The Nassau County Board of Supervisors voted on February 14, 1968, to provide funding to set up an educational television station on Long Island, thereby also accessing New York state matching funds. The Long Island Educational Television Council then applied for and, in June, received a construction permit for channel 21 at Garden City. Facilities were established on the campus of Nassau Community College, while a 60-hour broadcast week evenly split between in-school instructional and general cultural offerings was slated. Test programming from Long Island's first TV station was aired beginning on January 14, with the station still not completely set up and technicians using screwdrivers to adjust audio levels including a series of hearings on the Long Island Rail Road, Official broadcasting did not begin until January 27. WLIW operated on a very tight budget—so