Lowell White Paxson was born on April 17, 1935 in
Rochester, New York. Paxson began his career as an owner of
WACK radio, a little 500-watt radio station in the village of
Newark, New York. His next attempt at media ownership was radio station
WXYJ (AM 1340) and TV station
WNYP (channel 26) in
Jamestown, New York. Paxson, who bought the stations in 1966, attempted to affiliate WNYP with the
CTV Television Network out of Canada (a first for an American television station); by 1969, the TV station had failed. Paxson later emerged as the owner of a small
AM radio station,
WWQT (1470 AM), in
Clearwater, Florida. There, in 1977, an advertiser had plenty of product to sell—avocado-green-colored can openers—but ran out of funds to purchase airtime. Paxson instructed talk-show host
Bob Circosta, who had a talk show from noon until 3:00 p.m., to sell the can openers live over the airwaves, and both men were stunned at the audience response. All 118 can openers were purchased within the hour on August 28, 1977. This started the Suncoast International Bargainers Club. Sensing the sales potential of live, on-air product selling, Paxson and financier
Roy Speer co-founded a local
cable TV channel (channel 52 on Vision Cable) in 1982 that sold products directly to
Florida viewers, and then launched nationwide in 1985. The channel was the Home Shopping Club, later Home Shopping Network (currently known as
HSN), and Paxson's former radio man
Bob Circosta was tapped as the network's first-ever host. HSN soon became a billion dollar juggernaut and began the home shopping / electronic retailing industry. In 1996, the two sold HSN to
Hollywood executive
Barry Diller. Paxson then formed Paxson Communications Corporation and bought
radio stations,
TV stations, and
billboards, primarily in
Florida. Eventually, he sold those and put the money into PAX TV (currently known as
Ion Television), a new network of family-friendly TV shows. The channel also reflected Paxson's background as an
evangelical Christian (since 1985), which he spoke of openly. PAX TV began on August 31, 1998. During the time between the sale of HSN and the founding of PAX TV, Paxson moved his headquarters from
Tampa to
West Palm Beach. However, the network never received anywhere near the
ratings or
advertising revenue of the other networks. In addition, PAX TV lost a few affiliates, such as when Paxson sold its
Dayton, Ohio, and
Green Bay, Wisconsin, stations to
ACME Communications so that group could affiliate them with
The WB (though PAX TV programming continued to air overnight on those stations for a few years), and the network was unable to offer their programming in some markets, like
St, Louis,
Charlotte and
Pittsburgh. On July 1, 2005, PAX TV became "i: Independent Television". In November of that year,
NBCUniversal, which owned 22 percent of i, began a nine-month period during which it could buy the rest of the network. Possibly sensing that NBCU would do so, and beset with lawsuits over the operation of i, Paxson resigned from the company he founded. In addition, Paxson became Ion Media Networks, and NBCU executive
R. Brandon Burgess became the
chief executive officer. In time, i was rebranded to Ion Television, which since 2020 has been a subsidiary of the
E. W. Scripps Company. == Personal life ==