WVPX-TV AKRON, OH

WVPX-TV (channel 23) is a television station licensed to Akron, Ohio, United States, serving the Cleveland area as an affiliate of Ion Television. It is owned by Inyo Broadcast Holdings alongside Canton-licensed Bounce TV affiliate WDLI-TV (channel 17), which transmits using WVPX-TV's full-power spectrum via a channel sharing agreement. The two stations share studios on Renaissance Parkway in Warrensville Heights and transmitter facilities on Ohio SR 261 in Norton, Ohio.

This station was signed on by S. Bernard Berk's Summit Radio Corporation as WAKR-TV, the television extension of WAKR. WAKR-TV positioned itself with a focus primarily on Akron even as it also covered the Greater Cleveland television market. From their 1953 establishment until 1996, the station was one of two primary ABC affiliates within the Cleveland market, current primary affiliate WEWS-TV being the other. Denied what would have originally been a VHF license, WAKR-TV's competitiveness was negatively impacted throughout this era by financial shortfalls and continuous ratings issues, even with a move from channel 49 to channel 23 in 1967, and eventual market-wide carriage on cable systems. Becoming WAKC-TV in 1986 after WAKR was sold, the station remained in the hands of the Berk family until 1994, when it was sold to home-shopping broadcast chain ValueVision. Under ValueVision, the station retained local programming and its ABC affiliation. A subsequent sale to Paxson Communications resulted in all newscast production ceasing immediately upon consummation on February 28, 1996, and disaffiliation from ABC at years' end; these moves made Akron the largest city in Ohio without a traditional television network affiliate or commercial television newscast.