Paxson Communications Corp. said Wednesday that Pax TV had resumed
broadcasting on its assigned UHF channel 31 in New York.
'Like many broadcasters operating from the World Trade Center, we had to find
alternatives,' chairman Lowell 'Bud' Paxson said in a press release.
WPXN, carrying Pax, is operating with 250,000 watts of power from a tower in
East Orange, N.J., and on low-power TV on channel 38 in Amityville, N.Y.
Plans are in the works to move WPXN's channel 31 operations to several
megawatts from a taller tower in Alpine, N.J., in about one month.
Paxson said cable coverage in the New York area was not interrupted because
WPXN TV 31's master control in New York feeds the cable headends by fiber. The
biggest cable operator in Manhattan is Time Warner Cable.
But Pax was off the air on RCN Corp.'s cable system in Manhattan for several
days, during which a sign appeared on channel 3 notifying subscribers that the
outage was caused by the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. RCN, an
overbuilder, has said it serves about 800 apartment buildings in Manhattan.
In the release, Paxson expressed praise and appreciation for all New York
staff and engineering personnel who kept the network on cable and restored the
over-the-air signal following the tragic events of last week.
