Channel 62 signed on in 1985 as WFCT, an independent station owned by Fayetteville/Cumberland Telecasters. Attorneys Robinson and Katherine Everett of Durham, founders of WRDU-TV in Durham, along with WJKA in Wilmington and WGGT in Greensboro, were two of the principals in this company. The station changed call letters to WFAY in 1993 and became a Foxaffiliate in 1994; the affiliation came as part of a deal that also saw the Everetts switch their CBS affiliates, WJKA and KECY-TV in El Centro, California/Yuma, Arizona to Fox. Even though WFAY was located in the same market as WLFL, it mainly focused on communities located south of Fayetteville that did not get a good signal from WLFL. Some of its non-network programming was also simulcast to the Raleigh–Durham area on WRAY-TV for a couple of years in the mid-1990s until it was acquired by the Shop at Home network. WFAY later became WFPX and dropped Fox after being bought out by Paxson in the middle of 1998, shortly before WRAZ assumed the Fox affiliation for the Raleigh market. Later that year, newly minted Fox stationWFXB out of the Florence–Myrtle Beach market expanded its signal to cover areas formerly served by WFAY. It is worthy of note that WFPX's signal was not seen at all in the northern portion of the Raleigh–Durham–Fayetteville market, but covered northern portions of the Florence–Myrtle Beach market, which did not have its own Ion Television affiliate until 2015, when WBTW added Ion on a digital subchannel following a deal made with Media General.
Channel-sharing agreement with WRPX
On April 4, 2017, WFPX was identified by the FCC as receiving $62.4 million for the spectrum reallocation auction. The station later entered into a channel-sharing arrangement with WRPX After the channel share went into effect, WRPX-DT3, carrying Ion Life, took WFPX's 62.1 virtual channel, assuring that network market-wide must-carry over pay-TV systems.
Digital television
Digital channel
Analog-to-digital conversion
WFPX-TV discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over UHF channel 62, at noon on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal continued to broadcasts on its pre-transition UHF channel 36. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 62, which was among the high band UHF channels that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition.
