KPPX TV

KPPX history

On December 21, 1988, the Federal Communications Commission granted a construction permit to Phoenix businessman Hector Garcia Salvatierra to build a full-power television station serving Tolleson and the Phoenix metropolitan area on UHF channel 51. The construction permit remained inactive for over six years until January 1995, when Salvatierra secured a site license to build facilities on South Mountain, and the station was assigned the call letters KAJW.

In July 1996, Salvatierra entered into an agreement with Paxson Communications (now Ion Media Networks) to sell a 49% interest of his company to Paxson and to transfer the construction permit and site license to Paxson to build the television station under the new ownership entity America 51 L.P. The station changed its call letters to KPPX in March 1998 to reflect its pending affiliation with the new Pax TV network (now Ion Television); the station first signed on the air on February 15, 1999, broadcasting under Program Test Authority until its license was granted on April 20, 2000. Salvatierra sold the remaining interest in the company to Paxson Communications in November 2000.

On March 12, 2007, during a 9 p.m. airing of an Ion Life rebroadcast of a Tom Brokaw-hosted NBC special, State of U.S. Health Care, a station employee inserted between one and ten minutes (sources vary on the exact amount shown) of a pornographic film into the broadcast. Viewers then registered complaints with the station, the Ion Television offices in West Palm Beach, Florida, local cable provider Cox Communications and the Federal Communications Commission about the indecent content. KPPX promised to conduct a thorough investigation to find the person responsible, and on March 20, the employee found to be responsible was fired, with possible further legal actions from Ion Television and the FCC.

Other Phoenix stations on channel 51

In the early 1990s, while the construction permit for the full-power station on channel 51 was inactive, the FCC granted a construction permit to build a low-power television station on channel 51. On March 12, 1993, a permit for station K51EI was granted to San Bernardino, California-based Community Service Television Company, but the station was never completed. In January 1995, the construction permit for the full-power station was reactivated, and the permit for the low-power station was discontinued. The K51EI callsign was deleted in February 1996.

Digital television

The station's digital channel is multiplexed:

Analog-to-digital conversion

The Federal Communications Commission granted a construction permit on March 1, 2001 to build transmitter facilities to broadcast its digital signal on UHF channel 52 until the end of the digital transition. Facilities were completed and licensed on December 20, 2002. Because its allocated pre-transition digital channel was outside the range of core frequencies designated by the FCC (channels 2-51) – the high band UHF channels (52-69) being removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition, KPPX chose channel 51 for its permanent digital television operations, where it would move at the end of the digital transition, which, at the time, was scheduled for February 17, 2009. Although the DTV Delay Act became law on February 11, 2009 postponing the required analog shutoff until June 12, 2009, KPPX made the decision to proceed with final conversion on February 17, which was approved by the FCC.

KPPX-TV shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 51, on February 17, 2009, the original target date for full-power television stations in the United States to transition from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate (which Congress had moved the previous month to June 12). The station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition UHF channel 52, which was among the high band UHF channels (52-69) that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition, to its analog-era UHF channel 51.