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City | Manassas, Virginia |
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Ownership | |
Owner | |
WWPX-TV, WMAR-TV | |
History | |
First air date | April 2, 1978 |
Former call signs |
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Former channel number(s) |
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Call sign meaning | Pax Washington, D.C. |
Technical information[1] | |
Licensing authority | FCC |
Facility ID | 74091 |
ERP | 949 kW |
HAAT | 234.1 m (768 ft) |
Transmitter coordinates | 38°57′49.9″N 77°6′17.2″W / 38.963861°N 77.104778°W |
Repeater(s) | WWPX-TV 60 Martinsburg, WV |
Links | |
Public license information | |
Website | iontelevision |
WPXW-TV (channel 66) is a television station licensed to Manassas, Virginia, United States, broadcasting the Ion Television network to the Washington, D.C. area. The station is owned by the Ion Media subsidiary of the E. W. Scripps Company, and maintains business offices in Fairfax Station, Virginia; its transmitter is located on River Road in Bethesda, Maryland. The Ion network is also broadcast in the region from WWPX-TV (channel 60) in Martinsburg, West Virginia, which shares the same subchannels as WPXW-TV, and on a subchannel of Scripps-owned ABC affiliate WMAR-TV (channel 2) in Baltimore.
Channel 66 went on the air April 2, 1978, as WTKK ("Witnessing the King of Kings"), a Christian station owned by Manassas-based National Capital Christian Broadcasting. The station's programming consisted of local and national religious shows, though in the 1980s it broadened its format to include some classic TV series. National Capital Christian Broadcasting sold channel 66 to home shopping network ValueVision in 1994, though the seller would continue to be investigated for fraud and misrepresentations to investors. The station had the call sign WVVI under ValueVision. Paxson Communications Corporation, forerunner to Ion Media, acquired WVVI-TV and incorporated it into its Infomall TV network, broadcasting infomercials and paid programs, in 1997; these stations formed the core of the Pax network, predecessor to Ion, in 1998.