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WGPX-TV (channel 16) is atelevision station licensed toBurlington, North Carolina, United States, serving thePiedmont Triad region as an affiliate ofIon Television. The station is owned by Inyo Broadcast Holdings, and maintains offices on North O'Henry Boulevard inGreensboro; its transmitter is located inRandleman, North Carolina.^[2]

The station first signed on the air on August 7, 1984, as WRDG, originally operating as areligiousindependent station. It changed its call letters to WAAP in 1990, continuing to air religious programs while addinghome shopping programming fromShop at Home. The station addedcartoons during the early mornings and afternoons in the fall of 1992, and some low-budget barter entertainment shows during the evening hours that winter. In 1991, WAAP ran a local newscast, titledNews Source 16. Austin Caviness, now a meteorologist atWXII-TV (channel 12), was among the on-air staffers; the newscast was canceled in 1992.

By 1993, WAAP had become a general entertainment station running mostly barter shows andprofessional wrestling from theUnited States Wrestling Association,Smoky Mountain Wrestling, and the World Wrestling Federation (nowWorld Wrestling Entertainment). However, it never was able to gain much traction against the established non-Big Three stations in the market,Fox affiliate WNRW (channel 45, nowABC affiliateWXLV-TV) and itssatellite WGGT (channel 48, nowMyNetworkTV affiliateWMYV), and WBFX (channel 20, nowCW affiliateWCWG). The Triad market was not large enough at the time to support what were essentially three independent stations, and channel 16 barely registered in the ratings. The station originally desired to affiliate withUPN and/orThe WB when those networks launched in January 1995, but both of them affiliated with other area stations instead (The WB with WBFX; UPN on a secondary basis with WXLV/WGGT). By the fall of that year, WAAP did manage to acquire a fewsyndicated cartoons from WXLV and WGGT when those stations took the ABC affiliation fromWGHP.

Paxson Communications bought the station in July 1996, and by the end of the year, WAAP became an affiliate of the Infomall Television Network (inTV), airinginfomercials and religious programs for most of the day and overnight programming fromThe Worship Network. The station changed its call letters to WGPX-TV in January 1998, and became a charterowned-and-operated station of Pax TV (now Ion Television) when it launched on August 31 of that year.

The station broadcast its signal from a transmitter located in theCane Creek Mountains nearSnow Camp for many years. It later moved its transmitter to southernRockingham County.

On February 27, 2021, WGPX-TV's second, third and fourth subchannels switched toGrit,Court TV andLaff whenIon Plus,Qubo andIon Shop ceased broadcasting.

The station's signal ismultiplexed:

WGPX-TV shut down its analog signal on June 12, 2009, as part of the FCC-mandatedtransition to digital television for full-power stations.^[4] The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 14, usingvirtual channel 16.

• 1984 establishments in North Carolina
• Bounce TV affiliates
• Court TV affiliates
• Get (TV network) affiliates
• Ion Plus affiliates
• Ion Television affiliates
• Laff (TV network) affiliates
• Television channels and stations established in 1984
• Television stations in the Piedmont Triad

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