WQPX-TV (channel 64) 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's s ...

licensed to

Scranton, Pennsylvania Scranton is a city in and the county seat of Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania, United States. With a population of 76,328 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, Scranton is the most populous city in Northeastern Pennsylvania and the ...

, United States, broadcasting the

Ion Television Ion Television (referred to on-air as simply Ion) is an American broadcast television network and FAST television channel owned by the Scripps Networks subsidiary of the E. W. Scripps Company. The network first began broadcasting on August ...

network to

Northeastern Pennsylvania Northeastern Pennsylvania (NEPA or Nepa) is a region of the U.S. state of Pennsylvania that includes the Pocono Mountains, the Endless Mountains, and the industrial cities of Scranton (the area's largest city), Wilkes-Barre, Pittston, Ha ...

Owned and operated In the broadcasting industry, an owned-and-operated station (frequently abbreviated as an O&O) usually refers to a television or radio station owned by the network with which it is associated. This distinguishes such a station from an affiliate ...

by the

Ion Media Ion Media, LLC (formerly known as Paxson Communications Corporation and Ion Media Networks) is a subsidiary of the E.W. Scripps Company that operates the linear broadcast networks Ion Television, Ion Mystery, and Ion Plus. Prior to its acquis ...

subsidiary of the

E. W. Scripps Company The E. W. Scripps Company, also known as Scripps, 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 conglom ...

, the station has offices on Lackawanna Avenue in downtown Scranton, and its transmitter is located on Bald Mountain, northwest of Scranton and

I-476 Interstate 476 (I-476) is a auxiliary Interstate Highway of I-76 in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. The highway runs from I-95 near Chester north to I-81 near Scranton, serving as the primary north–south Interstate corridor through ea ...

History

WQPX began broadcasting May 18, 1998, with test broadcasts; the official sign on took place June 1. Before WQPX signed on, the station's call sign was WSWB-TV, first used on channel 38 in the early 1980s (before its own sign-on) and currently used on that same station today. WSWB initially planned to sign on in July 1997, but delayed its launch so that it could construct a 5,000,000-watt signal to increase its

must carry In cable television, many governments, including the ones of the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada, apply a must-carry regulation stating that forces a cable TV provider to carry the public interest programming, like locally licensed te ...

reach. Initially, WQPX aired Paxson's InfoMall format of

infomercial An infomercial is a form of television commercial that resembles regular TV programming yet is intended to promote or sell a product, service or idea. It generally includes a toll-free telephone number or website. Most often used as a form of di ...

s and

religious programming Religious broadcasting, sometimes referred to as faith-based broadcasts, is the dissemination of television and/or radio content that intentionally has religious ideas, religious experience, or religious practice as its core focus. In some coun ...

; on August 31, 1998, the station became one of the launch stations for Pax TV (the forerunner to Ion). On October 5, 1998, WQPX added a secondary affiliation with

UPN The United Paramount Network (UPN) was an American broadcast television network that operated from 1995 to 2006. It was originally a joint venture between Chris-Craft Industries (later sold to News Corporation)'s subsidiary, United Television, ...

as part of a group deal between Paxson Communications and UPN; the network's programming aired in late night, following Pax's prime time lineup. UPN programming had previously aired in weekend late night timeslots on

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS (an abbreviation of its original name, Columbia Broadcasting System), is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainme ...

affiliate

WYOU WYOU (channel 22) is a television station licensed to Scranton, Pennsylvania, United States, serving as the CBS affiliate for Northeastern Pennsylvania. It is owned by Mission Broadcasting, which maintains a shared services agreement (SSA) wit ...

(channel 22). WQPX dropped UPN in 1999.

The New York Times Company The New York Times Company is an American mass media corporation that publishes ''The New York Times'' and its associated publications such as ''The New York Times International Edition'' and other media properties. The New York Times Company's ...

, then-owner of

ABC ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script. ABC or abc may also refer to: Arts, entertainment and media Broadcasting * Aliw Broadcasting Corporation, Philippine broadcast company * American Broadcasting Company, a commercial American ...

affiliate

WNEP-TV WNEP-TV (channel 16) is a television station licensed to Scranton, Pennsylvania, United States, serving as the ABC affiliate for Northeastern Pennsylvania. Owned by Tegna Inc., the station maintains studios on Montage Mountain Road in Moosic. ...

, announced plans to take over WQPX's advertising sales through a

joint sales agreement In North American broadcasting, a local marketing agreement (LMA), or local management agreement, is a contract in which one corporation, company agrees to operate a radio station, radio or television station owned by another party. In essence, it ...

in October 2000; the agreement came after negotiations with

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. It is one of NBCUniversal's ...

affiliate

WBRE-TV WBRE-TV (channel 28) is a television station licensed to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, United States, serving Northeastern Pennsylvania as an affiliate of NBC. It is owned by Nexstar Media Group, which provides certain services to Scranton-license ...

(channel 28) fell through. The arrangement with WNEP ended on June 30, 2005, after Paxson Communications terminated all joint sales agreements involving its stations.

Newscasts

From 2001 to 2005, WQPX aired rebroadcasts of newscasts from ABC affiliate WNEP-TV (channel 16) instead of airing newscasts from NBC affiliate WBRE-TV (channel 28).

Technical information

Subchannels

The station's signal is

multiplexed In telecommunications and computer networking, multiplexing (sometimes contracted to muxing) is a method by which multiple analog or digital signals are combined into one signal over a shared medium. The aim is to share a scarce resource— ...

Analog-to-digital conversion

WQPX-TV 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 ...

channel 64, on June 12, 2009, the official date on 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 32, using

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 as digits on a receiver's ...

64.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Wqpx-Tv 1998 establishments in Pennsylvania Bounce TV affiliates Court TV affiliates E. W. Scripps Company television stations Grit (TV network) affiliates Ion Plus affiliates Ion Television affiliates Television channels and stations established in 1998 QPX-TV