City Miami, Florida Affiliations Ion Television | Branding Ion Television | |
Slogan Positively Entertaining Channels Digital: 35 (UHF)
Virtual: 35 (PSIP) Subchannels 35.1 - Ion HD (720p)
35.2 - qubo (480i)
35.3 - Ion Life (480i)
35.4 - Ion Shop (480i)
35.5 - QVC
35.6 - HSN | ||
WPXM-TV, virtual and UHF digital channel 35, is an Ion Television owned-and-operated television station located in Miami, Florida, United States. The station is owned by Ion Media Networks. WPXM maintains offices and master control facilities located on Northwest 14th Street in Sunrise, and its transmitter is located on Southwest 27th Street in West Park. On cable, the station is available on Comcast Xfinity channels 16 (standard definition) and 437 (high definition).
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History
The station first signed on the air in October 1992 as WMLB-TV. Originally operating as an independent station, the station changed its call letters to WDLP-TV in 1993, before changing it again to WCTD several months later. Channel 35 was acquired by Paxson Communications (the forerunner of Ion Media Networks) in 1997. Shortly after the sale was finalized, the station became an affiliate of the Infomail TV Network (inTV), which carried an infomercial format. On August 31, 1998, the station's call letters were changed to WPXM-TV; that same date, the station became a charter owned-and-operated station of Pax TV (now Ion Television).
From 2002 through the 2005 season, WPXM was the flagship TV station of the Florida Marlins (now the Miami Marlins), the baseball team that won the World Series in 1997 and 2003. It also aired on sister station WPXP in West Palm Beach.
Digital television
The station's digital channel is multiplexed:
Analog-to-digital conversion
WPXM-TV ended programming on its analog signal, on UHF channel 35, on February 17, 2009, the original target date in which full-power television stations in the United States to transition from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate (which was later pushed back to June 12, 2009). On February 18, the station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition UHF channel 26 to channel 35. WPXM was the only Miami-licensed station that applied to cease analog transmissions on the original transition date, despite the DTV Delay Act having extended the deadline to June 12. WPXM elected to use UHF channel 35 as its post-transition allocation during the first round of the digital channel elections, and was allowed to keep the allocation despite a conflict with another station.