KWPX-TV

KWPX-TV (channel 33) is a television station licensed to Bellevue, Washington, United States, serving as the Ion Television outlet for the Seattle–Tacoma area. The station is owned and operated by the Ion Media subsidiary of the E. W. Scripps Company. KWPX-TV's offices are located on 304th Avenue Southeast in Preston, and its transmitter is located on West Tiger Mountain near Issaquah.

KWPX-TV

Bellevue–Seattle–Tacoma, Washington United States
City	Bellevue, Washington
Channels	Digital: 33 (UHF) Virtual: 33
Programming
Affiliations	33.1: Ion Television for others, see § Subchannels
Ownership
Owner	Ion Media (Ion Media License Company, LLC)
History
First air date	May 17, 1989 (36 years ago) (1989-05-17)
Former call signs	KBGE (1989–1998)
Former channel number(s)	Analog: 33 (UHF, 1989–2009) Digital: 32 (UHF, until 2009)
Former affiliations	Independent (1989–1991) ValueVision (1991–1998)
Call sign meaning	Washington State Pax
Technical information[1]
Licensing authority	FCC
Facility ID	56852
ERP	400 kW
HAAT	716 m (2,349 ft)
Transmitter coordinates	47°30′16.3″N 121°58′10″W
Links
Public license information	Public file LMS
Website	iontelevision.com

History

The station signed on the air as KBGE on May 17, 1989. Its original transmitter site was atop Columbia Center; the transmitter was later moved to West Tiger Mountain. The call letters became KWPX-TV on March 9, 1998, after the station was purchased by Paxson Communications, replacing ValueVision with its inTV network until the launch of Pax on August 31, 1998.^[2] The station was never a part of the early-2000s initiative by NBC to rebroadcast local newscasts a half-hour later on a Pax station, as KING-TV already featured newscasts on sister station KONG-TV.

Until 2021, the station carried Telemundo on its seventh subchannel, before Scripps' purchase of Ion Media nullified the agreement, in order to carry their subchannel networks. Cox-owned KIRO-TV relaunched the network in the market in the fall of 2022 over subchannel 7.4.

Technical information

Subchannels

The station's signal is multiplexed:

Subchannels of KWPX-TV^[3]

Channel	Res.	Aspect	Short name	Programming
33.1	720p	16:9	ION	Ion Television
33.2			CourtTV	Court TV
33.3	480i		Bounce	Bounce TV
33.4			Grit	Grit → Defy (coming soon)
33.5			IONPlus	Ion Plus
33.6			BUSTED	Busted
33.7			GameSho	Game Show Central
33.8			QVC	QVC

Analog-to-digital conversion

KWPX-TV shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 33, on February 17, 2009, to conclude the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television.^[4] The station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition UHF channel 32 to channel 33.^[5]