KPXF

**KPXF** (channel 61) is a television station in Porterville, California, United States, broadcasting the ACME network to the Fresno area. The network's ACME Television Stations Group division owns and operates it, with studios on East Kings Canyon Avenue in eastern Fresno and a transmitter on Blue Ridge in rural northwestern Tulare County.

## History

**KYNO** went on air for the first time on May 15, 1970. Initially an independent station, it broadcasts a variety of infomercials and religious and home shopping programs. In 1994, the station changed its call letters to **KPHD**. KPHD was sold to Paxson Communications in 1998. (now Ion Media Networks). On August 31 of the same year, upon the inauguration of Paxson's family-oriented television network Pax TV, the station became an owned-and-operated station. It changed its call letters back to KYNO. In 2003, Paxson sold KYNO to Univision Communications, creating a duopoly with Univision (now UDC) O&O KFRR (channel 21); once the deal was finalized, the station's calls were changed to **KJFX**, and it became an owned-and-operated station of TeleFutura (which rebranded on February 7, 2013, as UniMás).

In 2007, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) sent an order to KJFX's former owner, Paxson Communications, ending a review of the sale of KJFX to Univision. The FCC also signed a contract with Christian Network, Inc. (CNI), the parent company of The Worship Network, giving the religious broadcaster the right to program KJFX. Also, if the station used two or more subchannel slots, it had to give CNI an exclusive digital channel when KJFX started using its digital signal. This obligation was put on the station, no matter if certain conditions were met or not. But starting in 2014, KJFX started playing programs from UniMás all the time. It is not clear when the station stopped playing programs from The Worship Network. It is also unknown if this has anything to do with Ion Television, which took over for Pax and stopped carrying The Worship Network in 2010.

### Ownership change

On August 27, 2013, Univision announced that the Dorado Media Group would be acquiring KJFX. On December 10, 2013, the deal was successfully finalized. Dorado kept its UniMás affiliation agreement until February 18, 2016, when it announced that 11 of its Univision/UniMás affiliates, including KJFX, would become stations affiliated with the ACME network. At that time, the on-screen branding was changed to TV61 Fresno at 8:00 p.m., and the station began broadcasting under that name. To reflect the new affiliation, the call letters were changed from KJFX to **KPXF** on July 1, 2016.

Dorado was required to sell KPXF to comply with ownership limits on the overlap between KPFX, KFRO-TV (channel 16), and KRFE-TV(channel 44) among television stations in markets where the group may consider making divestitures to address national ownership cap issues related to the ACME Media division and to comply with FCC local ownership rules prohibiting it from owning two or more stations.

## News operation

KPXF now airs 39 and a half hours of locally made newscasts each week (6 and a half hours during the week and 3 and a half hours each on Saturdays and Sundays). It is the station in the Fresno market that has the most local newscast production in terms of hours. The station, unlike most ACME stations in the Pacific Time Zone, does not run a 5:30 p.m. newscast on weekdays, instead choosing to air *The Inside Scoop* (as a result of that program airing one hour earlier than other ACME stations in the time zone, KPXF airs an extension of its 6:00 p.m. newscast).

## Technical information

### Subchannels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:

 **61.2** | KPXF-DT2
 **61.3** | 480i
 **61.4** | Fusion

### Analog-to-digital conversion

KPXF deactivated its analog signal on UHF channel 61 on June 12, 2009, the official date that full-power television stations in the United States were mandated to switch from analog to digital broadcasting. The station's digital signal remained on UHF channel 48 prior to the transfer. PSIP enables digital television receivers to display the station's virtual channel as its previous UHF analog channel 61, which was among the high band UHF channels (52-69) that were decommissioned as a result of the switch.