WYIN (channel 56), branded on-air as Lakeshore PBS, is a secondary PBS member television station licensed to Gary, Indiana, United States, serving the Chicago area. It is owned by Northwest Indiana Public Broadcasting, Inc., as a sister station to NPR member WLPR-FM (89.1). Both stations share studios on Indiana Place (Mississippi Street) in Merrillville, while WYIN's transmitter is located near Lake Dalecarlia (due south of Cedar Lake). WYIN is one of two PBS member stations in the Chicago television market, alongside Chicago-licensed WTTW (channel 11). History Prior license history The first television station in northwest Indiana was WCAE, a noncommercial station owned by the Lake Central School Corporation in St. John, which broadcast on UHF channel 50 from September 26, 1967, to March 31, 1983. The station was closed when financial troubles prompted the school board to pull its subsidy, ceasing channel 50's operations. Becoming WYIN Northwest Indiana Public Broadcasting, a group that consisted of former WCAE advisory board members who had split from the school board in 1978, bought the WCAE license in late 1983 and set out to reactivate it. In a convoluted transaction that had as its purpose the construction of a new TV station in Chicago, Metrowest Corporation (owned by Fred Eychaner) paid NIPB $684,000 to join its plan to switch the noncommercial and commercial statuses of Gary's two TV channel allocations, channels 50 and 56. Metrowest had bought a majority stake in the permitholder of WDAI, a commercial station on channel 56; however, channel 56 could not be built from the Sears Tower, while channel 50 could. The payment allowed NIPB to access matching federal grants to construct its own facilities. Metrowest eventually took channel 50 to air as commercial station WPWR-TV (now a MyNetworkTV owned-and-operated station). The WCAE non-commercial license that was now reassigned to channel 56 was reconstructed by NIPB who signed the station on the air as WYIN on November 15, 1987. For many years, WYIN fought to try to replace its aging transmitter and build a new tower atop either the Sears Tower or the John Hancock Center in downtown Chicago. Its plans, and any floated by WYCC, were bitterly opposed by Window to the World Communications, which used their position as a national programming provider for PBS to turn back any attempts at competition from the two stations all being on an equal platform and transmitter position and power. WYIN