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 ear ...
licensed to
Brunswick, Georgia
Brunswick () is a city in and the county seat of Glynn County, Georgia, Glynn County in the U.S. state of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. As the primary urban and economic center of the lower southeast portion of Georgia, it is the second-largest ...
, United States, broadcasting the
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 ent ...
network to the
Jacksonville, Florida
Jacksonville is a city located on the Atlantic coast of northeast Florida, the most populous city proper in the state and is the List of United States cities by area, largest city by area in the contiguous United States as of 2020. It is the co ...
area. It is the only major
commercial
Commercial may refer to:
* a dose of advertising conveyed through media (such as - for example - radio or television)
** Radio advertisement
** Television advertisement
* (adjective for:) commerce, a system of voluntary exchange of products and s ...
station in the Jacksonville market that is licensed in
Georgia
Georgia most commonly refers to:
* Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia
* Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States
Georgia may also refer to:
Places
Historical states and entities
* Related to t ...
. The station is
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 (formerly known as Paxson Communications Corporation and Ion Media Networks) was an American broadcasting company that owned and operated over 71 television stations in most major American markets (through its television stations grou ...
Camden County, Georgia
Camden County is a county located in the southeastern corner of the U.S. state of Georgia. According to the 2010 Census, the population was 50,513. Its county seat is Woodbine, and the largest city is St. Marys. It is one of the original co ...
(northwest of
Kingsland Kingsland may refer to:
Places
;Barbados
* Kingsland, Barbados (in Christ Church, Barbados Parish)
;Canada
* Kingsland, Calgary, Alberta, a neighborhood
;Australia
* proposed alternative name for the Northern Territory in 1912
;New Zealand
* Kings ...
).
History
The station was granted a
construction permit
Planning permission or developmental approval refers to the approval needed for construction or expansion (including significant renovation), and sometimes for demolition, in some jurisdictions. It is usually given in the form of a building per ...
by the
Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisd ...
(FCC) on December 28, 1987. The station first signed on the air on April 2, 1990 as WBSG-TV. 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, market ...
, the station became a charter
affiliate
Affiliation or affiliate may refer to:
* Affiliate (commerce), a legal form of entity relationship used in Business Law
* Affiliation (family law), a legal form of family relationship
* Affiliate marketing
* Affiliate network or affiliation pla ...
of
The WB
The WB Television Network (for Warner Bros., or the "Frog Network", for its former mascot, Michigan J. Frog) was an American television network launched on terrestrial television, broadcast television on January 11, 1995, as a joint venture be ...
upon its launch on January 11, 1995. However, WBSG struggled financially, and on August 2, 1996, the station's owner, Coastal Com Inc., entered into a
local marketing 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 tim ...
with the Allbritton Communications Company, set to take effect on September 1; Coastal Com had earlier planned to sell WBSG to Allbritton outright for $10 million. Allbritton was planning to sign on Orange Park-licensed WJXX (channel 25), and intended for WBSG to serve as a semi-satellite of WJXX for the northern part of the market. Allbritton had also signed an agreement to switch the affiliations of its television stations not already affiliated with the network to ABC; this agreement was spurred by a 1994 affiliation deal between
Fox
Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull, upright, triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or ''brush'').
Twelv ...
and
New World Communications
New World Pictures (also known as New World Entertainment and New World Communications Group, Inc.) was an American independent production, distribution, and (in its final years as an autonomous entity) multimedia company. It was founded in 197 ...
(which was the owner of
Birmingham
Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the We ...
ABC affiliate
WBRC
WBRC (channel 6) is a television station in Birmingham, Alabama, United States, affiliated with the Fox Broadcasting Company, Fox network. It is owned by Gray Television alongside low-power broadcasting#Television, low-power, Class A television ...
at the time). WJXX signed on the air on February 9, 1997, taking the ABC affiliation from WJKS (channel 17, now CW affiliate WCWJ). On that same day, WBSG dropped the WB affiliation and began carrying most of WJXX's schedule with deviations for channel 21's own local newscasts. The switch was supposed to occur in April 1997. However, when WJKS announced that it would drop the ABC affiliation in February and join The WB, under the callsign WJWB, ABC asked Allbritton to sign on WJXX two months earlier than originally planned.
Allbritton heavily invested in the two stations, including building studio facilities on A.C. Skinner Parkway in Jacksonville. However, WBSG and WJXX failed to gain significant ratings traction in the market. In addition to the early sign-on, the two stations' combined signal footprint was not nearly as large as those of CBS affiliate WJXT (channel 4, now an independent station) 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 ...
affiliate
WTLV
WTLV (channel 12) is a television station in Jacksonville, Florida, United States, affiliated with NBC. It is owned by Tegna Inc. alongside Orange Park–licensed ABC affiliate WJXX (channel 25). Both stations share studios on East Adams S ...
(channel 12).
After the FCC legalized television station duopolies on November 15, 1999, Allbritton announced the following day that it would sell WJXX to the
Gannett Company
Gannett Co., Inc. () is an American mass media holding company headquartered in McLean, Virginia, in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. When the sale of WJXX to Gannett was finalized in March 2000, Allbritton made WBSG an affiliate of Pax (a forerunner to Ion Television). The network's parent company, Paxson Communications (now Ion Media Networks), bought the station that September, and changed its call letters to WPXC-TV the following year, to reflect the station's new affiliation.
Former translator (WPXJ-LP)
Until September 6, 2013, WPXC-TV was relayed on a low power fill-in
analog
Analog or analogue may refer to:
Computing and electronics
* Analog signal, in which information is encoded in a continuous variable
** Analog device, an apparatus that operates on analog signals
*** Analog electronics, circuits which use analo ...
translator station, WPXJ-LP (channel 41) in Jacksonville. This station was granted a construction permit to operate on UHF channel 59 on November 12, 1986, under the callsign W59BC. A license to cover was issued on July 29, 1988. The station applied to move to UHF channel 41 and became W41BM in 1992. Although the FCC regarded the station as having immediately changed callsigns, the move was not licensed until 1996; a few months later, the station was renamed WDVL-LP.
WDVL was silent by December 1997, when Paxson Communications purchased the station from original owner Jacksonville Translator, Inc. It returned to the air in April 1998 as WPXJ-LP, temporarily carrying programming from Paxson's
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 dir ...
network, the Infomail TV Network (inTV) until the launch of Pax TV on August 31. WPXJ was the only Pax station in the market until WBSG-TV's switch to the network and its subsequent acquisition by Paxson in 2000. The station had a construction permit to
flash-cut
A flash cut, also called a flash cutover, is an immediate change in a complex system, with no phase-in period.
In the United States, some telephone area codes were split or overlaid immediately, rather than being phased in with a permissive dia ...
a digital signal into operation on UHF channel 41, which was never constructed. WPXJ-LP left the air on September 6, 2013 due to the expiration of the lease for its transmitter site; on September 9, 2014, its license was canceled by the FCC.
Programming
Newscasts
During its years as an independent station and later as a WB affiliate, WBSG-TV operated a news department; its local newscasts, branded as ''NewsCenter 21'' with half-hour evening newscasts at 6:00, 10:00 and 11:00 p.m., were targeted at Brunswick and southeast Georgia. After it switched to ABC in December 1996, the station cancelled its 10:00 p.m. newscast as the network began running regular primetime programming during that hour. The news department was shut down in December 1997, when WJXX launched its own news operation and Allbritton transferred most of WBSG's news staff to WJXX (during the stations' first months as an ABC affiliate, the two stations split their simulcast at 6:00 and 11:00 p.m., with WBSG continuing its local newscasts while WJXX aired ''
M*A*S*H
''M*A*S*H'' (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital) is an American media franchise consisting of a series of novels, a film, several television series, plays, and other properties, and based on the semi-autobiographical fiction of Richard Hooker (auth ...
Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL) ...
games from the
Tampa Bay Devil Rays
The Tampa Bay Rays are an American professional baseball team based in St. Petersburg, Florida. The Rays compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) East division. Since its inception, the team's home ve ...
produced by the team's syndication service, the Rays Television Network. The station also aired NBA games from the
Orlando Magic
The Orlando Magic are an American professional basketball team based in Orlando, Florida. The Magic compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Eastern Conference Southeast Division. The franchise was estab ...
during the 2006–07 season. WPXC lost the broadcast rights to both teams after the teams moved all televised games to
regional sports network
In the United States and Canada, a regional sports network (RSN) is a cable television channel (many of which are also distributed on direct broadcast satellite services) that presents sports programming to a local market or geographical region. ...
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
On June 12, 2009, WPXC-TV terminated its analog signal, on
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 21, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television.List of Digital Full-Power Stations /ref> The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 24. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display WPXC-TV'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' ...