In 1985, the FCC allowed television stations to begin broadcasting stereo audio. Not only did we get Stereo, but we also got an additional channel where we can broadcast another audio program. This channel is called SAP for Second Audio Program.

We have provided Spanish translation of some English programs and English translation of "Adelante," which is broadcast in Spanish as the main audio. We also use this channel to provide a service called DVS. This stands for Descriptive Video Service. It has been found that many visually handicapped people enjoy television programs, but the lack of visual clues usually makes the stories hard to follow. PBS has developed DVS to address this need. During the dialog of a program like "Mystery" an announcer will insert a description of things that are happening on the screen, that are not apparent from the audio program. An example would be "the butler walked to the drawer and removed a bloody knife." This narration is sandwiched between the dialog in a very unobtrusive way and the program audio is not interrupted at all. We broadcast about 25 hours of DVS every week and if it is missing, we receive calls on our trouble number, reminding us to get it working quickly. While this is an important use of SAP, it only uses a small portion of our broadcast week. The rest of the time we broadcast NOAA weather radio. This is a service of the national weather service and is a continuous broadcast of the weather for southeastern Wisconsin and the nearby waters of Lake Michigan.

Assistance with SAP programming is a request that we often get in the engineering department. Stereo televisions have menus that allow selection of many of the features of the set. One of these is the Audio Mode Menu. On this menu, you would be able to select whether the receiver is operating in Stereo, Mono, or SAP. Most of the other stations in Milwaukee broadcast their normal program audio on their SAP channel. If your set is selected to SAP, you would not be aware of this until you tuned to Channel 10 or 36 and heard the weather. This makes it seem like it is our problem, but the cure is really on your Audio Menu. If you would like assistance with "Audio Mode", please call our engineering department, during normal business hours, and we will be glad to help.