Флоридадағы WXPX 66 телеарнасы

Ion TV station in Bradenton, Florida

WXPX TV (channel 66) is a television station licensed to Bradenton, Florida, United States, serving as the Tampa Bay area's Ion Television outlet. It is owned and operated by the Ion Media subsidiary of the E. W. Scripps Company alongside Tampa licensed ABC affiliate WFTS TV (channel 28). WXPX TV's studios are located on 66th Street North in Clearwater, and its transmitter is located in Riverview, Florida.

The station first signed on the air on August 1, 1994, as WFCT; the station was founded by Paxson Communications, which was renamed Ion Media Networks in 2007. It originally ran an all infomercial format as an affiliate of the Paxson owned Infomall TV Network (inTV), and also carried programming from The Worship Network during the overnight hours. The station also broadcast games from the now defunct Atlanta Knights minor league hockey franchise, which was affiliated with the NHL's Tampa Bay Lightning. At the time, Paxson also owned a chain of radio stations in Florida. Paxson's Tampa Bay radio cluster regularly received commercial time on WFCT; this ended when Paxson sold off his radio and billboard businesses to fund start up operations for the Pax TV network. The station changed its call letters to WXPX TV in 1998; the station then became a charter owned and operated station of Pax TV (which rebranded as i: Independent Television on July 1, 2005, and later to Ion on January 29, 2007) when it debuted on August 31 of that year, after which it rebranded as "Pax 66". The Worship Network and infomercial remained on the station's schedule but it also carried the network's family oriented programming. From 2004 to 2008, WXPX became the over the air broadcaster of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays Major League Baseball franchise, airing a number of games that were not televised on a national broadcast or cable network. It also carried NBA games from the Orlando Magic through the syndicated Magic Television Network. The rights to those games later exclusively moved to regional sports networks Fox Sports Florida and Sun Sports.

On September 24, 2020, the Cincinnati based E. W. Scripps Company announced that it would purchase Ion Media for $2.65 billion, with financing from Berkshire Hathaway. With this purchase, Scripps will divest 23 Ion owned stations, but no announcement has been made as to which stations that Scripps will divest as part of the move. The proposed divestitures will allow the merged company to fully comply with the FCC local and national ownership regulations. Scripps has agreed to a transaction with an unnamed buyer, who has agreed to maintain Ion affiliations for the stations. Scripps decided to keep WXPX TV, making it a sister station to ABC affiliate WFTS TV (channel 28).

WXPX TV shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 66, on June 12, 2009, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television. The station's digital signal remained on its pre transition UHF channel 42, using virtual channel 66.