WPXH-TV

WPXH-TV, virtual channel 44 (UHF digital channel 45), is an Ion Television owned-and-operated television station serving Birmingham, Alabama, United States that is licensed to Gadsden. The station is owned by Ion Media Networks. WPXH maintains offices located on Golden Crest Drive in Birmingham, and its transmitter is located near Highland Lake (between Oneonta and Springville).

History

As a satellite of WTTO and WDBB

The station traces its creation to issues involving independent station WDBB (channel 17) in Tuscaloosa, which was looking to increase its profile in central Alabama. When that station signed on in October 1984, at a time when cable television still did not have much penetration in the region, WDBB faced problems in trying to improve its coverage throughout the central part of the state, as its signal was nowhere near strong enough to cover the northern half of the market, particularly areas to the northeast of Birmingham proper. Although WDBB's founding owner, Dubose Broadcasting, invested heavily in the station and acquired a strong inventory of syndicated programming, the signal's inability to reach most of central Alabama put WDBB at a severe disadvantage against the area's other major independent, WTTO (channel 21) in Birmingham, which had early on established itself as one of the strongest independent stations in the Deep South and the United States as a whole.