WPXW-TV


WPXW-TV, virtual channel 66, is an Ion Television owned-and-operated station serving the American capital city of Washington, District of Columbia that is licensed to nearby Manassas, Virginia. The station is owned by West Palm Beach, Florida-based Ion Media Networks. WPXW-TV's studios are located in Fairfax Station, Virginia, and its transmitter is located on River Road in Bethesda, Maryland. It is one of two Ion outlets that serve the Baltimore market.
On cable, WPXW-TV is available on Comcast Xfinity channel 33 in Washington, D.C., Cox Communications channel 15 in Fairfax County, Virginia, and channel 16 or 17 on most other systems in the market.
WWPX-TV in Martinsburg, West Virginia, operates as a full-time satellite of WPXW-TV.

History

Channel 66 signed on as WTKK, an independent religious station owned by National Capital Christian Broadcasting, in 1978. The call letters stood for Witnessing The King of Kings. In 1982, they added some classic sitcoms and very old movies to the lineup, but by 1986, they reverted to mostly religious. From 1984 until 1986, WTKK had a sister station in Richmond, WTLL. In 1994, WTKK was purchased by ValueVision, a home shopping network, and on June 6, 1994, the call letters were changed to WVVI. Paxson Communications purchased the station in 1997, and on January 13, 1998, the call letters were changed to the current WPXW. The station was an all-infomercial channel from the time that Paxson bought the station until the Pax network launched on August 31, 1998. The station had the rights to the 2005 season of Baltimore Orioles games in the Washington area that were produced by MASN. It was formerly known as Pax 66, before the Pax network changed its name to i: Independent Television and later Ion Television.

Digital television

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:

Analog-to-digital conversion

WPXW-TV shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 66, 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 moved from its pre-transition UHF channel 43 to channel 34. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 66, which was among the high band UHF channels that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition.