WUPX-TV


WUPX-TV, virtual channel 67, is an Ion Television owned-and-operated station serving Lexington, Kentucky, United States that is licensed to Richmond. The station is owned by West Palm Beach, Florida-based Ion Media Networks. WUPX-TV's transmitter is located on High Bridge Road north of Bryantsville, Kentucky. The station's main studio facilities for the purposes of Federal Communications Commission regulations are located in Knoxville, Tennessee with that market's Ion station, Jellico-licensed WPXK-TV.

History

A construction permit for WAOM was issued in October 1993. Originally licensed to Morehead, Kentucky, the station signed on the air on June 1, 1998 as a repeater of low-powered UPN affiliate WBLU-LP, which broadcast on UHF channel 62. Both stations simulcast programming from UPN and The WB as well as infomercials until WAOM was sold off in 2001. After WAOM was sold, WBLU-LP lost both The WB and UPN in 2003 and 2004, respectively, to become independent, and at some point became affiliated with MyNetworkTV and RTV. WBLU-LP is no longer broadcasting as it went dark in 2009 after its parent company went bankrupt.
In 2001, WAOM-TV was sold to Paxson Communications, became a Pax TV owned-and-operated station and changed its callsign to the current WUPX-TV. Pax TV became i: Independent Television in 2005, and then Ion Television in 2007.
On December 11, 2018, the FCC granted WUPX-TV's petition to change its city of license from Morehead to Richmond, Kentucky. The move was conditioned upon the station providing continued service to Morehead.

Digital television

Analog-to-digital conversion

WUPX-TV shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 67, 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 remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 21. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 67, which was among the high band UHF channels that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition.

TV spectrum repack

WUPX moved its channel allocation from digital channel 21 to channel 25 in 2019, but it remained on virtual channel 67. The station relocated its transmitter to a tower southwest of Lexington formerly used by Fox affiliate WDKY-TV.