Channel 62 signed on in 1985 as WFCT, an
independent station owned by Fayetteville/
Cumberland Telecasters. Attorneys Robinson and Katherine Everett of Durham, founders of WRDU-TV (now
MyNetworkTV affiliate WRDC) in
Durham, along with WJKA (now
Fox affiliate
WSFX-TV) in
Wilmington and WGGT (now MyNetworkTV affiliate
WMYV) in
Greensboro, were two of the principals in this company. WFCT temporarily carried the programming of then-
NBC affiliate
WPTF-TV after that station's tower collapsed in an ice storm on December 10, 1989. The station changed call letters to WFAY in 1993 and became a Fox affiliate in 1994; the affiliation came as part of a deal that also saw the Everetts switch their
CBS affiliates, WJKA and
KECY-TV in
El Centro, California–
Yuma, Arizona to Fox. Even though WFAY was located in the same
market as
WLFL (a Fox affiliate at the time), it mainly focused on communities located south of Fayetteville that did not get a good signal from WLFL. Some of its non-network programming was also
simulcast to the Raleigh–Durham area on
WRAY-TV for a couple of years in the mid-1990s until it was acquired by the
Shop at Home network. WFAY later became WFPX and dropped Fox after being bought out by Paxson in the middle of 1998, shortly before
WRAZ assumed the Fox affiliation for the Raleigh market. Later that year, newly minted Fox station
WFXB out of the
Florence–
Myrtle Beach market expanded its signal to cover areas formerly served by WFAY. It is worthy of note that WFPX's signal was not seen at all in the northern portion of the Raleigh–Durham–Fayetteville market, but covered northern portions of the Florence–Myrtle Beach market, which did not have its own Ion Television affiliate until 2015, when
WBTW added Ion on a digital subchannel following a deal made with
Media General.
Channel-sharing agreement with WRPX On April 4, 2017, WFPX was identified by the FCC as receiving $62.4 million for the
spectrum reallocation auction. The station later entered into a channel-sharing arrangement with WRPX. Since WRPX's signal does not reach Fayetteville, WFPX changed its city of license to
Archer Lodge, east of Raleigh. After the channel share went into effect, WRPX-DT3, carrying Ion Life (later
Ion Plus), took WFPX's 62.1 virtual channel, assuring that network market-wide
must-carry over pay-TV systems. Since 2021, WFPX has aired various digital subchannel networks, all of them owned by
Scripps Networks. ==Technical information==