WPXL-TV (channel 49) is a television station in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States, broadcasting the Ion Television network. It is owned and operated by the Ion Media subsidiary of the E. W. Scripps Company, and maintains offices on Veterans Memorial Boulevard and Cleary Avenue in Metairie; its transmitter is located off Paris Road (LA 47) near the Orleans–St. Bernard parish line. History Early history After a string of delays, channel 49 first signed on the air on March 19, 1989, as WCCL; it originally operated as an independent station with a general entertainment format, along with numerous CBS programs preempted by WWL-TV (channel 4), including CBS This Morning. Owned by Black woman Barbara Lamont, WCCL failed to show in the ratings with poor programming and a lack of cable carriage. By the end of 1989, it had filed bankruptcy due to a hostile creditor that sought to evict it from its tower at Algiers. The station had begun work on its own tower at Bywater which would prevent blockage of channel 49's signal by passing ships on the Mississippi River, but a battle with neighbors who wanted its height reduced left the site unfinished and unusable by the station. The hostile creditor—Lodestar Towers—was successful in obtaining an order to repossess WCCL's equipment, forcing the station off the air on May 23, 1990. While Lamont spent two years trying to rebuild the station's transmitter facility elsewhere, she gave up in May 1992, when her Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization case was converted to Chapter 7 liquidation. Flinn Broadcasting Corporation purchased the station's license out of bankruptcy and returned channel 49 to the air on May 25, 1994, carrying programming from the Home Shopping Network. The station changed its call letters to WPXL-TV on August 31, 1998; that same day, the station became a charter affiliate of the family-oriented network Pax TV (now Ion Television). As part of the affiliation deal with Pax TV, Flinn Broadcasting entered into a time brokerage agreement with Pax TV owner Paxson Communications to operate the station. On July 30, 2001. Paxson entered into a joint sales agreement with Hearst-Argyle Television (now Hearst Television), owner of NBC affiliate WDSU (channel 6), to provide advertising and marketing services for WPXL. Hurricane Katrina In early September 2005, shortly after Hurricane Katrina made landfall in southern Louisiana, WPXL partnered with WDSU, whose transmitter building in Chalmette was damaged due to flooding