WPXH-TV

WPXH-TV, virtual channel 44 (UHF digital channel 45), is an Ion Television owned-and-operated television station serving Birmingham, Tuscaloosa and Anniston, Alabama, United States that is licensed to Gadsden. The station is owned by Ion Media Networks. WPXH maintains offices located on Golden Crest Drive in Birmingham, and its transmitter is located in Oneonta.

History

The station first signed on the air in April 1986 as WNAL-TV, operating as a full-time satellite station of WDBB (channel 17) in Tuscaloosa. The two stations combined were intended to serve the Birmingham market, with WDBB serving the southern part of the market and WNAL serving the northern part of the area. After seven months as independent stations, WDBB and WNAL became charter affiliates of Fox when that network launched on October 6, 1986. Despite the stations' relatively strong program lineup, fellow independent station WTTO (channel 21) in Homewood had stronger ratings than channels 44 and 17. Additionally, neither WNAL nor WDBB had a strong signal reach into Birmingham, even after WDBB built a new transmission tower in Bessemer (located 18 miles (29 km) southwest of the city) in an attempt to improve its signal coverage in the Birmingham area, and several Birmingham cable companies declined to carry the stations. As a result, WDBB/WNAL was not profitable.

In January 1991, Fox moved its Birmingham affiliation to WTTO, after all efforts to get better cable coverage for WDBB/WNAL failed. Soon afterward, WDBB and WNAL began simulcasting WTTO for all but two hours of the broadcast day. By 1993, WDBB and WNAL operated as full-time satellites of WTTO. The WTTO/WNAL/WDBB combination (which nonetheless branded only as "Fox 21", signifying WTTO's channel allocation) eventually became one of the strongest Fox affiliates in the country. In 1995, both WNAL and WDBB began airing separate programming during the daytime hours. That year, WNAL was purchased by Fant Broadcasting.

In 1994, Citicasters sold longtime ABC affiliate WBRC-TV (channel 6) to New World Communications (which had signed a deal with Fox that May to affiliate with twelve of its stations after acquiring the rights to the NFL's National Football Conference television package^[2]) – only to place it in an outside trust company, which would then sell it directly to Fox, after New World purchased NBC affiliate WVTM-TV (channel 13) in a four-station deal with Argyle Broadcasting (which would have left New World over the FCC-mandated limit of 12 stations that was in effect at the time). This forced a complicated series of affiliation changes for six central Alabama stations that took effect on September 1, 1996. On that date, WBRC became the sole Fox affiliate for central Alabama (after having to be run as an ABC affiliate for a year under Fox ownership as its affiliation contract with the network did not expire until September 1); CBS affiliates WCFT-TV (channel 33) in Tuscaloosa and WJSU-TV (channel 40) in Anniston, became full-power satellites to the Birmingham market’s new ABC affiliate, WBMA-LP (channel 58). WNAL, which prior to the massive affiliation switch had become a secondary affiliate of The WB, became the CBS affiliate for northeast Alabama.

In 1998, the Tuscaloosa and Anniston/Gadsden areas were merged back into the Birmingham market as the result of the 1996 merger of WCFT, WJSU, and WBMA-LP into Birmingham's ABC affiliate, causing it to jump 12 places from 51st to 39th place among the Nielsen media markets;^[3] in effect, resulting in the market becoming very large geographically, stretching across nearly the entire width of the state from the Alabama-Georgia state line westward to the Mississippi-Alabama border. The market's official CBS affiliate was Birmingham-licensed WBMG (channel 42, now WIAT).

Around this time, Paxson Communications (now Ion Media Networks) purchased WNAL with the intent of making it a charter owned-and-operated station of Pax TV (later i: Independent Television, now Ion Television) for the Birmingham market. Soon afterwards, the station changed its call letters to WPXH-TV. However, channel 44 remained a CBS affiliate even after Pax TV debuted on August 31, 1998. In May 1999, WPXH dropped its CBS affiliation, and briefly became an independent station targeting Anniston and surrounding areas. The station finally switched to Pax TV in August 1999.

Digital channels

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Analog-to-digital conversion

WPXH-TV shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 44, 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 45.^[5] Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 44.

Newscasts

When WPXH (as WNAL-TV) became a CBS affiliate in 1996, it opted not to start its own news department. Instead, the station entered into a news share agreement with WBMG to simulcast its 6:00 and 10:00 p.m. newscasts (which were briefly suspended when the station's newscasts were temporarily canceled in early 1998, as its news department was being rebooted due to persistent low ratings); the WIAT news simulcasts were dropped in 1999, when channel 44 became an independent station.

After becoming a Pax TV owned-and-operated station, WPXH entered into a news share agreement with WVTM-TV as part of the network's management agreement with NBC, and began airing rebroadcasts that station's 6:00 and 10:00 p.m. newscasts on a half-hour delay (at 6:30 and 10:30 p.m.) starting in 2001; the rebroadcasts were dropped on June 30, 2005, the day prior to Pax's rebranding as i: Independent Television.

References

External links

• Ion Television website
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WPXH
• BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on WPXH-TV