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Educational independent TV station in New Orleans

WLAE TV (channel 32) is an educational independent television station in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. The station is owned by the Educational Broadcasting Foundation, a partnership between the Willwoods Community (a Catholic related organization) and the Louisiana Educational Television Authority (operator of Louisiana Public Broadcasting, which owns the PBS member stations in Louisiana that are located outside of New Orleans). WLAE's studios are located on Howard Avenue in New Orleans, and its transmitter is located on Paris Road/Highway 47 (northeast of Chalmette).

In 1978, a group of married couples, supported by the Catholic Church, formed the Willwoods Community. The organization joined forces with the Louisiana Educational Television Authority, which had been looking for a way to get its locally based programming into the state's largest market. At the time, WYES TV (channel 12) was the city's sole public TV station, and Willwoods sought to obtain the other non commercial license allocated to the New Orleans market. On December 14, 1981, under the banner of the "Educational Broadcasting Foundation," the partnership was granted an educational station license from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). WLAE TV first signed on the air on July 8, 1984; it originally served as a member station of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). WLAE TV operated as a secondary member of the network through PBS' Program Differentiation Plan, and thus only carried 25% of the programming broadcast by PBS, while the remainder aired on WYES. Sesame Street was one of the few programs that was shown on both stations. In addition to offering PBS programming, WLAE also aired, and still airs, locally produced educational programs, as well as select programming from Louisiana Public Broadcasting (mostly consisting of news and public affairs programming). WLAE is also one of very few public television stations to televise a daily Catholic Mass, presented live from the St. Louis Cathedral in the city's Jackson Square district; PBS had tightened its restrictions regarding religious programming on member stations in 2009, although WLAE was exempted from these restrictions through a grandfather clause. WLAE was one of at least two PBS member stations that were owned at least in part by a Catholic related organization (KMBH in Harlingen, Texas was the other; it is now Fox affiliate KFXV, owned by commercial media company Entravision Communications), and one of at least three in general that were run by a religious organization (counting KBYU TV in Provo, Utah, which left PBS in 2018). In 2000, WLAE and WYES both received a $691,000 grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to negotiate and establish joint production and master control facilities. The two stations' operators agreed to build the facility on the grounds of a Lakefront research park owned by the University of New Orleans. In 2005, WLAE and WYES planned a campaign to raise $4 million in capital on behalf of their relocation plan. As part of its educational outreach for the program, the station also held a special screening of the documentary at the St. Bernard Docville Farm in Violet on October 30. The event was supported by the Mereux Foundation.

WLAE TV shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 32, on June 12, 2009, the official date on 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 31. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 32.