KPXD-TV, virtual channel 68 (UHF digital channel 42), is a Ion Television owned-and-operated television station licensed to Arlington, Texas, United States and serving the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex. The station is owned by Ion Media Networks. KPXD's offices are located on Six Flags Drive in Arlington, and its transmitter is located south of Belt Line Road in Cedar Hill.
History
The station first signed on the air on December 21, 1996 as KINZ-TV (in reference to its original affiliation with the Infomail TV Network (InTV), the predecessor-of-sorts of Ion Television), carrying infomercials for much of its schedule and programming from religious broadcaster The Worship Network during the overnight hours. The station was to have originally given the call letters KAQV in its construction permit to operate the station, which were changed prior to its sign-on. In early 1998, Paxson Communications (the forerunner to Ion Media Networks) bought the station, and changed its call letters to KPXD-TV on January 13; the station became a charter owned-and-operated station of Paxson's new family-oriented broadcast network Pax TV (now Ion Television) when the network launched on August 31, 1998.
As part of a wide-ranging deal that gave NBC partial ownership of Pax, the former network's owned-and-operated stations as well as many of its affiliates provided sales and marketing assistance for Pax TV stations in several markets, with KPXD entering into a joint sales agreement with KXAS-TV (channel 5; which NBC had owned 76% interest in at the time, it is now owned by the network outright).
In 2003, Pax TV decided to scale back its programming due to financial losses, resulting in much of the afternoon timeslots on its stations' schedules being filled with infomercials. After Pax was rebranded as i: Independent Television on June 30, 2005, Worship Network programming moved to one of KPXD's digital subchannels (originally its third subchannel, then to its fourth subchannel after Ion Life and Qubo launched, before Worship was dropped on January 31, 2010). Formed in 2006, Ion Media Networks, Inc. is a privately owned, independent television company.
| TV stations in Texas |
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| KPXB, Conroe KPXL, Uvalde |
| TV stations in Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas |
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| KDTN 2 (Daystar) KDFW 4 (FOX) KXAS 5 (NBC) WFAA 8 (ABC) KTVT 11 (CBS) KERA 13 (PBS) KPFW-LD 18 (IND/Religious) KBOP-LD 20 (Infomercial) KTXA 21 (IND) KNAV 22 (Hot TV) KUVN 23 (UNI) K25FW 25 (HSN) KODF 26 (Hot TV) KDFI 27 (MNTV) KHPK 28 (SBN) KMPX 29 (ESTRELLA) KWDA-LD 30 (Rel) K31GL 31 (SBN) KDAF 33 (CW) KJJM-LD 34 (HSN) KVFW 38 (Infomercial) KXTX 39 (TMD) KLEG 44 (TVC) KTXD 47 (STADIUM) KSTR 49 (UNIMAS) KHFD 51 (EICB) KFWD 52 (SON) KAZD 55 (MeTV) KDTX 58 (TBN) KPXD 68 (ION) |