WPXA-TV

WPXA-TV, virtual channel 14 (digital channel 31), is an Ion Television owned-and-operated television station located in the metro Atlanta area. The station is licensed to Rome, with its transmitter and antenna on Bear Mountain, overlooking Lake Arrowhead near Waleska, near the Cherokee/Bartow county line several miles northwest of Atlanta. The TV studio was located in Marietta, next to Six Flags White Water along Cobb Parkway (U.S. 41). It is owned and operated by ION Media Networks.

The station's broadcast range extends into parts of Alabama and Chattanooga, Tennessee and even the southwest corner of North Carolina. However, terrain shielding not accounted for in radio propagation models prevents this from regularly occurring, due to the north Georgia mountains.

WPXA-TV can be viewed on Comcast cable channel 12.

History

The station was issued a construction permit in 1984 on Channel 14 as WZGA but never went on-air. The station went on-air February 29, 1988 as WAWA with studios on Shorter Avenue in Rome and TV tower on Mount Alto nearby. The station was owned by Sudbrink Broadcasting, West Palm Beach, FL, and had a general entertainment format of low-budget shows, public domain movies, local TV news, and pre-empted network TV programs. It also aired several CBS, ABC and NBC shows that WAGA-TV, WSB-TV and WXIA-TV turned down.

In 1990, the station changed its calls to WTLK-TV and moved its studios to Marietta and transmitter to Bear Mountain (west of Canton). Rebranding as "Talk TV", it featured national talk shows like Phil Donahue and Sally Jesse Raphael. It also aired local shows (with TV studio audiences) with WSB's Neal Boortz, former Miss America Suzette Charles, Hosea Williams, Michael Young, WVEE's Mike Roberts, WGST's Brian Wilson and others. The station never took off in metro Atlanta as WTLK was not a must-carry on cable TV. The other independent on the fringe of the market, WNGM-TV (channel 34, now WUVG) had the same problem. Later in the 1990s, WTLK ran blocks of country music videos along with infomercials.

In 1996 the station was sold to Paxson Communications. The must-carry rules for cable systems took effect about the same time. WTLK, WNGM and WATC would be added to most metro cable systems immediately. The station's format consisted of infomercials by day and Worship Network at night. Pax TV was launched in 1998 and WTLK became WPXA as a charter affiliate. Pax TV later became i and ION television. During the Pax era, WPXA aired a late-night replay of WXIA's 11 pm newscast. Most Pax stations had similar arrangements with the NBC stations in their markets.

The station's broadcast tower on Bear Mountain was also the first location for WCHK-FM 105.5, now WRDA 105.7 on Sweat Mountain.

Rome also had a previous full-power TV station (ABC/CBS/NBC/Dumont) WROM-TV channel 9, from 1953-1957. That was later moved to Chattanooga and became what is now WTVC.

Digital television (over the air)

The station's over the air digital channel is multiplexed:

WPXA-TV also has a Mobile DTV feed of subchannel 14.2, labelled "WPXA - ION", broadcasting at 3.67 Mbit/s. This is the highest bitrate of any Metro Atlanta television station mobile feed.^[3][4][5]

The Worship Network was originally on 14.4 until the end of January 2010, when it was dropped from all Ion stations.

The station had selected 14 as its permanent digital channel in the digital channel election, but had to remain on 51 due to a co-channel RF interference conflict.^[6]

The station's digital facility is at maximum power (1000 kW), while its analog was not (3800 kW instead of the 5000 kW allowed for analog stations). Its digital TV antenna is also 15 meters (49 ft) higher on the same tower, improving the broadcast range further.

In August 2013, the station contracted with local Telemundo affiliate WKTB-CD (channel 47) to provide a full-market signal for the low-power station, along with probable retransmission consent to fold it in with WPXA's negotiations. This precluded WPXA from Ion's agreement to carry the over-the-air signal of Home Shopping Network on its DT6 subchannel later in the year, though HSN already is carried by W45DX-D (channel 45) over-the-air in the market.

On July 6, 2015, WPXA-TV was licensed by the FCC to shift their digital signal from channel 51 to channel 31 to allow T-Mobile US to use the adjacent channel 52 frequency for LTE data and voice services without interference, requiring a tuner re-scan for viewers to continue to receive the station; using PSIP to display WPXA-TV's virtual channel as 14 on digital television receivers.

References

External links

• ION Television website
• FCC map of WPXA
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WPXA
• BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on WPXA-TV