WPXE-TV (channel 55) is a television station licensed to Kenosha, Wisconsin, United States, broadcasting the Ion Television network to the Milwaukee area. It is owned and operated by the Ion Media subsidiary of the E. W. Scripps Company alongside NBC affiliate WTMJ-TV (channel 4), with engineering and some master control operations run out of WTMJ-TV's Radio City facility on East Capitol Drive in Milwaukee. WPXE's transmitter is located on the WITI TV Tower on East Capitol Drive in Shorewood, Wisconsin. History The station first signed on the air on June 1, 1988 as WHKE (for "World Harvest Kenosha Evangelism"), operating as a religious station; it was originally owned by LeSEA Broadcasting. The station's original transmitter was located in Kenosha, just north of the Illinois–Wisconsin state line (the tower is remains in use for the transmitter of radio station WWDV, 96.9 FM). Paxson Communications purchased the station in 1995 and turned it into an all-infomercial format as part of the Infomall TV Network (inTV), though it also aired the daily greyhound racing recap program from Kenosha's Dairyland Greyhound Park for many years after WVTV (channel 18) stopped carrying that show in 1996, which met the station's local programming requirements. In the late 1990s after its purchase by Paxson, the station moved its transmitter to a tower in northern Racine County (near I-94) which was shared with WEZY (92.1 FM; now WVTY, which continues to use the tower). Despite the reason for the transmitter move being to serve more of the Milwaukee market, the southerly tower location from the traditional northeast side tower farm operated at a lower power, mainly to keep the channel 55 allocation open for an eventual new station in Wausau (which would eventually be given to Wittenberg-licensed WFXS in 1999), limited the station's coverage area in southeastern Wisconsin; this caused the station to not be available in Fond du Lac and Sheboygan counties, except through cable. The station became a charter affiliate of Pax TV (now Ion) when it launched on August 31, 1998, at which time it changed its call letters to WPXE-TV. At times during summer due to tropospheric propagation in the analog era, WHKE/WPXE would receive heavy interference a few times and even have its signal overwhelmed by that of another distant station on channel 55, WBNX-TV from Cleveland, which broadcast at a stronger power and had its signal brought over Lake Michigan into Wisconsin