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KSPX-TV (channel 29) is a television station in Sacramento, California, United States, airing programming from the Ion Television network. It is owned and operated by the Ion Media subsidiary of the E. W. Scripps Company, and maintains offices on Prospect Park Drive in Rancho Cordova; its transmitter is located at TransTower in Walnut Grove, California. The station began broadcasting in 1990 with home shopping programming and aired home shopping and infomercials before the launch of Pax, predecessor to Ion, in 1998.
An FCC administrative law judge selected Ponce-Nicasio Broadcasting from among six bidders in an initial decision released in January 1984. The application consisted of three stockholders. Carmen Briggs, who owned 70 percent, was the wife of former politician and lobbyist John Briggs; Yolanda Nava was a former anchor at Sacramento TV station KXTV and at the time was working at KNBC in Los Angeles; and Mary Ann Alonzo worked for KGO-TV in San Francisco as well as Sacramento's KCRA-TV in the 1970s.
Not much progress was made on the new station in the rest of the 1980s. Ponce-Nicasio Broadcasting settled with competing applicants, paying them a total of $395,000, to end further litigation around the permit. In September 1989, the firm filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Filings in the bankruptcy case exposed a rift between the owners as to the programming for the new station. Nava and Alonzo favored an offer made to affiliate with Telemundo, a Spanish-language network. Briggs favored Home Shopping Club and instructed attorneys for Ponce-Nicasio Broadcasting not to review other offers. While an arbitrator ruled the Telemundo-aligned offer was in the company's best interest, a consultant hired by Briggs was granted a temporary restraining order against the move, and the bankruptcy filing froze that litigation. Nava and Alonzo charged through their lawyer that the filing was a "vindictive 'suicide mission'" to block the Telemundo offer. Briggs criticized them, saying their investment in the station in time and money had been minimal.
KCMY began broadcasting August 27, 1990, a day before the construction permit expired, with Home Shopping Club programming from a transmitter site in Diamond Springs. In a 1992 letter to the editor of Broadcasting magazine, Briggs defended the use of Home Shopping Club programming as a necessary income stream: "KCMY put Home Shopping Network programing on the air as the sole means of getting on the air as no one and I mean no one-like banks or leasing companies would lend us any money for a broadcasting venture without a source of repayment via an affiliation agreement. The only source of regular income available was HSN, since ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox affiliations were long gone by our sign-on in 1990 after the CP grant in 1984."
In 1995, KCMY switched from home shopping to the Infomall TV network from Paxson Communications Corporation. It also briefly had a deal with KXTV to supply reruns of the talk show Geraldo and several other programs. Paxson announced a deal to buy KCMY from Ponce-Nicasio Broadcasting in 1996, but Ponce-Nicasio still owned the station. In 2000, the $17.725 million purchase was filed with the FCC.
KCMY became KSPX ahead of the August 31, 1998, launch of the Pax TV network. After changing its name to i: Independent Television in 2005, the network became known as Ion Television in 2007.
Bill Simon, the Republican candidate in the 2002 California gubernatorial election, had previously been an investor in and vice president of Paxson Communications Corporation. In 2001, he hosted a weekly public affairs show on KSPX, Sunday with Simon.
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