WPXR-TV (channel 38) 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

Roanoke, Virginia Roanoke ( ) is an Independent city (United States), independent city in Virginia, United States. It lies in Southwest Virginia, along the Roanoke River, in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Blue Ridge range of the greater Appalachian Mountains. Roanok ...

, 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 the Roanoke– Lynchburg

market Market is a term used to describe concepts such as: *Market (economics), system in which parties engage in transactions according to supply and demand *Market economy *Marketplace, a physical marketplace or public market *Marketing, the act of sat ...

. 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, 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 ...

, and maintains a transmitter atop

Poor Mountain Poor Mountain is a ridge of high peaks located in Roanoke County, Virginia and Montgomery County, Virginia. At 3,928 feet, Poor Mountain is the tallest mountain in the immediate area. Poor Mountain has the largest known population, by far, of ...

in unincorporated southwestern

Roanoke County Roanoke County ( ) is a county in the U.S. state of the Commonwealth of Virginia. As of the 2020 census, its population was 96,929. Its county seat is Salem, but the county administrative offices are located in the census-designated place of ...

History

The station signed on January 3, 1986, as WEFC, a

religious Religion is a range of social- cultural systems, including designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relate humanity to supernatural ...

station owned by Evangel

Foursquare Church The Foursquare Church is an international Pentecostal Christian denomination founded in 1923 by evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson. It lies within the evangelical tradition. Its headquarters are in Los Angeles, California, United States. H ...

(hence the call letters). It was the first non-network affiliated station in Roanoke, and the first new UHF station in the market to sign on following the demise of

WRLU WRLU (104.1 FM) is a radio station broadcasting a mainstream country format. Licensed to serve Algoma, Wisconsin, United States, the station serves Door A door is a hinged or otherwise movable barrier that allows ingress (entry) into an ...

channel 27 nearly 11 years earlier. Coincidentally, a new channel 27, under the calls of WVFT, would sign on two months after WEFC, carrying a similar format. Paxson Communications bought the station in 1997 and made it part of the all-

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 ...

inTV network. It joined Pax TV (later i: Independent Television and now Ion Television) on the network's launch in 1998.

Newscasts

From September 1996 until August 1997,

WDBJ WDBJ (channel 7) is a television station licensed to Roanoke, Virginia, United States, serving as the CBS affiliate for the Roanoke–Lynchburg, Virginia, Lynchburg media market, market. It is owned by Gray Media alongside Danville, Virginia, Da ...

produced a 10 p.m. newscast, ''News 7 Primetime'', for WEFC; the newscast was canceled due to low ratings. From 2000 to 2005, WPXR aired rebroadcasts of

WSLS-TV WSLS-TV (channel 10) is a television station licensed to Roanoke, Virginia, United States, serving the Roanoke– Lynchburg market as an affiliate of NBC. Owned by Graham Media Group, the station maintains studios on Fifth Street in Roanoke, an ...

's newscasts as part of 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 ...

between Paxson Communications and WSLS owner

Media General Media General, Inc. was an American media company based in Richmond, Virginia. The company's origins can be traced back to 1887 when Richmond attorney Joseph Bryan acquired ''The Richmond Daily Times'', which later became ''The Richmond Times-D ...

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

WPXR-TV ended regular programming on 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 38, 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 36, 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 ...

38.

References

External links

*
Site of the Week – Roanoke, Virginia
nbsp;– discusses WPXR's antennas 1986 establishments in Virginia Court TV affiliates E. W. Scripps Company television stations Grit (TV network) affiliates Ion Mystery affiliates Ion Plus affiliates Ion Television affiliates Laff (TV network) affiliates Television channels and stations established in 1986 PXR-TV {{Virginia-tv-station-stub