WPXH-TV
This article needs to be updated.(January 2021) |
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HAAT | 318.4 m (1,045 ft) |
Transmitter coordinates | 33°29′2″N 86°48′21″W / 33.48389°N 86.80583°W |
Links | |
Public license information | |
Website | iontelevision |
WPXH-TV (channel 44) is a
History
As a satellite of WTTO and WDBB
The station traces its creation to issues involving
DuBose found a solution when the
WDBB and WNAL became a Fox charter affiliate when the network officially launched on October 9, 1986. As was the case with other Fox stations during the network's early years, channels 17 and 44 continued to program as de facto independent stations as the late-night talk show The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers was the network's only program initially; when Fox debuted its prime time schedule in April 1987, the network only carried evening programming on weekends, and would not carry seven nights a week of programming until June 1993. Until Fox began airing programming on a nightly basis, WDBB and WNAL aired movies (and later, syndicated programs) at 7 p.m. on nights when the network was not scheduled to air any programming.
Despite covering roughly half of central Alabama over-the-air and the two stations maintaining a relatively strong program lineup, the signal of WDBB did not provide better than Grade B coverage (at best) within Birmingham proper. Due to the eastward location of its transmitter tower, WNAL's signal did not penetrate well into Birmingham either, only reaching as far west as extreme eastern Jefferson County. In addition, several major cable providers in the Birmingham market, including in Jefferson and Shelby counties, refused to carry the station for this reason. Ultimately, WDBB/WNAL was not profitable. After all efforts to increase the stations' cable coverage failed, Fox signed an agreement to make WTTO its new Birmingham affiliate and moved its programming to channel 21 in January 1991.
Soon afterward, DuBose reached an agreement with Abry Communications in which WDBB and WNAL would convert into
(channel 13). In 1993, Abry had purchased WDBB and WNAL outright and converted both stations into full-time satellite stations of WTTO, resulting in the removal of local programming on the former two stations.By 1994, the WTTO/WDBB/WNAL combination had become one of the highest-rated Fox affiliates in the country, and managed to overtake then-underperforming
As a CBS affiliate
In March 1994, Great American Communications agreed to sell WBRC to New World Communications, as part of a deal that also involved three of the former group's other television stations (WDAF-TV in Kansas City, KSAZ-TV in Phoenix and WGHP in High Point, North Carolina).[4][5][6] Subsequently, three weeks later, New World agreed to purchase WVTM and three other stations (KTVI in St. Louis, KDFW in Dallas, and KTBC in Austin, Texas) from Argyle Television Holdings.[5] New World was now faced with the prospect of having to divest as many as three of the acquired stations as the FCC forbade broadcasting companies from owning two commercial television stations in the same market, and restricted them from owning more than twelve stations nationwide (the concurrent acquisitions of the Argyle and Citicasters stations put New World three stations over the national television ownership cap).
On May 23, 1994, six months after the network signed a deal with the National Football League (NFL) to acquire the rights to the National Football Conference television package, New World signed an affiliation agreement with Fox to switch twelve of its television stations—six that New World had already owned and eight that the company was in the process of acquiring through the Argyle and Citicasters deals, including WBRC—to the network, once their existing affiliation contracts with CBS, NBC or ABC expired.[6] Although WTTO was one of Fox's strongest affiliates at the time, the network saw the opportunity to affiliate with WBRC because it had been the highest-rated station in the Birmingham market for most of its history.
Seeing a chance to solve its ownership conflicts in Birmingham, New World reached an agreement with Citicasters to sell WBRC (as well as WGHP) directly to the network's owned-and-operated station group, Fox Television Stations, in return for $130 million in promissory notes; New World would also establish an outside trust company that would operate channel 6 until the sale was completed.[7][8]
Even though the sale would be finalized on July 24, 1995, Fox Television Stations could not convert WBRC into a Fox owned-and-operated station in the short term as the station's affiliation agreement with ABC was not set to expire until August 31, 1996. While this put WBRC in the rare position of being owned by the O&O group of one network while still affiliated with another, it also gave ABC enough time to find a replacement affiliate in Birmingham; this was also instrumental in causing a complicated series of affiliation changes involving six central Alabama stations. In November 1995, as part of its $20 million purchase of CBS affiliate WCFT-TV (channel 33, now Heroes & Icons affiliate WSES) in Tuscaloosa from Federal Broadcasting, Allbritton Communications signed a deal with Fant Broadcasting to assume operational responsibilities and provide programming to WNAL-TV under a local marketing agreement. Allbritton backed out of the LMA proposal with Fant in January 1996, and instead signed a deal with Osborne Communications Corporation to acquire the non-license assets of CBS affiliate WJSU-TV (channel 40, now Heroes & Icons affiliate WGWW) in Anniston under an LMA.[9][10][11] The Allbritton deals served as the catalyst for an affiliation agreement between ABC and Allbritton in April 1996 that renewed or established new affiliation deals with the group's seven television stations.[12]
ABC and Allbritton reached a precursor agreement to that affiliation deal two months prior, after it declined an offer by the Sinclair Broadcast Group. Sinclair's notification to the network that the station had no intention of starting a news department and wanted to only carry its prime time and news programming led ABC to turn down an offer to affiliate with WTTO (which, along with WNAL and WDBB, was set to lose its Fox affiliation to WBRC). Under that deal, Allbritton agreed to make WCFT and WJSU the new Central Alabama affiliates of ABC, with WJSU initially intending to act as the satellite station to WCFT (Allbritton would subsequently purchase low-power independent station W58CK (channel 58, now WBMA-LD) in Birmingham to allow the two others to be counted in Nielsen ratings reports for that market). In January 1996, WNAL-TV became a secondary affiliate of The WB; it carried WB programming on tape delay on Sunday and Wednesday nights after Fox network programming. Fant Broadcasting subsequently approached CBS about switching to the network, and in February 1996, reached a deal to make WNAL-TV the network's new affiliate for northeastern Alabama.[13]
On September 1, 1996, when WBRC officially became a Fox owned-and-operated station and W58CK, WCFT and WJSU became ABC affiliates, WNAL officially discontinued its part-time simulcast of WTTO (which, along with WDBB, became independent stations); WCFT and WJSU ceded the CBS programming rights in central Alabama to WNAL, which became the CBS affiliate for the Anniston–Gadsden market, and WBMG, which had recently upgraded its transmitter to provide a much stronger full-power signal throughout much of the central third of the state. Channel 44's switch left Central Alabama without a WB affiliate until WTTO/WDBB switched to the network in January 1997.
Sale to Paxson Communications
In September 1996, shortly after it became a CBS affiliate, Fant Broadcasting sold WNAL-TV to Paxson Communications (now Ion Media), which initially intended to shift it to its infomercial-focused Infomall TV Network (inTV).[14] However, Paxson continued to operate the station as a CBS affiliate after the sale was completed, as its affiliation contract with CBS did not expire until April 1999.
On January 13, 1998, the station changed its call letters to WPXH in preparation of becoming the Birmingham market's charter owned-and-operated station of Pax TV (later i: Independent Television, now Ion Television), though it would continue to honor the CBS affiliation contract in full even after the network's debut on August 31, 1998. That year, the station moved its transmitter facilities to a tower near Inland Lake, south of Oneonta in Blount County.
In September 1998, Nielsen merged the Tuscaloosa and Anniston–Gadsden markets back into the Birmingham market as a result of the consolidation of WCFT, WJSU, and WBMA-LP into Birmingham's ABC affiliate two years earlier, which expanded the designated market area to encompass nearly the entire width of the state, stretching from the Alabama–Georgia state line westward to the Mississippi–Alabama border. The move benefited all of the major Birmingham stations as it increased their available viewership in the three cities and resulted in the newly expanded market's placement in Nielsen's national market rankings jumping by twelve spots from 51st to 39th place.[15][16][17]
WPXH officially disaffiliated from CBS on April 30, 1999, with Paxson deciding to hold out on converting the station to its network for a few months. The CBS affiliation rights for Central Alabama were then ceded exclusively to WIAT, which became the network's sole affiliate for the enlarged Birmingham market. The station finally began to carry Pax TV on August 1, 1999.
In the late 2010s, what was now Ion Media applied to change WPXH's physical channel from 45 to 33 as part of the FCC's spectrum reallocation, along with moving its transmitter from Oneonta and into Birmingham proper, broadcasting from the Red Mountain site just south of town where the market's other television stations originate. With the change, it would no longer have any signal serving Gadsden. WPXH-TV's city of license was thus moved to the Birmingham suburb of Hoover. The new transmitter was activated early in 2020, centralizing channel 44 as a Birmingham area station once and for all.
Newscasts
Unlike other former independent stations and Fox affiliates that joined a Big Three network displaced due to Fox's affiliation deals with longtime major network stations, WPXH-TV (as WNAL-TV) did not invest in its own news department after it was affiliated with CBS in September 1996. Instead of local news programming, WNAL opted to air religious programming on weekday mornings before
In September 2001, as a Pax TV owned-and-operated station, WPXH entered into a news share agreement with WVTM-TV as part of an overall corporate management agreement between Paxson Communications and NBC. Under the agreement, WPXH-TV began airing rebroadcasts of WVTM's 6 and 10 p.m. newscasts on a half-hour tape delay (at 6:30 and 10:30 p.m.) each Monday through Friday night. The newscasts were discontinued after the 10 p.m. news rebroadcast on June 30, 2005, as Paxson had decided to end the news share agreements for its owned-and-operated stations upon Pax's rebranding as i: Independent Television.
Technical information
Subchannels
The station's signal is
Channel | Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming |
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44.1 | 720p | 16:9
|
ION | Ion Television |
44.2 | CourtTV | Court TV | ||
44.3 | 480i | Grit | Grit | |
44.4 | Laff | Laff | ||
44.5 | SCRIPPS | Scripps News | ||
44.6 | Jewelry | Jewelry Television | ||
44.7 | HSN | HSN | ||
44.8 | QVC | QVC | ||
44.9 | ShopLC | ShopLC
|
Analog-to-digital conversion
WPXH-TV signed on its digital signal on
As it opted to become a participant of the
Notes
- ^ The Broadcasting and Cable Yearbook says April 26, while the Television and Cable Factbook says April 25.
References
- ^ "COL Petition for Rulemaking - WPXH-TV Gadsden to Hoover". Licensing and Management System. Federal Communications Commission. December 3, 2018. Retrieved February 9, 2019.
- ^ "Modification of a License for DTV Application". Licensing and Management System. Federal Communications Commission. May 7, 2019. Retrieved May 7, 2019.
- ^ "Facility Technical Data for WPXH-TV". Licensing and Management System. Federal Communications Commission.
- ^ "COMPANY NEWS; GREAT AMERICAN SELLING FOUR TELEVISION STATIONS". The New York Times. May 6, 1994. Retrieved December 12, 2015.
- ^ a b Foisie, Geoffrey (May 30, 1994). "Argyle socks away profit. (New World Communications Group Inc. acquires Argyle Television Holdings)". Broadcasting & Cable. Cahners Business Information. Archived from the original on January 9, 2016. Retrieved December 12, 2015.
- ^ Hollinger International. May 23, 1994. Archived from the originalon October 11, 2013. Retrieved June 1, 2013.
- Cahners Business Information. Archived from the originalon January 9, 2016. Retrieved December 12, 2015.
- ^ McAvoy, Kim (April 10, 1995). "The FCC last week approved New World's plans to transfer WGHP-TV Greensboro, N.C., and WBRC-TV Birmingham, Ala., into a trust for eventual sale to Fox". Broadcasting & Cable. Cahners Business Information. Archived from the original on October 16, 2015. Retrieved December 12, 2015.
- ^ Rathbun, Elizabeth (January 8, 1996). "Allbritton takes another route to Birmingham". Broadcasting & Cable. Cahners Business Information. Archived from the original on January 9, 2016. Retrieved December 12, 2015.
- Cahners Business Information. Retrieved December 12, 2015.
- ^ Gimein, Mark (January 8, 1996). "Tuscaloosa, Ala. (TV stations change hands)". Mediaweek. Archived from the original on December 22, 2015. Retrieved December 12, 2015.
- ^ "Allbritton Communications Co. and ABC have signed a 10-year affiliation agreement". Broadcasting & Cable. Cahners Business Information. April 22, 1996. Archived from the original on January 9, 2016. Retrieved December 12, 2015.
- ^ "Birmingham TV News: A Bit on 33/40". ReoCities.
- ^ Rathbun, Elizabeth A. (September 16, 1996). "Paxson picks up CBS affiliate". Broadcasting & Cable. Cahners Business Information. Archived from the original on June 10, 2014. Retrieved December 10, 2015.
- ^ Fybush, Scott (June 5, 2002). "A Quick Jaunt Through Birmingham, Alabama". Fybush.com. p. A selection from a decade of visits to tower and studio sites in the Northeast and beyond. Retrieved January 30, 2014.
- ^ Brodesser, Claude (September 1, 1997). "Nielsen mulling expansion of market". Mediaweek. Archived from the original on December 22, 2015. Retrieved December 12, 2015.
- ^ Lafayette, Jon (December 15, 1997). "Birmingham's WBMG-TV cleans house with news staff". Electronic Media. p. 2.
- ^ "RabbitEars TV Query for WPXH". Retrieved March 6, 2021.
- ^ "DTV Tentative Channel Designations for the First and Second Rounds" (PDF). Federal Communications Commission. March 24, 2012. Archived from the original (PDF) on August 29, 2013. Retrieved March 24, 2012.
- ^ "Appendix B All Full Power Station By DMA, Indicating Those Terminating Analog service On Or Before February 17, 2009" (PDF). Federal Communications Commission.
- ^ "UPDATED List of Participants in the Analog Nightlight Program" (PDF). Federal Communications Commission. June 12, 2009. Retrieved June 4, 2012.