KPXB-TV, virtual channel 49 (UHF digital channel 32), is an Ion Television owned-and-operated television station serving Houston, Texas, United States that is licensed to the suburb of Conroe. The station is owned by Ion Media. KPXB's transmitter is located near Missouri City, in unincorporated northeastern Fort Bend County.
History
The station first signed on the air on June 16, 1989 as KTFH (not to be confused with present-day UniMás owned-and-operated station KFTH-DT, channel 67); mainly airing home shopping programming, before becoming an over-the-air affiliate of Spanish-language network Galavisión (which is primarily distributed through cable and satellite television) in November of that year. From 1990 until 2009, KPXB was relayed on low-powered translator KBPX-LP (channel 33), which mainly served to improve KPXB's signal coverage in southern portions of Houston since the full-power analog transmitter site was located in the far northern suburbs.
KTFH was sold to Paxson Communications (the forerunner to Ion Media Networks) in 1995. Paxson then dropped Galavisión and affiliated it with its Infomail Television Network (inTV) infomercial service on April 3, 1995; its call letters were later changed to KPXB in early 1998. KPXB, along with other Paxson-owned stations, became a charter station of Pax TV (later i: Independent Television and now Ion Television) when the network launched on August 31, 1998.
After the digital transition, KPXB moved its transmitter from east of Splendora to the Houston-area antenna farm near Missouri City. KBPX-LP was shut down on June 30, 2009, two weeks after the digital transition, due to loss of access to the tower site. However, since the main KPXB transmitter provides a signal comparable to the other Houston stations, the translator was redundant in any event. On November 22, 2010, KBPX-LP resumed operations on digital channel 46, as an affiliate of The Country Network.
| TV stations in Texas |
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| KPXB, Conroe KPXL, Uvalde |
| TV stations in Greater Houston |
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| KPRC 2 (NBC) KUHT 8 (PBS) KUVM-LD 10 (Ind) KHOU 11 (CBS) KTRK 13 (ABC) KETH 14 (TBN) KVVV-LD 15 (Word) KTXH 20 (MNTV) KVQT-LD 21 (Ind) KLTJ 22 (Daystar) KRIV 26 (Fox) KUGB-CD 28 (GEB) KCVH-LD 30 (REL) KEHO-LD 32 (FESTIVA) KUVM-CD 34 (LATV) KZHO-LD 38 (VCL) KIAH 39 (CW) KHLM-LD 43 (MULTIMEDIOS) KXLN 45 (UNI) KBPX-LD 46 (NV) KTMD 47 (TLM) KPXB 49 (Ion) KDHU-LD 50 (Daystar) KYAZ 51 (AZA) KTBU 55 (QUEST) KUBE 57 (Ind) KZJL 61 (ESTRELLA) KFTH 67 (UMas) |