Originally licensed to Fayetteville, North Carolina, WFPX served as a full-time satellite of WRPX-TV from 1998 until 2018. WFPX's signal covered areas of south-central North Carolina that received a marginal to non-existent signal from WRPX, although there was significant overlap between the two stations' contours otherwise. WFPX was a straight simulcast of WRPX; on-air references to WFPX were limited to Federal Communications Commission (FCC)-mandated hourly station identifications during programming. Aside from its former transmitter, WFPX did not maintain any physical presence locally in Fayetteville.
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 MyNetworkTVaffiliateWRDC) 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.[5] 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-TVinEl Centro, California–Yuma, Arizona to Fox.[6] Even though WFAY was located in the same marketasWLFL (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.
On April 4, 2017, WFPX was identified by the FCC as receiving $62.4 million for the spectrum reallocation auction.[7] 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.[2] 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.
On February 27, 2021, after the closure of Ion Plus, WFPX-TV became a Bounce TV owned-and-operated station.
On May 5, 2024, WFPX switched from Bounce to sister network Scripps News, with Bounce moving to sister station WRPX-DT4.
WFPX-TV ended regular programming on its analog signal, over UHF channel 62, at noon on June 12, 2009, the official date on which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal continued to broadcasts on its pre-transition UHF channel 36,[10] using virtual channel 62.
(*) – indicates station is in one of North Carolina's primary TV markets (**) – indicates station is in an out-of-state TV market, but reaches a small portion of North Carolina
(*) – indicates station is in one of Virginia's primary TV markets (**) – indicates station is in an out-of-state TV market, but reaches a small portion of Virginia
