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WXIX-TV (channel 19) is a television station licensed to Newport, Kentucky, United States, serving the Cincinnati metro as the market's Fox affiliate. It is owned by Gray Media alongside low-power Telemundo affiliate WBQC-LD (channel 25) and Dayton–licensed low-power independent station WZCD-LD (channel 30). The three stations share studios at 19 Broadcast Plaza on Seventh Street in the Queensgate neighborhood just west of downtown Cincinnati; WXIX-TV's transmitter is located in the South Fairmount neighborhood on the city's northwest side.
Though the construction permit for a fourth television station to serve Cincinnati—originally assigned channel 74—had been obtained by a Newport group in 1953, it took 15 years and two sales before the station was built on channel 19; its facilities have always been in Ohio. A successful independent station under U.S. Communications Corporation, Metromedia, and Malrite Communications Group before the creation of Fox in 1986, the station began producing a local newscast in 1993 and today airs local newscasts in many time slots.
With Lang noting the tribulations of other UHF television stations around the country, however, Tri-City opted not to build its station right away. In April 1956, Lang told a reporter for The Cincinnati Enquirer that it would only be a "matter of time" until channel 74 went on air. Some conversation around the construction permit emerged in late 1962, when Lang sold WNOP radio and the WNOP-TV construction permit to television actor Dean Miller in a deal that ultimately fell through; Tri-City had presented to the FCC a proposal to add a lower-power channel 3 station to Cincinnati (between channel 2 in Dayton and channel 3 in Louisville), which Miller also supported, though chances of approval were slim.
In early 1965, channel 74 was no closer to going on the air than it had been a decade prior, but a change in ownership would lead to the foundation being laid to start a new commercial television station in Greater Cincinnati. That March, Tri-City sold the WNOP-TV permit to Daniel H. Overmyer, who was seeking to build a chain of major-market UHF television stations, for $100,000. Two changes were nearly immediate after the purchase closed. On September 14, 1965, the call letters were changed to WSCO-TV; Overmyer's stations all bore the initials of family members, with the new designation representing his wife, Shirley Clark Overmyer. The FCC was in the process of overhauling the UHF table of allocations at the time, which—together with a rulemaking petition from Overmyer—resulted in the lower channel of 19 being substituted for 74 in 1966. Overmyer selected the Bald Knob tower site, negotiated to lease a studio facility on Eighth Street in the Queensgate neighborhood, and announced that the new station would be affiliated with the new Overmyer Network once it started. Civic leaders in Newport objected, to no avail, to the idea of the station leaving Northern Kentucky.
A launch date of February 1, 1967, was initially slated, but the station did not start on that date. Instead, in April, Overmyer reached a deal to sell 80 percent of his television station group to the American Viscose Corporation (AVC).
Cincinnati's first commercial independent station featured a schedule consisting primarily of movies, sports, and syndicated programs, though it also produced a local daytime children's program hosted by puppeteer Larry Smith. The next year, the station debuted "The Cool Ghoul", a host of Scream-In, channel 19's Saturday night science fiction and horror movie played by Dick VonHoene. By the start of 1970, an American Research Bureau study had determined WXIX-TV was the number-one UHF independent station in the United States and in the top ten of all independents, VHF or UHF, nationwide. In 1970, the station purchased a facility on Taconic Terrace in Woodlawn, Ohio, from the defunct K & S Films for use as a larger studio base.
By month's end, Metromedia was in negotiations to purchase WXIX-TV, and a deal was reached in early October to purchase the station for the assumption of $3 million in liabilities. The FCC approved of the deal in August 1972.
Metromedia was able to stabilize WXIX-TV, increasing its ability to attract quality programming and contributing its own productions. Furthermore, WXIX-TV started a commercial production division; as none of the other stations had entered this specialty, channel 19 was able to corner between 70 and 80 percent of this market in the Cincinnati area. In the late 1970s, the station's local programs included Cincinnati Stingers hockey games and a news magazine, In Cincinnati. While a second independent station began broadcasting in 1980, WSTR-TV (channel 64) was a part-time subscription television station which had trimmed its ad-supported schedule to a handful of programs by 1983.
Under Malrite, WXIX-TV continued to be the market's leading non-network station, not far behind the network stations in early evening hours and way ahead of WBTI, which had become a full-time ad-supported station again as WIII in 1985. One advertising agency president declared it had become "one of the big boys" in local television. In the early years under Malrite, the station telecast Xavier Musketeers men's basketball before picking up a multi-year deal to air University of Cincinnati basketball games in 1987. UC basketball had previously aired on the station in the Metromedia era.
It joined Fox as a charter member in 1986. When Fox made a push into children's programming with the startup of the Fox Children's Network (later known as Fox Kids), WXIX started its own Fox Kids Club; within nine months, channel 19 had 80,000 members, outpacing projections of 50,000 in the first year. It also started a new weekly local children's show, Fridays Are Fun, hosted by Michael Flannery.
Launching local news made the Woodlawn site, from Cincinnati on Interstate 75, a hindrance for news crews. As a result, in 1993, WXIX-TV purchased the former Harriet Beecher Stowe School building in the Queensgate neighborhood, spending $2 million at a sheriff's sale to acquire the former black junior high school which had since been converted into offices. The station converted a third of the structure for its own use, including using the former gymnasium as its primary studio. The station moved into what was renamed "19 Broadcast Plaza" in December 1995; at the same time, it dropped its "19XIX" moniker used for a decade and became known as "Fox 19". Between 1992 and the launch of a morning newscast in 1996, WXIX-TV's staff swelled from 63 to 141 employees.
In 1998, Raycom Media purchased Malrite Communications and its five stations, three of them in Ohio. Under Raycom, the station made a series of news expansions and analyzed leaving 19 Broadcast Plaza for a larger building that could be owned rather than leased.
In 2025, WXIX agreed to simulcast ten Cincinnati Reds regular season games, including opening day, with FanDuel Sports Network Ohio; the games would additionally be simulcast over Rock Entertainment Sports Network (RESN) which airs on WXIX-DT3. A joint venture between Gray Media and Rock Entertainment Group, RESN launched over WXIX-DT3 in August 2024, with WXIX's feed set up to carry additional local programming.
After channel 19 moved into the former Stowe School, several expansions of news at WXIX were carried out. The first was the extension of the 10 p.m. news to a full hour in January 1996. That fall, 19 in the Morning, a three-hour morning news program, debuted. 19 News Midday, a half-hour at 11:30 a.m., followed in May 1997. Even though the morning shows were still gaining an audience, the Ten O'Clock News was among the highest-rated in the United States. After seeing success with a 10 p.m. newscast, the station expanded further into morning news, adding a 6 a.m. hour in 1998, and ratings increased when it promoted Macke to full-time 10 p.m. anchor and hired Sheila Gray to anchor Fox 19 in the Morning in 1999.
After nearly a decade, news expansions began again in 2008 with the launch of the Fox 19 Evening News, a 6:30 p.m. local newscast. In 2010, 2011, and 2012, extensions to the morning newscast brought its total length at its peak to seven hours, from 4 to 11 a.m. The station would also debut weekend morning newscasts in 2012. In the 2010s, WXIX also had news sharing partnerships with WLW radio and The Cincinnati Enquirer.
In 2018, WXIX added 4 p.m. and 11 p.m. newscasts, the latter the first competition to network affiliates in that time slot in Cincinnati TV history. This was followed in January 2020 by 90 further daily minutes of news from 5 to 6:30 p.m. and in 2021 by an hour of news at 3 p.m. As of 2024, WXIX produces hours of local newscasts each week.
| + Subchannels of WXIX-TV |
WXIX's main subchannel is carried on the ATSC 3.0 (Next Gen TV) multiplex of WSTR-TV, which launched in 2021; in exchange, WXIX hosts one of WSTR's subchannels.
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