identification with the university. At the time it had signed on, the WHUT call letters belonged to a radio station in Anderson, Indiana and were not available to Howard. Soon after the start of preparations for the 2016-17 spectrum reallocation auction, Howard University announced that it was considering the sale of WHUT-TV's channel 33 allocation in the auction in order to alleviate longstanding financial issues at the university. The station was entered into the auction when it began in March 2016. Because of WHUT-TV's status as the only black-owned public television station in the United States, the decision attracted sustained opposition from faculty and community members who feared the loss of a rare minority voice in public media. Howard announced WHUT-TV was withdrawn from the auction on February 16, 2017; the official reason was that the station's asking price had become low enough through the reverse auction process that it was apparent selling would not produce sufficient proceeds to justify ending operations. Technical information Subchannels The station's ATSC 1.0 channels are carried on the multiplexed digital signal of WJLA-TV: WHUT began broadcasting in digital in 2007. In July 2009, Washington, D.C. TV stations became a test market for Mobile DTV, and WHUT was one of the participating stations. Analog-to-digital conversion WHUT-TV shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 32, on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal continued to broadcasts on its pre-transition UHF channel 33. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 32. WHUT-TV commenced ATSC-M/H (Mobile DTV) broadcasting on February 27, 2011. WHUT-TV was the last remaining Washington-market broadcaster to broadcast an M/H signal. The signal nominally contained a feed of its main programming in standard definition on 32.1 and an audio feed of WAMU on 32.2, although neither stream contains audio or video data. ATSC 3.0 WHUT became the Washington market's second ATSC 3.0 lighthouse station on December 15, 2021, joining Sinclair Broadcast Group's WIAV-CD (channel 58). WHUT's ATSC 3.0 signal carries its own main programming feed as well as those of Washington's four major network affiliates. As required by FCC rules, WHUT's two subchannels relocated to the signal of Sinclair's WJLA-TV (channel 7) to continue ATSC 1.0 service to existing receivers. In