CHAMPAIGN – WEIU-TV's program listings will return to The News-Gazette's "TV This Week" supplement following a few weeks' absence.

The listings were dropped after changes in April that forced Comcast's analog customers to get a set-top box if they wanted to continue seeing the Charleston-based public broadcasting station on cable.

Comcast's digital-cable customers continue to get WEIU on Channel 14 and Channel 189, said Rich Ruggiero, vice president for Comcast's Greater Chicago Region.

But as of April 14, analog-cable customers had to get a set-top box to receive WEIU on those channels.

Basic analog-cable customers would have to pay $1.38 a month for the box, while standard analog-cable customers could either pay $3.48 a month for the box, or save money by upgrading to Digital Starter service for $1.99 a month, Ruggiero said.

With the set-top box, analog-cable customers can also get WEIU World on Channel 418, and if they have a high-definition TV, they can get WEIU HD on Channel 915.

Denis Roche, general manager of WEIU, said that as a result of an agreement between a public TV consortium and a cable system consortium, cable systems are required to carry only one PBS station in their market area on their analog tier – and in Champaign-Urbana, the primary PBS station was WILL-TV.

As a secondary PBS station, WEIU had the choice of staying on the analog tier – which will eventually be phased out – or moving to the digital tier with the prospect of carrying additional signals.

It chose the latter because that would enable it to transmit MHz Worldview (WEIU World), as well as a digital radio station, Roche said.

MHz Worldview carries news from different parts of the world, as well as international programming, including mysteries, sports and movies, he said.

Roche said WEIU is a "partial PBS station" that can carry up to 25 percent of PBS programming.

Among the PBS programs the station elected to carry are "Mystery," "Nature," "Nova," "Antiques Roadshow," "American Experience" and "History Detectives." But it has to delay those programs for eight days after they're available for airing.

As a partial PBS station, WEIU doesn't have to follow the conventional PBS programming schedule, Roche said. So it has created "genre" nights with British comedies Monday nights, mysteries Tuesday nights, science Wednesday nights, history Thursday nights, travel Friday nights and music Saturday nights. It airs what it calls "the best of PBS" on Sunday nights.

Other programming unique to WEIU includes:

– Its nightly news at 5:30 p.m.

– The broadcast of Eastern Illinois University home basketball and football games.

– "The Hootenanny Show," a local country music show.

WEIU broadcasts from a tower near Humboldt, about 10 miles northwest of Charleston.

Roche said the station's viewership is growing in Champaign-Urbana.