| Greensboro/Winston-Salem, North Carolina | |
|---|---|
| City of license | Burlington, North Carolina |
| Branding | ION Television |
| Channels | Digital: 14 (UHF) |
| Affiliations | Ion Television |
| Owner | Ion Media Networks, Inc. (Ion Media Greensboro License, Inc.) |
| First air date | August 7, 1984 |
| Call letters' meaning | Greensboro's PaX TV |
| Former callsigns | WRDG (1984-1990) WAAP (1990-1998) |
| Former channel number(s) | Analog: 16 (UHF, 1984-2009) |
| Former affiliations | independent (religious) (1984-1993) independent (general) (1993-1996) inTV (1996-1998) Pax TV (1998-2005) i (2005-2007) |
| Transmitter power | 95 kW |
| Height | 213 m |
| Facility ID | 65074 |
| Website | www.ionline.tv |
WGPX-TV is the Ion Television affiliate licensed to Burlington, North Carolina and serving the Greensboro/Winston-Salem/High Point television market. It is owned by ION Media Networks and broadcasts on UHF digital channel 14. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display WGPX's virtual channel as 16.
The station signed on as WRDG in 1984 with a religious format. It became WAAP in 1990, continuing to air religious shows as well as adding home shopping programming from Shop at Home. The station added cartoons in the early mornings and afternoons in the fall of 1992, and some low budget barter entertainment shows in the evenings in the winter of that year. For a brief time in 1991/1992, WAAP ran a local newscast, "News Source 16". WXII-TV weatherman Austin Caviness was one of the personalities. By 1993, WAAP had become a general entertainment station running mostly barter shows and professional wrestling from the United States Wrestling Association, Smoky Mountain Wrestling, and the World Wrestling Federation.
The station originally desired to affiliate with UPN and WB when those networks launched in 1995, but both networks affiliated with other stations instead (WB with WTWB-TV; UPN with WXLV-TV/WUPN-TV). By the fall of that year, WAAP did manage to pick up a few syndicated cartoons from WXLV and WUPN.
Paxson bought the station in July 1996, and by the end of the year, WAAP was running infomercials and religious shows from morning to evening and Worship music overnight. The station changed its call letters to WGPX in January 1998, and became an affiliate of Pax TV that August. In July 2005, Pax TV became i, and on January 29, 2007, the network was again renamed, this time to ION Television. Along with its name change to Ion, WGPX began broadcasting three other networks on its new Digital TV channels, including Qubo Children's Network (16.2), ION Life Health Network (16.3), and Worship Network (16.4). (The Worship Network was removed from all Ion-owned stations, including WGPX, on February 1, 2010.)
The station broadcast for many years from a transmitter located in the Cane Creek Mountains near Snow Camp, but has since moved their transmitter to southern Rockingham County.
In Virginia, WGPX is available on DirecTV in Grayson County, which is part of the Roanoke media market.
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