WCAE was a PBS member station on channel 50 at St. John, Indiana, owned by the Lake Central School Corporation. It was the first television station to serve Northwest Indiana and the Calumet Region. The station began experiencing financial and personnel turmoil in the late 1970s; when the early 1980s recession hit the region hard, public support fell, and the school board closed the station in 1983. The license was reactivated in 1987, after more than four years of silence, as WYIN on channel 56.