WZPX-TV

WZPX-TV, virtual channel 43 (UHF digital channel 44), is an Ion Television owned-and-operated television station serving Grand Rapids and Lansing, Michigan, United States that is licensed to Battle Creek. The station is owned by Ion Media Networks. WZPX maintains offices on Horizon Drive on the southeastern side of Grand Rapids, and its transmitter is located in Vermontville Township in western Eaton County. The station is available on Comcast channel 6 in the Lansing market (CBS affiliate WLNS-TV, which operates over-the-air on virtual channel 6, is carried on channel 9).

History

WZPX first signed on the air on October 11, 1996 as WJUE, carrying infomercials for most of the day as part of Paxson Communications's inTV service (the forerunner of the current Ion Media Networks), along with programming from United Paramount Network (UPN) as a secondary affiliation. The station's original licensee was Horizon Broadcasting Corporation, which Paxson Communications acquired before the station's sign-on. When Paxson bought WBSX-TV in Detroit (now WPXD-TV), WJUE was spun off to DP Media, a sister company because of Federal Communications Commission ownership rules in effect at the time. WBSX' transmitter was located near Chelsea in northwestern Washtenaw County, which was close enough to the Ingham County line to give WBSX city-grade coverage of Lansing. Jackson, the second-largest city in the Lansing market, also got a fairly strong signal from WBSX. At the time, the FCC normally did not allow common ownership of stations with overlapping signals, and would not even consider granting a waiver for a city-grade overlap. Even though the two stations were in different markets, the FCC ruled that WJUE and WBSX were effectively a duopoly, forcing WJUE's sale. However, Paxson continued to operate the station under a local marketing agreement. Within a year, the station changed its call letters to WILV.