WUPX-TV (channel 67) 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

Richmond, Kentucky Richmond is a home rule-class city in Madison County, Kentucky, United States. The population was 34,585 as of the 2020 census, making it the state's seventh-largest city. It is the principal city of the Richmond–Berea micropolitan area, wh ...

, United States, serving the Lexington area as an affiliate of

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 ...

. The station is owned by Inyo Broadcast Holdings, and maintains a transmitter on High Bridge Road north of

Bryantsville, Kentucky Bryantsville is an unincorporated community in Garrard County, Kentucky, United States. It lies along U.S. Route 27 northwest of the city of Lancaster, the county seat of Garrard County. Its elevation is 942 feet (287 m). It has a p ...

History

construction permit Planning permission or building permit refers to the approval needed for construction or expansion (including significant renovation), and sometimes for demolition, in some jurisdictions. House building permits, for example, are subject to bu ...

for WAOM was issued on October 14, 1985. Originally licensed to

Morehead, Kentucky Morehead is a list of Kentucky cities, home rule-class city located along U.S. Route 60 in Kentucky, US 60 (the historic Midland Trail) and Interstate 64 in Kentucky, Interstate 64 in Rowan County, Kentucky, Rowan County, Kentucky, in the United ...

, the station signed on the air on June 1, 1998, with low-power

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, ...

affiliate

WBLU-LP WBLU-LP (channel 62) was a low-power television station in Lexington, Kentucky, United States. Owned by Equity Media Holdings, the station broadcast its signal from downtown Lexington and provided coverage that did not extend far past the develop ...

(channel 62) signing on a year later. Both stations simulcast programming from UPN and

The WB The WB Television Network (shortened to The WB, stylized as "THE WB", and nicknamed the "Frog Network" and/or "The Frog" for its former mascot Michigan J. Frog) was an American television network that ran from 1995 to 2006. It launched on ter ...

as well as

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 until WAOM was sold off in 2001. After WAOM was sold, WBLU-LP lost both The WB and UPN in 2003 and 2004, respectively, to become independent, and at some point became affiliated with

MyNetworkTV MyNetworkTV (stylized as mynetworkTV; unofficially abbreviated MNT or MNTV) is an American commercial broadcast television syndication service and former television network owned by Fox Corporation, operated by its Fox Television Stations ...

and RTV. WBLU-LP is no longer broadcasting as it went

dark Darkness is the condition resulting from a lack of illumination, or an absence of visible light. Human vision is unable to distinguish colors in conditions of very low luminance because the hue-sensitive photoreceptor cells on the retina are ...

in 2009 after its parent company went

bankrupt Bankruptcy is a legal process through which people or other entities who cannot repay debts to creditors may seek relief from some or all of their debts. In most jurisdictions, bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the de ...

. In 2001, WAOM-TV was sold to Paxson Communications (now

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 ...

), became a Pax TV owned-and-operated station and changed its

callsign 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 assi ...

to the current WUPX-TV. Pax TV became i: Independent Television in 2005, and then Ion Television in 2007. On December 11, 2018, the FCC granted WUPX-TV's petition to change its

city of license In U.S., Canadian, and Mexican broadcasting, a city of license or community of license is the community that a radio station or television station is officially licensed to serve by that country's broadcast regulator. In North American broadcast ...

from Morehead to

. The move was conditioned upon the station providing continued service to Morehead.

Near sale to Scripps; sale to Inyo Broadcast Holdings

On September 24, 2020, the

Cincinnati Cincinnati ( ; colloquially nicknamed Cincy) is a city in Hamilton County, Ohio, United States, and its county seat. Settled in 1788, the city is located on the northern side of the confluence of the Licking River (Kentucky), Licking and Ohio Ri ...

-based

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 ...

announced that it would purchase Ion Media for $2.65 billion, with financing from

Berkshire Hathaway Berkshire Hathaway Inc. () is an American multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska. Originally a textile manufacturer, the company transitioned into a conglomerate starting in 1965 under the management of c ...

. With this purchase, Scripps would divest 23 Ion-owned stations, but no announcement was made as to which stations that Scripps would divest as part of the move. However, on October 16, 2020, it was announced that WUPX-TV would be one of the stations that Scripps would spin off as part of the merger. The buyer, revealed in an October 2020 FCC filing to be Inyo Broadcast Holdings, has promised to maintain the stations' Ion Television affiliations after the purchase. The proposed divestitures will allow the merged company to fully comply with the FCC local and national ownership regulations. This would have made it a

sister station In broadcasting, sister stations or sister channels are radio or television stations operated by the same company, either by direct ownership or through a management agreement. Radio sister stations will often have different formats, and somet ...

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

WLEX-TV WLEX-TV (channel 18) is a television station in Lexington, Kentucky, United States, affiliated with NBC and owned by the E.W. Scripps Company. The station's studios are located on Russell Cave Road ( KY 353) in Lexington, and its transmitter is ...

(channel 18) if Scripps had decided to keep WUPX-TV, but Lexington has fewer than eight independently owned and operating full-power television stations, not enough to permit a duopoly in any case. The transaction was finalized and closed on January 7, 2021.

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

WUPX-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 67, 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 21, 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 ...

67.

TV spectrum repack

WUPX moved its channel allocation from digital channel 21 to channel 25 in 2019, but it remained on virtual channel 67. The station relocated its transmitter to a tower southwest of Lexington formerly used by

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 ("brush"). Twelve species ...

affiliate

WDKY-TV WDKY-TV (channel 56) is a television station licensed to Danville, Kentucky, United States, serving the Lexington area as an affiliate of the Fox network. The station is owned by Nexstar Media Group and maintains studios on Euclid Avenue in Le ...

(channel 56).

Notes

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Wupx-Tv 1998 establishments in Kentucky Grit (TV network) affiliates Ion Mystery affiliates Ion Plus affiliates Ion Television affiliates Laff (TV network) affiliates Richmond, Kentucky Television channels and stations established in 1998 UPX-TV