The station first signed on the air on June 16, 1989, as KTFH (not to be confused with present-day UniMás owned-and-operated station KFTH-DT, channel 67); mainly airing home shopping programming, before becoming an over-the-air affiliate of Spanish-language network Galavisión (which is primarily distributed through cable, satellite television, and IPTV) in November of that year.[2]
KTFH was sold to Paxson Communications in 1995. Paxson then dropped Galavisión and affiliated it with its Infomall Television Network (inTV) infomercial service on April 3, 1995;[3] its call letters were later changed to KPXB in early 1998. KPXB, along with other Paxson-owned stations, became a charter station of Pax TV (later i: Independent Television and now Ion Television) when the network launched on August 31, 1998.
From 1990 until 2009, KPXB was relayed on low-powertranslator KBPX-LP (channel 33), which mainly served to improve KPXB's signal coverage in southern portions of Houston since the full-power analog transmitter site was located in the far northern suburbs.
On September 24, 2020, the Cincinnati-based E. W. Scripps Company announced it would purchase KPXB-TV's owner, Ion Media, for $2.65 billion, with financing from Berkshire Hathaway.[4] Part of the deal includes divesting 23 stations nationally to an undisclosed third party maintaining Ion affiliations.[5]
From 2000 to 2005, KPXB aired rebroadcasts of CBS affiliate KHOU (channel 11)'s newscasts at 6:30 and 11:30 p.m. instead of airing newscasts from NBC affiliate KPRC-TV (channel 2).
KPXB-TV ended regular programming on its analog signal, over UHF channel 49, on June 12, 2009, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television.[7] The station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition VHF channel 5 to UHF channel 32 due to signal issues common with low-band VHF digital channels, using virtual channel 49.
After the digital transition, KPXB moved its transmitter from east of Splendora to the Houston-area antenna farm near Missouri City. KBPX-LP was shut down on June 30, 2009, two weeks after the digital transition, due to loss of access to the tower site.[8] However, since the main KPXB transmitter provides a signal comparable to the other Houston stations, the translator was redundant in any event. On November 22, 2010, KBPX-LP resumed operations on digital channel 46,[9] as an affiliate of The Country Network.[10]
