KPXB-TV


KPXB-TV, virtual channel 49, is an Ion Television owned-and-operated station serving Houston, Texas, United States that is licensed to the suburb of Conroe. The station is owned by West Palm Beach, Florida-based Ion Media Networks. KPXB-TV'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 ; mainly airing home shopping programming, before becoming an over-the-air affiliate of Spanish-language network Galavisión in November of that year.
KTFH was sold to Paxson Communications in 1995. Paxson then dropped Galavisión and affiliated it with its Infomail Television Network 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 when the network launched on August 31, 1998.
From 1990 until 2009, KPXB was relayed on low-powered translator KBPX-LP, 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.

Digital television

Analog-to-digital conversion

KPXB-TV discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over UHF channel 49, on June 12, 2009, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition VHF channel 5, using PSIP to display KPXB-TV's virtual channel as 49 on digital television receivers.
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.

Newscasts

From 2000 to 2005, KPXB aired rebroadcasts of CBS affiliate KHOU 's newscasts at 6:30 and 11:30 p.m. instead of airing newscasts from NBC affiliate KPRC-TV.