WUPX-TV (channel 67) 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

Richmond, Kentucky Richmond is a home rule-class city in and the county seat of Madison County, Kentucky, United States. It is named after Richmond, Virginia, and is home to Eastern Kentucky University. In 2019, the population was 36,157. Richmond is the fourth-la ...

, United States, serving the Lexington area as an affiliate of

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 ...

. The station is owned by Inyo Broadcast Holdings, and maintains a transmitter on High Bridge Road north of Bryantsville, Kentucky.

History

construction permit Planning permission or developmental approval refers to the approval needed for construction or expansion (including significant renovation), and sometimes for demolition, in some jurisdictions. It is usually given in the form of a building perm ...

for WAOM was issued on October 14, 1985. Originally licensed to

Morehead, Kentucky Morehead is a list of Kentucky cities, home rule-class city located along U.S. Route 60 in Kentucky, US 60 (the historic Midland Trail) and Interstate 64 in Kentucky, Interstate 64 in Rowan County, Kentucky, Rowan County, Kentucky, in the United ...

, the station signed on the air on June 1, 1998, with low-powered

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 ...

affiliate

WBLU-LP WBLU-LP (channel 62) is a defunct Low-power broadcasting#Television, low-power television station in Lexington, Kentucky, United States. Owned by Equity Media Holdings, the station broadcast its signal from downtown Lexington and provided coverag ...

(channel 62) signing on a year later. Both stations simulcast programming from UPN and

The WB The WB Television Network (for Warner Bros., or the "Frog Network", for its former mascot, Michigan J. Frog) was an American television network launched on broadcast television on January 11, 1995, as a joint venture between the Warner Bros. ...

as well as

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 until WAOM was sold off in 2001. After WAOM was sold, WBLU-LP lost both The WB and UPN in 2003 and 2004, respectively, to become independent, and at some point became affiliated with

MyNetworkTV MyNetworkTV (unofficially abbreviated MyTV, MyNet, MNT or MNTV, and sometimes referred to as My Network) is an American commercial broadcast television syndication service and former television network owned by Fox Corporation, operated by its ...

and RTV. WBLU-LP is no longer broadcasting as it went

dark Darkness, the direct opposite of lightness, is defined as a lack of illumination, an absence of visible light, or a surface that absorbs light, such as black or brown. Human vision is unable to distinguish colors in conditions of very low lum ...

in 2009 after its parent company went

bankrupt Bankruptcy is a legal process through which people or other entities who cannot repay debts to creditors may seek relief from some or all of their debts. In most jurisdictions, bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debt ...

. In 2001, WAOM-TV was sold to Paxson Communications (now

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 ...

), became a Pax TV owned-and-operated station and changed its

callsign In broadcasting and radio communications, a call sign (also known as a call name or call letters—and historically as a call signal—or abbreviated as a call) is a unique identifier for a transmitter station. A call sign can be formally assigne ...

to the current WUPX-TV. Pax TV became i: Independent Television in 2005, and then Ion Television in 2007. On December 11, 2018, the FCC granted WUPX-TV's petition to change its

city of license In American, Canadian, and Mexican broadcasting, a city of license or community of license is the community that a radio station or television station is officially licensed to serve by that country's broadcast regulator. In North American broa ...

from Morehead to

. The move was conditioned upon the station providing continued service to Morehead.

Near sale to Scripps; sale to Inyo Broadcast Holdings

On September 24, 2020, the

Cincinnati Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line wit ...

-based

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 ...

announced that it would purchase Ion Media for $2.65 billion, with financing from

Berkshire Hathaway Berkshire Hathaway Inc. () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate holding company headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, United States. Its main business and source of capital is insurance, from ...

. With this purchase, Scripps will divest 23 Ion-owned stations, but no announcement was made as to which stations that Scripps would divest as part of the move. However, on October 16, 2020, it was announced that WUPX-TV would be one of the stations that Scripps would spin off as part of the merger. The buyer, revealed in an October 2020 FCC filing to be Inyo Broadcast Holdings, has promised to maintain the stations' Ion Television affiliations after the purchase. The proposed divestitures will allow the merged company to fully comply with the FCC local and national ownership regulations. This would have made it a

sister station In broadcasting, sister stations or sister channels are radio or television stations operated by the same company, either by direct ownership or through a management agreement. Radio sister stations will often have different formats, and somet ...

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 WLEX-TV (channel 18) if Scripps had decided to keep WUPX-TV, but Lexington has fewer than eight independently owned and operating full-power television stations, not enough to permit a duopoly in any case.E.W. Scripps scales up with $2.65 billion Berkshire-backed deal for ION Media
/ref> The transaction was finalized and closed on January 7, 2021.

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

WUPX-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 67, 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 remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 21. 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 67, which was among the high band UHF channels (52–69) that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition.

TV spectrum repack

WUPX moved its channel allocation from digital channel 21 to channel 25 in 2019, but it remained on virtual channel 67. The station relocated its transmitter to a tower southwest of Lexington formerly used by

Fox Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull, upright, triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or ''brush''). Twelve sp ...

affiliate

WDKY-TV WDKY-TV (channel 56) is a television station licensed to Danville, Kentucky, United States, serving the Lexington area as an affiliate of the Fox network. The station is owned by Nexstar Media Group and maintains studios on Euclid Avenue in Le ...

(channel 56).

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Wupx-Tv UPX-TV Ion Television affiliates Grit (TV network) affiliates Ion Mystery affiliates Scripps News affiliates Laff (TV network) affiliates Defy TV affiliates TrueReal affiliates Television channels and stations established in 1998 1998 establishments in Kentucky Richmond, Kentucky