WQPX-TV (channel 64) 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 earth ...

licensed to

Scranton, Pennsylvania Scranton is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania, Lackawanna County. With a population of 76,328 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 U ...

, 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 enter ...

network to

Northeastern Pennsylvania Northeastern Pennsylvania (NEPA) is a geographic region of the U.S. state of Pennsylvania that includes the Pocono Mountains, the Endless Mountains, and the industrial cities of Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, Pittston, Hazleton, Nanticoke, and Carbon ...

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 71 television stations in most major American markets (through its television stations group ...

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 ...

, the station has offices on Lackawanna Avenue in downtown Scranton, and its transmitter is located on Bald Mountain, northwest of Scranton and

I-476 Interstate 476 (I-476) is a auxiliary Interstate Highway of I-76 in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. The highway runs from I-95 near Chester north to I-81 near Scranton, serving as the primary north–south Interstate corridor through e ...

. WQPX-TV operates a digital replacement

translator Translation is the communication of the Meaning (linguistic), meaning of a #Source and target languages, source-language text by means of an Dynamic and formal equivalence, equivalent #Source and target languages, target-language text. The ...

on UHF channel 49 that is licensed to Waymart with a transmitter in Forest City. It exists because

wind turbine A wind turbine is a device that converts the kinetic energy of wind into electrical energy. Hundreds of thousands of large turbines, in installations known as wind farms, now generate over 650 gigawatts of power, with 60 GW added each year. ...

s run by

NextEra Energy Resources NextEra Energy Resources, LLC (NEER) is a wholesale electricity supplier based in Juno Beach, Florida. NEER is a subsidiary of NextEra Energy (), a Fortune 200 company. Prior to 2009, NextEra Energy Resources was known as FPL Energy. NextEra ...

at the

Waymart Wind Farm Waymart Wind Farm is the second largest wind farm in Pennsylvania, United States. It consists of 43 GE 1.5 MW wind turbines, with a total net capacity of 64.5 MW, "which is enough renewable energy to power more than 21,000 Pennsylvania homes." The p ...

interfere with the transmission of full-power television signals.

History

WQPX began broadcasting May 18, 1998, with test broadcasts; the official sign on took place June 1. Before WQPX signed on, the station's call sign was WSWB-TV, first used on channel 38 in the early 1980s (before its own sign-on) and currently used on that same station today. WSWB initially planned to sign on in July 1997, but delayed its launch so that it could construct a 5,000,000-watt signal to increase its

must carry In cable television, governments apply a must-carry regulation stating that locally licensed television stations must be carried on a cable provider's system. North America Canada Under current CRTC regulations, the lowest tier of service on ...

reach. Initially, WQPX aired Paxson's InfoMall format of

infomercial An infomercial is a form of television commercial that resembles regular TV programming yet is intended to promote or sell a product, service or idea. It generally includes a toll-free telephone number or website. Most often used as a form of dire ...

s and

religious programming Religious broadcasting, sometimes referred to as faith-based broadcasts, is the dissemination of television and/or radio content that intentionally has religious ideas, religious experience, or religious practice as its core focus. In some coun ...

; on August 31, 1998, the station became one of the launch stations for Pax TV (the forerunner to Ion). On October 5, 1998, WQPX added a secondary affiliation with

UPN The United Paramount Network (UPN) was an American broadcast television network that launched on January 16, 1995. It was originally owned by Chris-Craft Industries' United Television. Viacom (through its Paramount Television unit, which prod ...

as part of a group deal between Paxson Communications and UPN; the network's programming aired in late night, following Pax's prime time lineup. UPN programming had previously aired in weekend late night timeslots on

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 Entertainmen ...

affiliate

WYOU WYOU (channel 22) is a television station licensed to Scranton, Pennsylvania, United States, serving as the CBS affiliate for Northeastern Pennsylvania. It is owned by Mission Broadcasting, which maintains a shared services agreement (SSA) with ...

(channel 22). WQPX dropped UPN in 1999.

The New York Times Company The New York Times Company is an American mass media company that publishes ''The New York Times''. Its headquarters are in Manhattan, New York City. History The company was founded by Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones in New York City. T ...

, then-owner 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

WNEP-TV WNEP-TV (channel 16) is a television station licensed to Scranton, Pennsylvania, United States, serving as the ABC affiliate for Northeastern Pennsylvania. Owned by Tegna Inc., the station maintains studios on Montage Mountain Road in Moosic. Th ...

, announced plans to take over WQPX's advertising sales through a

joint sales agreement In North American broadcasting, a local marketing agreement (LMA), or local management agreement, is a contract in which one company agrees to operate a radio or television station owned by another party. In essence, it is a sort of lease or time ...

in October 2000; the agreement came after negotiations with

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an Television in the United States, American English-language Commercial broadcasting, commercial television network, broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Enterta ...

affiliate

WBRE-TV WBRE-TV (channel 28) is a television station licensed to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, United States, serving Northeastern Pennsylvania as an affiliate of NBC. It is owned by Nexstar Media Group, which provides certain services to Scranton-license ...

(channel 28) fell through. The arrangement with WNEP ended on June 30, 2005, after Paxson Communications terminated all joint sales agreements involving its stations.

Newscasts

From 2001 to 2005, WQPX aired rebroadcasts of newscasts from ABC affiliate WNEP-TV (channel 16) instead of airing newscasts from NBC affiliate WBRE-TV (channel 28).

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

WQPX-TV shut down its analog signal, over

UHF Ultra high frequency (UHF) is the ITU designation for radio frequencies in the range between 300 megahertz (MHz) and 3 gigahertz (GHz), also known as the decimetre band as the wavelengths range from one meter to one tenth of a meter (on ...

channel 64, on June 12, 2009, the official date on which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 32. 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 A ...

, 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 64, which was among the high band UHF channels (52-69) that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Wqpx-Tv Ion Television affiliates Bounce TV affiliates Court TV affiliates Grit (TV network) affiliates Defy TV affiliates Scripps News affiliates E. W. Scripps Company television stations Television channels and stations established in 1998 1998 establishments in Pennsylvania QPX-TV