The station is owned and operated by the Ion Media subsidiary of the E. W. Scripps Company, and maintains a transmitter atop Poor Mountain in unincorporated southwestern Roanoke County.
Coincidentally, a new channel 27, under the calls of WVFT, would sign on two months after WEFC, carrying a similar format.
Paxson Communications bought the station in 1997 and made it part of the all-infomercial inTV network.
[3] From 2000 to 2005, WPXR aired rebroadcasts of WSLS-TV's newscasts as part of a joint sales agreement between Paxson Communications and WSLS owner Media General.
[4] The station's signal is multiplexed: WPXR-TV ended regular programming on its analog signal, over UHF channel 38, 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.