KPXE-TV

This article is about the Ion Television station in Kansas City. For the airport in Perry, GA, see Perry-Houston County Airport.
KPXE-TV
Kansas City, Missouri-
Kansas City, Kansas
United States
City Kansas City, Missouri
Branding Ion Television
Slogan Positively Entertaining
Channels Digital: 30 (UHF)
Virtual: 50 (PSIP)
Subchannels 50.1 Ion Television
50.2 qubo
50.3 Ion Life
50.4 Ion Shop
50.5 QVC
50.6 HSN
Affiliations Ion Television
Owner Ion Media Networks
(Ion Media Kansas City License, Inc.)
First air date October 29, 1969 (1969-10-29)
Call letters' meaning PaXson Entertainment
Former callsigns KCIT-TV (1969–1971)
KYFC (1978–1997)
KINB (1997–1998)
Former channel number(s) Analog:
50 (UHF, 1969–1971, 1978–2009)
Digital:
51 (UHF, 2004–2015)
Former affiliations Independent (1969–1971 and 1978–1998)
Silent (1971–1978)
Pax TV (1998–2005)
i (2005–2007)
Transmitter power 1000 kW
Height 339 m
Facility ID 33337
Transmitter coordinates 39°1′19.9″N 94°30′49.7″W / 39.022194°N 94.513806°W / 39.022194; -94.513806
Licensing authority FCC
Public license information: Profile
CDBS
Website www.iontelevision.com/

KPXE-TV, virtual channel 50 (UHF digital channel 30, is an Ion Television owned-and-operated television station serving Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansas, United States. The station is owned by Ion Media Networks. KPXE maintains offices located on Oak Street and Cleaver Boulevard in Kansas City, Missouri, and its transmitter is located on that city's Brown Estates section. On cable, the station is available on SureWest channel 15, Time Warner Cable channel 16 and AT&T U-verse channel 50. There is a high definition feed provided on Time Warner Cable channel 1218 and Surewest digital channel 705 and AT&T U-verse channel 1050.

History

The station first signed on the air on October 29, 1969 as KCIT-TV (probably standing for "Kansas City Independent Television"). Founded by Allied Broadcasting, it was the first independent station to sign on in the Kansas City market, and the first new commercial station to sign on in the area since the short-lived DuMont Television Network affiliate KCTY (on channel 25) debuted in 1954. KCIT filled its schedule mostly with programming that the network affiliates in the market – KCMO-TV (channel 5, now KCTV), KMBC-TV (channel 9) and WDAF-TV (channel 4) -- had chosen to turn down. However, in some cases, the network affiliates turned down so many shows that even KCIT could not air them all. Among the notable pre-empted network shows that it carried included The Brady Bunch, Days of Our Lives, the ABC Evening News, Meet the Press, The Merv Griffin Show and American Bandstand.[1] It also managed to produce a few local programs. One of them was Torey and Friends, hosted by popular children's host Torey Southwick. Landing Southwick was a major coup for the station, as he had been hosting local programs on KMBC-TV since 1960.

However, KCIT received competition in August 1970, when KBMA-TV (channel 41, now NBC affiliate KSHB-TV) began broadcasting. KBMA had wealthier owners and a stronger signal than channel 50; KCIT lost its early appeal as a result. Around this time, Allied Broadcasting had gotten into severe financial straits. By late June, the station had bumped its sign-on time to 2:30 p.m. By the end of the month, the station had finally decided to call it quits. During the last week in June and the first week of July, it was only on the air for two hours a day – the minimum required by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to cover the license. The first iteration of Channel 50 signed off for good on July 7, 1971. KBMA became the sole independent station in Kansas City for several years afterward until KEKR-TV (channel 62, now KSMO-TV) signed on in September 1983 (the KCIT call letters are now assigned to a Fox-affiliated station in Amarillo, Texas).

The channel 50 license remained dormant for seven years; at the time, the FCC was not willing to delete licenses for television stations with UHF allocations. The station returned to the air on December 17, 1978 as KYFC-TV, named after its owner, Kansas City Youth For Christ. Operating as a noncommercial independent station, its lineup largely consisted of religious programming through the 1980s, however a few "family-friendly" secular shows had been added to its schedule. The station ran newscasts from CNN Headline News at least once a day for several years, replacing the commercials during breaks within the simulcasts with other announcements.

Pledges to support the station declined during the 1990s. Station managers also grew concerned about the cost of converting to digital operations, something they were reluctant to pass on to their financial supporters. In 1997, the station was sold to Paxson Communications (the forerunner to Ion Media Networks), and began to air infomercials from the Infomail TV Network (inTV) and programming from The Worship Network shortly thereafter, along with some religious programs. On April 28 of that year, the station also changed its call letters to KINB. On January 13, 1998, the station changed its callsign again, this time to KPXE; then eight months later on August 31, the station became a charter owned-and-operated station of Pax TV when that network launched.

In 2001, KPXE entered into a joint sales agreement with NBC affiliate KSHB, as part of an agreement between Paxson Communications and three stations owned by the E. W. Scripps Company (which also involved KSHB sister stations WPTV in West Palm Beach, Florida and KJRH in Tulsa, Oklahoma).[2]

Digital television

Digital channels

Channel Video Aspect PSIP Short Name Network
50.1 720p 16:9 ION Ion Television
50.2 480i 4:3 qubo Qubo
50.3 IONLife Ion Life
50.4 Shop Ion Shop
50.5 QVC QVC
50.6 HSN HSN

[3]

Prior to January 31, 2010, KPXE offered The Worship Network on digital subchannel 50.4. KPXE began broadcasting its main 50.1 channel in high definition in late spring 2010.

Analog-to-digital conversion

KPXE-TV shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 50, 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 51.[4] Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 50.

In early 2015, KPXE was granted a construction permit by the FCC to move their signal to channel 30, as the FCC is selling off the high UHF spectrum for wireless communications. Viewers will still see channel 50 on their televisions via PSIP. The move to channel 30 took place in the early morning hours of May 30, 2015, with the FCC issuing the license to operate on channel 30 on July 6, 2015.

Newscasts

In September 2001, as part of its joint sales agreement with that station, KPXE-TV began airing tape delayed rebroadcasts of KSHB-TV's 6:00 and 10:00 p.m. newscasts each Monday through Friday evening at 6:30 and 10:30 p.m. (the latter beginning shortly before that program's live broadcast ended on KSHB). The news rebroadcasts ended on June 30, 2005, when the network's other news share agreements with major network affiliates throughout the United States were terminated upon the network's rebranding as i: Independent Television, as a result of the network's financial troubles.

References

  1. ↑ The Little Station That Couldn't
  2. ↑ PAX TV Enters Into Joint Sales Agreements With the E.W. Scripps Company's NBC-Affiliated Stations in Kansas City, West Palm Beach and Tulsa, Business Wire, January 10, 2001. Retrieved February 16, 2011 from HighBeam Research.
  3. ↑ RabbitEars TV Query for KPXE
  4. ↑ "DTV Tentative Channel Designations for the First and Second Rounds" (PDF). Retrieved 2012-03-24.

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Monday, April 11, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.