WPXL-TV
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

WPXL-TV (channel 49) is a television station in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States, broadcasting the Ion Television network. It is owned and operated by the Ion Media 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 OrleansSt. 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 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 ...
with a general entertainment format, along with numerous CBS programs preempted by WWL-TV (channel 4), including '' CBS This Morning''. 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, 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 A license (or licence) is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something (as well as the document of that permission or permit). A license is granted by a party (licensor) to another party (licensee) as an element of an agreeme ...
out of bankruptcy and returned channel 49 to the air on May 25, 1994, carrying programming from the
Home Shopping Network HSN, an initialism of its former name Home Shopping Network, is an American free-to-air television network owned by the Qurate Retail Group, which also owns catalog company Cornerstone Brands. Based in the Gateway area of St. Petersburg, Flor ...
. 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), owner of NBC affiliate WDSU (channel 6), to provide advertising and marketing services for WPXL.


Hurricane Katrina

In early September 2005, shortly after
Hurricane Katrina Hurricane Katrina was a destructive Category 5 Atlantic hurricane that caused over 1,800 fatalities and $125 billion in damage in late August 2005, especially in the city of New Orleans and the surrounding areas. It was at the time the cost ...
made landfall in southern Louisiana, WPXL partnered with WDSU, whose transmitter building in
Chalmette Chalmette ( ) is a census-designated place (CDP) in, and the parish seat of, St. Bernard Parish in southeastern Louisiana, United States. The 2010 census reported that Chalmette had 16,751 people; 2011 population was listed as 17,119; however, th ...
was damaged due to flooding caused by the storm, to simulcast channel 6's programming. The station also added programming from The Worship Network and the signals of the Tribune Broadcasting-owned
duopoly A duopoly (from Greek δύο, ''duo'' "two" and πωλεῖν, ''polein'' "to sell") is a type of oligopoly where two firms have dominant or exclusive control over a market. It is the most commonly studied form of oligopoly due to its simplicit ...
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 (channel 26) and CW affiliate WNOL-TV (channel 38) as subchannels on its digital signal for New Orleans area residents that had television sets with built-in
digital Digital usually refers to something using discrete digits, often binary digits. Technology and computing Hardware *Digital electronics, electronic circuits which operate using digital signals **Digital camera, which captures and stores digital i ...
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 and lifestyle network
Ion Life Ion Plus is an American free linear television network owned by the Katz Broadcasting subsidiary of the E. W. Scripps Company that formerly operated as a broadcast television network until February 28, 2021. The network originally launched in 20 ...
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
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 ...
WPXX WPXX-TV (channel 50) is a television station in Memphis, Tennessee, United States, affiliated with Ion Television. Owned by Inyo Broadcast Holdings, WPXX-TV maintains studios and transmitter facilities on Brother Boulevard in Bartlett, Tennessee. ...
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 In radio and television, broadcast delay is an intentional delay when broadcasting live material, technically referred to as a deferred live. Such a delay may be to prevent mistakes or unacceptable content from being broadcast. Longer delays las ...
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:


Analog-to-digital conversion

WPXL 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 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, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel 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