KPXM TV

History

The station originally signed on the air in 1982 as KXLI ("XLI" is 41 in Roman numerals). The station identified themselves as K-41 and showed syndicated fare and cartoons. KXLI was also simulcast on KXLT-TV channel 47 in Rochester, and by the late 1980s, Minnesota North Stars hockey broadcasts would also air on the stations. KXLI / KXLT were owned by Halcomm Inc. with its majority stockholder and president Dale W. Lang, chairman of magazine publisher Lang Communications Inc. Lang attempted with partners to create the "Minnesota Independent Network" (MIN) with 11 stations but never got past planning and initial work.

Lang also made a $9.6 million loan to Halcomm. The stations closed down in December 1988 with Lang calling the loan in 1989 taking possession of the stations.

In 1989, Lang became the primary investor in a new television network based in Orlando, Florida, the Star Television Network. KXLT returned on September 29, 1990 again simulcasting KXLI programming as an owned and operated Star station. Both stations were broadcasting 22 hours a day with 10 hours from Star, which consisted of 4 hours of infomercials and 8 hours of classic shows under the TV Heaven banner.

Following Star's closure in January 1991, KXLI / KXLT replaced its schedule with religious and infomercial programming, as well as programming from the Home Shopping Network, which continued through their purchase by Lowell "Bud" Paxson in the mid-1990s. Saturday afternoons during this time consisted of local and national hunting programs. Programming originated from the transmitter building during this time in Big Lake.

Once it was decided to bring back the moniker of TV Heaven, money was spent on a new building near the tower. TV Heaven was brought back with programs from the 50s, 60, 70s, 80s and some new shows during the 90's. It also had agreements to air programming from an upstart conservative network NET (National Empowerment Television) run by Paul Weyrich. To that end, the stations nicknamed themselves the Political News Network. Late evenings were taken up by many different shopping networks.

In 1998, Paxson broke the KXLI/KXLT simulcast by selling KXLT to Shockley Communications, becoming a Fox affiliate for the Rochester / Austin / Mason City market. Paxson also changed KXLI's call letters to KPXM, and the station would join the Pax TV network (later i and now Ion Television) later in 1998. The station also got a significant technical overhaul, replacing the 1970s-vintage La Kart tape switching equipment. It also moved to a new, much more powerful tower in Big Lake. It is the tallest structure in Minnesota, standing 1,505 feet (459 m) tall—nearly twice as high as the skyscrapers of downtown Minneapolis. The new tower more than doubled the station's coverage area, which was now comparable to those of the major Twin Cities stations.

KPXM originally had a marketing agreement with KARE (channel 11) in which KPXM repeated KARE's evening newscasts tape-delayed by half an hour, and also repeated KARE's morning show again in the afternoon. Similar arrangements were in place between other Pax and NBC stations across the country. This agreement ended in July 2005, when Paxson chose to end such agreements for all his stations.

In 2009 and 2012, the FCC authorized the station to move to a tower closer to the Twin Cities tower farm in Shoreview. However, that move has not yet occurred.

Analog-to-digital conversion

KPXM-TV shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 41, 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 40. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 41.

Translator stations

The broadcast signal of KPXM is extended by way of two digital translators in central Minnesota.