KPXE-TV

KPXE-TV (channel 50) is a television station in Kansas City, Missouri, United States, affiliated with Ion Television. Owned by Inyo Broadcast Holdings, the station maintains offices on Oak Street and Cleaver Boulevard in Kansas City, Missouri, and its transmitter is located in the city's Brown Estates section.

Channel 50 in Kansas City first signed on the air on October 29, 1969, as KCIT-TV. Founded by Allied Broadcasting, it was the first independent station to sign on in the Kansas City market and the first new commercial station to sign on in the area since the short-lived DuMont Television Network affiliate KCTY (on channel 25) debuted in 1954. Channel 50 programming primarily consisted of shows that the three network-affiliated television stations in Kansas City preempted, as well as some local programming.

Allied Broadcasting, owned by 20 local stockholders, could not survive a downturn in the economy and competition from a new independent station that signed on a year later, KBMA-TV (channel 41, now NBC affiliate KSHB-TV). KBMA-TV had wealthier owners and a stronger signal than channel 50. KCIT-TV cut programming hours in June, only to go silent July 8, 1971, after several days of bare minimum programming. The station's technical facilities were acquired for use in relaunching KCPT (channel 19) with color capability. KBMA-TV became the sole independent station in Kansas City for several years afterward until KEKR-TV (channel 62, now KSMO-TV) signed on in September 1983 (the KCIT call letters are now assigned to a Fox-affiliated station in Amarillo, Texas).

The channel 50 allocation remained dormant for several years. On July 2, 1976, Kansas City Youth for Christ, Inc., filed for a construction permit for a new channel 50 TV station, which was granted by the FCC on April 29, 1977.^[2] The new station signed on December 15, 1978, as KYFC, named after its owner.^[3] Operating as a noncommercial independent station, its lineup largely consisted of religious programming through the 1980s, however a few "family-friendly" secular shows had been added to its schedule. The station ran newscasts from CNN Headline News at least once a day for several years, replacing the commercials during breaks within the simulcasts with other announcements.

Pledges to support the station declined during the 1990s. Station managers also grew concerned about the cost of converting to digital operations, something they were reluctant to pass on to their financial supporters. In 1997, the station was sold to Paxson Communications, and began to air infomercials from the Infomall TV Network (inTV) and programming from The Worship Network shortly thereafter, along with some religious programs. On April 28 of that year, the station also changed its call letters to KINB. On January 13, 1998, the station changed its callsign again, this time to KPXE; then eight months later on August 31, the station became a charter owned-and-operated station of Pax TV when that network launched.

In 2001, KPXE entered into a joint sales agreement with NBC affiliate KSHB, as part of an agreement between Paxson Communications and three stations owned by the Cincinnati-based E. W. Scripps Company (which also involved KSHB sister stations WPTV in West Palm Beach, Florida, and KJRH in Tulsa, Oklahoma).^[4]

On September 24, 2020, Scripps (owner of KSHB-TV and KMCI-TV) announced that it would purchase Ion Media for $2.65 billion, with financing from Berkshire Hathaway. With this purchase, Scripps divested 23 Ion-owned stations to Inyo Broadcast Holdings, including KPXE-TV (as Scripps already owns two stations in the Kansas City market). The divestitures allowed the merged company to fully comply with the FCC local and national ownership regulations. Inyo has agreed to maintain Ion affiliations for the divested stations.^[5][6][7]

In September 2001, as part of its joint sales agreement with that station, KPXE-TV began airing tape delayed rebroadcasts of KSHB-TV's 6 and 10 p.m. newscasts each Monday through Friday evening at 6:30 and 10:30 p.m. (the latter beginning shortly before that program's live broadcast ended on KSHB). The news rebroadcasts ended on June 30, 2005, when the network's other news share agreements with major network affiliates throughout the United States were terminated upon the network's rebranding as i: Independent Television, as a result of the network's financial troubles.

The station's signal is multiplexed:

Prior to January 31, 2010, KPXE offered The Worship Network on digital subchannel 50.4. KPXE began broadcasting its main 50.1 channel in high definition in late spring 2010.

KPXE-TV shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 50, on June 12, 2009, the official date on which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal continued to broadcasts on its pre-transition UHF channel 51,^[9] using virtual channel 50.

In early 2015, KPXE was granted a construction permit by the FCC to move its signal to channel 30, as the FCC is selling off the high UHF spectrum for wireless communications. The move to channel 30 took place in the early morning hours of May 30, 2015, with the FCC issuing the license to operate on channel 30 on July 6, 2015.

• Official website
• David Johnson's history of the late & lamented KCIT-TV