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| History | |
| Founded | July 12, 1990 |
First air date | December 31, 1994 (30 years ago) (1994-12-31) |
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| Technical information[1] | |
Licensing authority | FCC |
| Facility ID | 21726 |
| ERP | 537kW |
| HAAT | 312 m (1,024 ft) |
| Transmitter coordinates | 35°12′41″N89°48′54″W / 35.21139°N 89.81500°W /35.21139; -89.81500 |
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Public license information | |
| Website | iontelevision |
WPXX-TV (channel 50) is atelevision station inMemphis, Tennessee, United States, affiliated withIon Television. Owned by Inyo Broadcast Holdings, WPXX-TV maintains studios and transmitter facilities on Brother Boulevard inBartlett, Tennessee. The station also serves as thede facto Ion outlet for theJackson, Tennessee, andJonesboro, Arkansas,markets.
The station first signed on the air onDecember 31, 1994, under the call letters WFBI; it was owned by Flinn Broadcasting, a company owned by Memphis businessman,radiologist (and laterShelby County commissioner) George Flinn. The station initially aired programming from theHome Shopping Network (sharing the affiliation withHolly Springs, Mississippi–basedWBUY-TV channel 40, now aTBNowned-and-operated station), until Paxson Communications (nowIon Media) began operating the station under alocal marketing agreement in 1998, when the station became a charter affiliate of the upstart Pax TV network (now Ion Television). During this time, the station also carried rebroadcasts of someWMC-TV newscasts. The station also carried a selected slate ofMemphis Grizzlies games produced byFox Sports Southeast from the team's inception until sometime in the late 2000s.
On February 22, 2006,News Corporation announced the launch of a new "sixth" network calledMyNetworkTV, which would be operated byFox Television Stations and its syndication divisionTwentieth Television. MyNetworkTV was created to compete against another upstart network that would launch at the same time that September,The CW (an amalgamated network that originally consisted primarily ofUPN andThe WB's higher-rated programs) as well as to give UPN and WB stations that were not mentioned as becoming CW affiliates another option besides converting toindependent stations.[2][3] AlthoughWLMT (channel 30) had served as the market's UPN and WB affiliates, the MyNetworkTV affiliation instead went to WPXX, which officially joined the network (as a secondary affiliation) on September 5, 2006, branding itself as "My50 Memphis".
In mid-August 2007, Ion Media announced that it would purchase WPXX andsister stationWPXL-TV inNew Orleans outright from Flinn Broadcasting for $18 million.[4] The sale was approved by theFederal Communications Commission and was completed on January 2, 2008.[5]
On September 28, 2009, WPXX dropped MyNetworkTV programming as the network converted to a syndicated programming service. CW affiliate WLMT chose to pick up the MyNetworkTV affiliation, but only for the purposes of carryingWWE SmackDown (which it aired on Saturday evenings, rather than on its recommended Friday night timeslot), declining to run the remainder of the network's schedule. That lasted untilSmackDown moved to theSyfy cable channel in October 2010, at which point WLMT's second digital subchannel picked up the full MyNetworkTV lineup whileRetro Television Network programming (which would be dropped in November 2011 in favor ofMeTV) outside of prime time.
The station's signal ismultiplexed:
| Channel | Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 50.1 | 720p | 16:9 | ION | Ion Television |
| 50.2 | 480i | CourtTV | Court TV | |
| 50.3 | Grit | Grit | ||
| 50.4 | IONPlus | Ion Plus | ||
| 50.5 | Busted | Busted | ||
| 50.6 | GameSho | Game Show Central | ||
| 50.7 | HSN | HSN | ||
| 50.8 | QVC | QVC | ||
| 50.9 | QVC2 | QVC2 |
WPXX-TV ended regular programming on its analog signal, overUHF channel 50, on June 12, 2009, as part of thefederally mandated transition from analog to digital television.[7] The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 51, usingvirtual channel 50.
As part of theSAFER Act, WPXX kept its analog signal on the air until June 26 to inform viewers of the digital television transition through a loop ofpublic service announcements from theNational Association of Broadcasters.[8]