WYPX-TV (channel 55) 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

Amsterdam, New York Amsterdam is a city in Montgomery County, New York, United States. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 18,219. The city is named after Amsterdam in the Netherlands. The City of Amsterdam is surrounded on the northern, eastern ...

, United States, serving the

Capital District A capital district, capital region or capital territory is normally a specially designated administrative division where a country's seat of government is located. As such, in a federal model of government, no state or territory has any politica ...

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 ...

. Owned by Inyo Broadcast Holdings, the station has offices on Charles Boulevard in

Guilderland Guilderland is a town in Albany County, New York, United States. In the 2020 census, the town had a population of 36,848. The town is named for the Gelderland province in the Netherlands. The town of Guilderland is on the central-northwest borde ...

, and its transmitter is located in the

Helderberg Escarpment The Helderberg Escarpment, also known as the Helderberg Mountains, is an escarpment in eastern New York, United States, roughly west of the city of Albany. The escarpment is the northeastern extremity of the Allegheny Plateau. It rises steepl ...

in New Scotland.

History

The station signed on the air in 1987 as an

independent station An independent station is an independent radio or terrestrial television station which is independent in some way from broadcast networks. The definition of "independence" varies from country to country, reflecting governmental regulations, market ...

under the

call letters 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 ...

WOCD. It was owned by Amsterdam Broadcasting, a subsidiary of Coit Services of

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

, and was leased to Christian Community Television (CCT) of

Schenectady, New York Schenectady () is a city in Schenectady County, New York, United States, of which it is the county seat. As of the 2020 census, the city's population of 67,047 made it the state's ninth-largest city by population. The city is in eastern New Y ...

. CCT faced financial troubles from the outset and they soon fell behind on their payments, so Amsterdam Broadcasting reassumed control of the station. The station went dormant in 1989, but in 1991, Coit struck a deal to sell the station to

Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to th ...

TV executive Wade Griffith for $1.8 million. Griffith would have relaunched the station as WNSI, but the deal fell through, and WOCD was sold to Cornerstone Television, a religious broadcaster, for $375,000 in 1992. The second incarnation of WOCD had problems getting cable carriage in much of the market which combined with the looming conversion to digital television led the station to be sold again. In 1997, Paxson Communications bought WOCD from Cornerstone, moved the station's offices from Scotia, New York to Guilderland, and made the station an outlet for the Infomall Television Network (inTV). The call sign was changed to WYPX on January 13, 1998; however, the new calls confused some people as there was a

radio station Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radio ...

with a similar call sign in the Albany market. WYPX became a charter station for the Pax TV network when it launched on August 31, 1998. WYPX also 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 ...

on October 5, 1998, airing the network's programming in late night hours following Pax's primetime programming. WVBG-LP (channel 25), a low-power station in Albany, also joined UPN as a primary affiliate the same day; the affiliation deal with WYPX was made before the network agreed to affiliate with WVBG (as Albany had no UPN affiliate at the time, though area cable systems imported

WSBK-TV WSBK-TV (channel 38) is an independent television station in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It is owned by the CBS News and Stations group alongside CBS owned-and-operated station WBZ-TV (channel 4). Both stations share studios on So ...

from

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

). WYPX retained its secondary UPN affiliation despite WVBG's affiliation; however, UPN programming disappeared from channel 55 in 1999. In 2001, WYPX entered into 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 ...

with

Hubbard Broadcasting Hubbard Broadcasting, Inc. is an American television and radio broadcasting corporation based in St. Paul, Minnesota. It was founded by Stanley E. Hubbard. The corporation has broadcast outlets scattered across Minnesota, Wisconsin, Missouri, ...

, owner of NBC affiliate WNYT (channel 13); under this arrangement, WNYT sold advertising time on WYPX, while WYPX aired replays of WNYT's news and public affairs programming. Paxson terminated all joint sales agreements involving its stations in June 2005 as part of its relaunch of Pax TV as i: Independent Television.

Technical information

Subchannels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:

Analog-to-digital conversion

WYPX-DT signed on the air on UHF channel 50 and broadcasts at 450 kW from the same transmitter site in early 2005. WYPX-TV requested permission from the FCC to shut down their analog signal on channel 55 so that the bandwidth could be used for

Qualcomm Qualcomm () is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Diego, California, and incorporated in Delaware. It creates semiconductors, software, and services related to wireless technology. It owns patents critical to the 5G, 4 ...

MediaFLO MediaFLO was a technology developed by Qualcomm for transmitting audio, video and data to portable devices such as mobile phones and personal televisions, used for mobile television. In the United States, the service powered by this technology wa ...

service. Qualcomm had made deals with other stations on channel 55, including

WLNY-TV WLNY-TV (channel 55) is an independent television station licensed to Riverhead, New York, United States, serving the New York City television market. It is owned by the CBS News and Stations group alongside CBS flagship WCBS-TV (channel 2). Bot ...

Riverhead, New York Riverhead is a town within Suffolk County, New York, United States, on the north shore of Long Island. Since 1727, Riverhead has been the county seat of Suffolk County, though most county offices are in Hauppauge. As of the 2020 census, the po ...

, to shut down analog so that they could launch their new multimedia offering on April 12, 2007. It was granted permission by the FCC to shut down its analog broadcast, surrender its analog license, and operate as a digital-only station on channel 50 on September 6, 2007. The station 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 55, on September 28, 2007. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 50. Through the use of PSIP, 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 55, 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:Wypx-Tv Montgomery County, New York Ion Television affiliates Bounce TV affiliates Defy TV affiliates Court TV affiliates Grit (TV network) affiliates TrueReal affiliates Newsy affiliates Television channels and stations established in 1987 1987 establishments in New York (state) YPX-TV