KPXN-TV


KPXN-TV, virtual channel 30, is an Ion Television owned-and-operated station serving Los Angeles, California, United States that is licensed to San Bernardino. The station is owned by West Palm Beach, Florida-based Ion Media Networks, as part of a duopoly with Inglewood-licensed Ion Plus owned-and-operated station KILM. The two stations share offices on West Olive Avenue in Burbank and transmitter facilities atop Mount Wilson.

History

Channel 30 first signed on the air as KHOF-TV on October 16, 1969. It originally operated as a Christian broadcast outreach of the Faith Center Church in Glendale, of which Reverend Raymond Schoch served as the pastor, with Paul Crouch as his assistant and general manager. KHOF was the second full-time Christian television station. WYAH in Virginia Beach was the first Christian station in 1961, but beginning in 1967, that station began a very gradual evolution to a conventional commercial independent television station. KHOF ran a mix of Schoch's own sermons, various televangelists and teaching programs, both local and syndicated. The church already owned and operated KHOF-FM radio in Los Angeles. The station began to have competition when their former GM Paul Crouch left in 1972 and acquired newly purchased KLXA Channel 40 in 1974.
A year later, in 1975, Schoch stepped down for health reasons, and would pass away on September 26, 1977. Dr. Gene Scott took over the ministry in 1975 and his Christian views were evolving, as reflected in his sermons. As the decade went on, KHOF gradually shifted away from syndicated Christian shows and local Christian programs to only in-house programming from Scott. Their church broke up as well, and the original Faith Center Church eventually shut down and merged with other churches while Scott had his own congregation. By 1980, the station, along with the radio stations and other TV stations owned by Faith Center, was running only Scott's discussions and sermons full-time. By 1981, the Faith Center was renamed the University Network. In the 1980s, KHOF came under the scrutiny of the Federal Communications Commission because of its fundraising operations, as well as Scott's refusal to allow the FCC to examine his station's financial records. The FCC eventually revoked KHOF-TV's license. After losing court challenges to the FCC action, KHOF-TV shut down on May 24, 1983. The final broadcast from Scott's channel 30 consisted of a number of cymbal-banging monkey toys termed as "The FCC Monkey Band" playing their mini-cymbals as a final attack against the commission.
In order to keep channel 30 from going dark until a new permanent licensee could be selected from the many applications that the FCC anticipated, they decided to allow an interim broadcaster to operate on the channel. In 1984, Angeles Broadcasting was granted an interim license and in January 1985, returned channel 30 to the air as KAGL-TV. The station continued to broadcast religious programming from Gene Scott as well. Because KAGL utilized the old KHOF transmitter, still owned by Faith Center, KAGL provided Dr. Scott four hours of evening time and some daytime hours to continue the Festival of Faith programs he televised on KHOF. In 1992, the FCC shut down KAGL in order to allow new licensee Sandino Communications to construct a new transmitter for a planned television station under the KZKI call letters.
The current channel 30 signed on the air on January 7, 1994 as KZKI, airing a mix of religious programs, infomercials, and some movies in the four years between that time and the launch of Pax TV on August 31, 1998. Sandino sold KZKI to Paxson Communications in 1995 for $18 million in cash and the assumption of debt.
KPXN's analog signal on UHF channel 30 was the last television station to transmit from Sunset Ridge in the Mount San Antonio range. At one time, KDOC, KSCI and KRCA broadcast their signals from Sunset Ridge as well.
Until the expansion of Ion Television's schedule past 1 a.m. in early 2011, KPXN aired one hour of Bible teaching programs nightly at 1 a.m. from the Los Angeles University Cathedral, which is taught by Dr. Scott's widow, Melissa Scott. The program was part of Ion's national schedule via a time brokerage agreement.

Digital television

Digital channels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:
ChannelVideoAspectPSIP Short NameProgramming
30.1720pIONMain KPXN-TV programming / Ion Television
30.2480iquboQubo
30.3480iShopIon Shop
30.5480iQVCQVC
30.6480iHSNHSN

KPXN-TV also operates a Mobile DTV feed of subchannel 30.1, labelled "KPXN-ION", broadcasting at 1.83 Mbit/s.

Analog-to-digital conversion

KPXN-TV shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 30, 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 UHF channel 38, using PSIP to display KPXN-TV's virtual channel as 30 on digital television receivers.

Newscasts

In the late 2000s, as part of Pax TV's partnership to provide Pax's stations with newscasts from local NBC affiliates, KPXN began airing rebroadcasts of the weekday editions of NBC owned-and-operated station KNBC 's 6:00 and 11:00 p.m. newscasts. KPXN branded the 7:00 p.m. airing of channel 4's 6:00 newscast as The Channel 4 News at 6 p.m. on PAX30, and the 11:30 p.m. airing of that station's late newscast as The Channel 4 News at 11:30 on PAX30. KPXN stopped airing the newscasts in 2005, after Pax dissolved its pact with NBC.