KPXD-TV

KPXD-TV, virtual channel 68 (UHF digital channel 25), is a Ion Television owned-and-operated station licensed to Arlington, Texas, United States and serving the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex. The station is owned by West Palm Beach, Florida-based Ion Media Networks (the former Paxson Communications). KPXD's offices are located on Six Flags Drive in Arlington, and its transmitter is located on Belt Line Road in Cedar Hill.

KPXD-TV
Arlington/Fort Worth/Dallas, Texas
United States
CityArlington, Texas
BrandingIon Television
SloganPositively Entertaining
ChannelsDigital: 25 (UHF)
Virtual: 68 (PSIP)
Affiliations
OwnerIon Media Networks
LicenseeIon Media Dallas License, Inc.
First air dateDecember 21, 1996 (1996-12-21)
Call sign meaningPaX TV Dallas
(former network branding)
Former call signsKINZ (1996–1998)
Former channel number(s)Analog:
68 (UHF, 1996–2009)
Digital:
42 (UHF, 1998–2019)
Former affiliationsinTV (1996–1998)
Transmitter power1000 kW
Height371.2 m (1,218 ft)
Facility ID68834
Transmitter coordinates32°35′25″N 96°58′24″W
Licensing authorityFCC
Public license informationProfile
CDBS
Websiteiontelevision.com

History

The station first signed on the air on December 21, 1996 as KINZ-TV (in reference to its original affiliation with the Infomail TV Network (InTV), the predecessor-of-sorts of Ion Television), carrying infomercials for much of its schedule and programming from religious broadcaster The Worship Network during the overnight hours. The station was to have originally given the call letters KAQV in its construction permit to operate the station, which were changed prior to its sign-on. In early 1998, Paxson Communications (the forerunner to Ion Media Networks) bought the station, and changed its call letters to KPXD-TV on January 13; the station became a charter owned-and-operated station of Paxson's new family-oriented broadcast network Pax TV (now Ion Television) when the network launched on August 31, 1998.

KPXD "Pax 68" logo, used from 1998 to 2005.

As part of a wide-ranging deal that gave NBC partial ownership of Pax, the former network's owned-and-operated stations as well as many of its affiliates provided sales and marketing assistance for Pax TV stations in several markets, with KPXD entering into a joint sales agreement with KXAS-TV (channel 5; which NBC had owned 76% interest in at the time, it is now owned by the network outright).

In 2003, Pax TV decided to scale back its programming due to financial losses, resulting in much of the afternoon timeslots on its stations' schedules being filled with infomercials. After Pax was rebranded as i: Independent Television on June 30, 2005, Worship Network programming moved to one of KPXD's digital subchannels (originally its third subchannel, then to its fourth subchannel after Ion Life and Qubo launched, before Worship was dropped on January 31, 2010).

Digital television

Digital channels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:

Channel Video Aspect PSIP Short Name Programming
68.1720p16:9IONMain Ion Television programming
68.2480i4:3quboQubo
68.3IONPlusIon Plus
68.4ShopIon Shop
68.5QVCQVC
68.6HSNHSN

[1]

Analog-to-digital conversion

KPXD-TV shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 68, on June 12, 2009, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television.[2] The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 42, using PSIP to display KPXD-TV's virtual channel as 68 on digital television receivers, which was among the high band UHF channels (52-69) that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition.

Newscasts

In September 2001, as part of the JSA with that station, KPXD began airing tape delayed rebroadcasts of NBC station KXAS-TV's 6:00 and 10:00 p.m. newscasts each Monday through Friday evening at 6:30 and 10:30 p.m. (the latter beginning shortly before that program's live broadcast ended on KXAS). The news rebroadcasts ended in 2003, two years before most of the network's other news share agreements with Pax TV stations were terminated upon the network's rebranding as i: Independent Television, as a result of the network's financial troubles.

References
  1. "RabbitEars TV Query for KPXD". Archived from the original on 2014-05-18. Retrieved 2014-05-17.
  2. List of Digital Full-Power Stations Archived 2013-08-29 at the Wayback Machine
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.