KPXC-TV (channel 59) 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 ea ...

Denver, Colorado Denver () is a consolidated city and county, the capital, and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. It is the 19th-most populous city in the Unit ...

, United States, affiliated with

Ion Television Ion Television is an American broadcast television network owned by the Katz Broadcasting subsidiary of the E. W. Scripps Company. The network first began broadcasting on August 31, 1998, as Pax TV, focusing primarily on family-oriented en ...

. Owned by Inyo Broadcast Holdings, the station maintains offices on South Jamaica Court in

Aurora An aurora (plural: auroras or aurorae), also commonly known as the polar lights, is a natural light display in Earth's sky, predominantly seen in high-latitude regions (around the Arctic and Antarctic). Auroras display dynamic patterns of bri ...

, and its transmitter is located in rural southwestern

Weld County Weld County is a county located in the U.S. state of Colorado. As of the 2020 census, the population was 328,981. The county seat is Greeley. Weld County comprises the Greeley, CO Metropolitan Statistical Area, which is included in the Denv ...

, east of

Frederick Frederick may refer to: People * Frederick (given name), the name Nobility Anhalt-Harzgerode *Frederick, Prince of Anhalt-Harzgerode (1613–1670) Austria * Frederick I, Duke of Austria (Babenberg), Duke of Austria from 1195 to 1198 * Frederick ...

History

The station first signed on the air on September 10, 1987, as KUBD. Originally operating 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, marke ...

, the station aired financial news programming from the

Financial News Network The Financial News Network (FNN) was an American financial and business news television network that was launched November 30, 1981. The purpose of the network was to broadcast programming nationwide, five days a week for seven hours a day on t ...

during the daytime hours and ran a general entertainment schedule at night. In 1989, KUBD became the original Denver area affiliate of the

Spanish-language Spanish ( or , Castilian) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from colloquial Latin spoken on the Iberian peninsula. Today, it is a global language with more than 500 million native speakers, mainly in the Am ...

network

Telemundo Telemundo (; formerly NetSpan) is an American Spanish-language terrestrial television network owned by NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises, a division of NBCUniversal, which in turn is owned by Comcast. It provides content nationally with pr ...

. FNN ceased operations two years later, when it was absorbed by

CNBC CNBC (formerly Consumer News and Business Channel) is an American basic cable business news channel. It provides business news programming on weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., Eastern Time, while broadcasting talk s ...

. In 1995, KUBD was sold by its original ownership group (which included satellite TV entrepreneur

Charlie Ergen Charles William Ergen (born March 1, 1953) is an American billionaire businessman. He is co-founder and chairman of Dish Network and EchoStar. He stepped down as CEO of Dish in May 2011 in favor of Joseph Clayton. Ergen resumed as CEO upon Clay ...

) to Christian Network, Inc. (CNI), a non-profit organization co-founded by

Bud Paxson Lowell White "Bud" Paxson (April 17, 1935 – January 9, 2015) was an American media executive. In 1982, Paxson and his business partner, Roy Speer, co-founded the Home Shopping Club (now called the Home Shopping Network). He later established Pax T ...

, for $6.5 million. That year, KUBD switched to

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 dire ...

programming from inTV, and Telemundo programming moved to KSBS-TV (now KRMZ). The CNI stations, including KUBD, were sold to Paxson Communications in 1996. The station changed its

call letters In broadcasting and radio communications, a call sign (also known as a call name or call letters—and historically as a call signal—or abbreviated as a call) is a unique identifier for a transmitter station. A call sign can be formally assigne ...

to KPXC-TV on February 2, 1998; KPXC became a charter owned-and-operated station of Paxson's new family-oriented broadcast network Pax TV (now Ion Television) when the network launched on August 31, 1998. In

2001 The September 11 attacks against the United States by Al-Qaeda, which killed 2,977 people and instigated the global war on terror, were a defining event of 2001. The United States led a multi-national coalition in an invasion of Afghanist ...

, KPXC obtained the local television rights to carry select NHL games featuring the

Colorado Avalanche The Colorado Avalanche (colloquially known as the Avs) are a professional ice hockey team based in Denver. They compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Central Division (NHL), Central Division in the Western Conference (N ...

; the deal to broadcast the games ended in

2003 File:2003 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The crew of STS-107 perished when the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during reentry into Earth's atmosphere; SARS became an epidemic in China, and was a precursor to SARS-CoV-2; A ...

. On December 15, 2014, Ion reached a deal to donate KPXC-TV's low-power repeater in

Fort Collins A fortification is a military construction or building designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is also used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from Latin ''fortis'' ("strong") and ''facere'' ...

, KPXH-LD (channel 25), to Word of God Fellowship, parent company of the Daystar network.

Newscasts

In September 2001, as part of its

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

with that station (the result of an overall deal between Pax TV and

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...

), KPXC-TV began airing tape delayed rebroadcasts of

Gannett Gannett Co., Inc. () is an American mass media holding company headquartered in McLean, Virginia, in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.KUSA-TV KUSA (channel 9) is a television station in Denver, Colorado, United States, affiliated with NBC. It is owned by Tegna Inc. alongside MyNetworkTV affiliate KTVD (channel 20). Both stations share studios on East Speer Boulevard in Denver's S ...

(channel 9)'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 KUSA). 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.

Technical information

Subchannels

The station's digital 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 - a ...

Analog-to-digital conversion

KPXC-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 (on ...

channel 59, 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 43. Through the use of

PSIP The Program and System Information Protocol (PSIP) is the MPEG (a video and audio industry group) and privately defined program-specific information originally defined by General Instrument for the DigiCipher 2 system and later extended for the AT ...

, digital television receivers display the station's

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 via digits on a receiver's ...

as its former UHF analog channel 59, which was among the high band UHF channels (52–69) that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition.

References

External links

* {{Other Colorado Stations Ion Television affiliates PXC-TV Bounce TV affiliates Court TV affiliates Defy TV affiliates TrueReal affiliates Grit (TV network) affiliates Newsy affiliates Television channels and stations established in 1987 1987 establishments in Colorado National Hockey League over-the-air television broadcasters