WPXL-TV (channel 49) is a
television station
A television station is a set of equipment managed by a business, organisation or other entity, such as an amateur television (ATV) operator, that transmits video content and audio content via radio waves directly from a transmitter on the eart ...
in
, United States, broadcasting the
Ion Television
Ion Television is an American broadcast television network owned by the Katz Broadcasting subsidiary of the E. W. Scripps Company. The network first began broadcasting on August 31, 1998, as Pax TV, focusing primarily on family-oriented en ...
network. It is
owned and operated
In the broadcasting industry, an owned-and-operated station (frequently abbreviated as an O&O) usually refers to a television or radio station owned by the network with which it is associated. This distinguishes such a station from an affiliate ...
by the
Ion Media
Ion Media (formerly known as Paxson Communications Corporation and Ion Media Networks) was an American broadcasting company that owned and operated over List of stations owned and operated by Ion Media, 71 television stations in most major Americ ...
subsidiary of the
E. W. Scripps Company
The E. W. Scripps Company is an American broadcasting company founded in 1878 as a chain of daily newspapers by Edward Willis "E. W." Scripps and his sister, Ellen Browning Scripps. It was also formerly a media conglomerate. The company is he ...
, and maintains offices on Veterans Memorial Boulevard and Cleary Avenue in
Metairie; its transmitter is located off Paris Road (
LA 47) near the
Orleans–
St. Bernard parish line.
History
Early history
After a string of delays, channel 49 first signed on the air on March 19, 1989, as WCCL; it originally operated as an
independent station with a general entertainment format, along with numerous
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...
programs preempted by
WWL-TV
WWL-TV (channel 4) is a television station in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States, affiliated with CBS. It is owned by Tegna Inc. alongside Slidell-licensed MyNetworkTV affiliate WUPL (channel 54). Both stations share studios on Rampart St ...
(channel 4), including ''
CBS This Morning
''CBS This Morning'' (''CTM'') is an American morning television program that aired on CBS from November 30, 1987, to October 29, 1999, and again from January 9, 2012, to September 6, 2021. The program was aired from Monday through Saturday. ...
''. Owned by Black woman Barbara Lamont, WCCL failed to show in the ratings with poor programming and a lack of cable carriage. By the end of 1989, it had filed bankruptcy due to a hostile creditor that sought to evict it from its tower at Algiers. The station had begun work on its own tower at Bywater which would prevent blockage of channel 49's signal by passing ships on the
Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it fl ...
, but a battle with neighbors who wanted its height reduced left the site unfinished and unusable by the station. The hostile creditor—Lodestar Towers—was successful in obtaining an order to repossess WCCL's equipment, forcing the station off the air on May 23, 1990.
While Lamont spent two years trying to rebuild the station's transmitter facility elsewhere, she gave up in May 1992, when her Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization case was converted to Chapter 7 liquidation. Flinn Broadcasting Corporation purchased the station's
license out of bankruptcy and returned channel 49 to the air on May 25, 1994, carrying programming from the
Home Shopping Network.
The station changed its call letters to WPXL-TV on August 31, 1998; that same day, the station became a charter affiliate of the family-oriented network Pax TV (now Ion Television). As part of the affiliation deal with Pax TV, Flinn Broadcasting entered into a
time brokerage agreement with Pax TV owner Paxson Communications to operate the station. On July 30, 2001. Paxson entered into a joint sales agreement with Hearst-Argyle Television (now
Hearst Television
Hearst Television, Inc. (formerly Hearst-Argyle Television) is a broadcasting company in the United States owned by Hearst Communications. From 1998 to mid-2009, the company traded its common stock on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol ...
), owner of
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...
affiliate
WDSU
WDSU (channel 6) is a television station in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States, affiliated with NBC and owned by Hearst Television. The station's studios are located on Howard Avenue in the city's Central Business District, and its transmitt ...
(channel 6), to provide advertising and marketing services for WPXL.
Hurricane Katrina
In early September 2005, shortly after
Hurricane Katrina made landfall in southern Louisiana, WPXL partnered with WDSU, whose transmitter building in
Chalmette was damaged due to flooding caused by the storm, to simulcast channel 6's programming. The station also added programming from
The Worship Network
The Worship Network, or Worship, was a broadcast television service that provided alternative Christian worship-themed programming 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The network was based in Nashville, Tennessee, in the United States, and is av ...
and the signals of the
Tribune Broadcasting
Tribune Broadcasting Company, LLC was an American media company which operated as a subsidiary of Tribune Media, a media conglomerate based in Chicago, Illinois. The group owned and operated television and radio stations throughout the United St ...
-owned
duopoly of
ABC
ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script known as the alphabet.
ABC or abc may also refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Broadcasting
* American Broadcasting Company, a commercial U.S. TV broadcaster
** Disney–ABC Television ...
affiliate
WGNO
WGNO (channel 26) is a television station in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States, affiliated with ABC. It is owned by Nexstar Media Group alongside CW owned-and-operated station WNOL-TV (channel 38). Both stations share studios at The Galler ...
(channel 26) and
CW affiliate
WNOL-TV
WNOL-TV (channel 38) is a television station in New Orleans, New Orleans, Louisiana, United States, airing programming from The CW. It is owned-and-operated station, owned and operated by network majority owner Nexstar Media Group alongside Amer ...
(channel 38) as
subchannels on its digital signal for New Orleans area residents that had television sets with built-in
digital tuners.
On March 29, 2008, almost a month after WGNO and WNOL resumed digital transmissions over WNOL's digital allocation on UHF channel 15, WPXL began to carry the Ion-owned children's network
Qubo
Qubo ( ; stylized as qubo) was an American television network for children between the ages of 5 and 14. Owned by Ion Media, it consisted of a 24-hour free-to-air television network often mentioned as the "Qubo channel" (available as a digital ...
and lifestyle network
Ion Life on digital channels 49.2 and 49.3; both networks had launched a year-and-a-half after Katrina hit the area.
Sale to Ion Media
On August 21, 2007, Ion Media announced that it would purchase WPXL-TV and
Memphis
Memphis most commonly refers to:
* Memphis, Egypt, a former capital of ancient Egypt
* Memphis, Tennessee, a major American city
Memphis may also refer to:
Places United States
* Memphis, Alabama
* Memphis, Florida
* Memphis, Indiana
* Memp ...
sister station WPXX from Flinn Broadcasting outright for $18 million. The sale was completed on January 2, 2008, with WPXL becoming an Ion owned-and-operated station.
Newscasts
In September 2001, as part of the JSA with that station, WPXL began airing
tape delayed rebroadcasts of NBC affiliate WDSU's 10:00 p.m. newscasts each Monday through Friday evening at 10:30 p.m. (beginning shortly before that program's live broadcast ended on WDSU). The news share agreement ended on June 30, 2005 (coinciding with Pax's rebranding as i: Independent Television), due to Paxson Communications' decision to discontinue carriage of network affiliate newscasts as a result of Pax TV's financial troubles.
Technical information
Subchannels
The station's digital signal is
multiplexed
In telecommunications and computer networking, multiplexing (sometimes contracted to muxing) is a method by which multiple analog or digital signals are combined into one signal over a shared medium. The aim is to share a scarce resource - a ...
:
Analog-to-digital conversion
WPXL shut down its analog signal, over
UHF channel 49, on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States
transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal continued to broadcast on its pre-transition UHF channel 50.
Through the use of
PSIP
The Program and System Information Protocol (PSIP) is the MPEG (a video and audio industry group) and privately defined program-specific information originally defined by General Instrument for the DigiCipher 2 system and later extended for the AT ...
, digital television receivers display the station's
virtual channel
In most telecommunications organizations, a virtual channel is a method of remapping the ''program number'' as used in H.222 Program Association Tables and Program Mapping Tables to a channel number that can be entered via digits on a receiver's ...
as its former UHF analog channel 49.
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wpxl-Tv
Ion Television affiliates
Grit (TV network) affiliates
Laff (TV network) affiliates
Defy TV affiliates
Scripps News affiliates
E. W. Scripps Company television stations
Television channels and stations established in 1994
1994 establishments in Louisiana
Television stations in New Orleans