WPXR-TV (channel 38) is a television station licensed to Roanoke, Virginia, United States, broadcasting the Ion Television network to the Roanoke–Lynchburg market. The station is owned and operated by the Ion Media subsidiary of the E. W. Scripps Company, and maintains a transmitter atop Poor Mountain in unincorporated southwestern Roanoke County.
History
The station signed on January 3, 1986, as WEFC, a religious station owned by Evangel Foursquare Church (hence the call letters). It was the first non-network affiliated station in Roanoke, and the first new UHF station in the market to sign on following the demise of WRLU channel 27 nearly 11 years earlier. Coincidentally, a new channel 27, under the calls of WVFT, would sign on two months after WEFC, carrying a similar format.
Paxson Communications bought the station in 1997 and made it part of the all-infomercial inTV network. It joined Pax TV (later i: Independent Television and now Ion Television) on the network's launch in 1998.
Newscasts
From September 1996 until August 1997,