WPXH-TV (channel 44) is a television station licensed to Hoover, Alabama, United States, serving the Birmingham area as an affiliate of Ion Television. The station is owned by Inyo Broadcast Holdings, and maintains offices on Golden Crest Drive in Birmingham and a transmitter atop Red Mountain, near the city's southern edge.

The station traces its creation to issues involving independent station WDBB (channel 17) in Tuscaloosa, which was looking to increase its profile in central Alabama. When that station signed on in October 1984, at a time when cable television still did not have much penetration in the region, WDBB faced problems in trying to improve its coverage throughout the central part of the state, as its signal was nowhere near strong enough to cover the northern half of the market, particularly areas to the northeast of Birmingham proper. Although WDBB's founding owner, Dubose Broadcasting, invested heavily in the station and acquired a strong inventory of syndicated programming, the signal's inability to reach most of central Alabama put WDBB at a severe disadvantage against the area's other major independent, WTTO (channel 21) in Birmingham, which had early on established itself as one of the strongest independent stations in the Deep South and the United States as a whole.

Dubose found a solution when the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) awarded the company a construction permit to launch a television station in Gadsden on UHF channel 44. That station signed on in April 1986 as WNAL-TV, originally operating as a full-time satellite station for the northern half of the market—specifically, areas to the east of downtown Birmingham—that could not receive the WDBB signal. Shortly before WNAL signed on, Dubose reached an agreement with the Fox Broadcasting Company to become the network's charter affiliate for central Alabama after WTTO turned down an offer to join the network. WDBB further strengthened its hand by using its forthcoming status as a network affiliate to make a concerted effort to improve its reach in Birmingham by applying to transfer its city of license to Bessemer, 15.5 miles (24.9 km) southwest of Birmingham, which allowed it to build a new transmitter tower located closer to Birmingham that would provide a much stronger signal in the western portion of the city.

WDBB and WNAL became Fox charter affiliates when the network officially launched on October 9, 1986. As was the case with other Fox stations during the network's early years, channels 17 and 44 continued to program as de facto independent stations as the late-night talk show The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers was the network's only program initially; when Fox debuted its prime time schedule in April 1987, the network only carried evening programming on weekends, and would not carry seven nights a week of programming until June 1993. Until Fox began airing programming on a nightly basis, WDBB and WNAL aired movies (and later, syndicated programs) at 7 p.m. on nights when the network was not scheduled to air any programming.

Despite covering roughly half of central Alabama over-the-air and the two stations maintaining a relatively strong program lineup, the signal of WDBB did not provide better than Grade B coverage (at best) within Birmingham proper. Due to the eastward location of its transmitter tower, WNAL's signal did not penetrate well into Birmingham either, only reaching as far west as extreme eastern Jefferson County. In addition, several major cable providers in the Birmingham market, including in Jefferson and Shelby counties, refused to carry the station for this reason. Ultimately, WDBB/WNAL was not profitable. After all efforts to increase the stations' cable coverage failed, Fox signed an agreement to make WTTO its new Birmingham affiliate and moved its programming to channel 21 in January 1991.

Soon afterward, Dubose reached an agreement with Abry Communications in which WDBB and WNAL would convert into semi-satellites of WTTO and begin simulcasting its programming for the vast majority of their broadcast day, with separate syndicated programming airing during the three hours that the stations continued to program themselves. As part of the deal, WDBB/WNAL merged its stronger inventory of programming onto WTTO's schedule, with the local rights to some classic sitcoms on its schedule that it could not retain or move elsewhere on the schedule being sold to WABM (channel 68) in Birmingham, which converted into a general entertainment independent around the same time the WTTO/WDBB/WNAL simulcasting arrangement went into place. The station subsequently began identifying as "Fox 21", using the channel allocation of WTTO as a universal brand for it and its repeaters. The combination of WTTO, WDBB and WNAL provided a strong combined signal throughout the central third of Alabama that was comparable to those of ABC affiliate WBRC-TV (channel 6) and NBC affiliate WVTM-TV (channel 13). In 1993, Abry had purchased WDBB and WNAL outright and converted both stations into full-time satellite stations of WTTO, resulting in the removal of local programming on the former two stations.

By 1994, the WTTO/WDBB/WNAL combination had become one of the highest-rated Fox affiliates in the country, and managed to overtake then-underperforming CBS affiliate WBMG (channel 42, now WIAT) as the third-highest-rated television station in central Alabama. Late that year, both WDBB and WNAL began airing separate programming during the daytime and late evening hours, consisting of syndicated sitcoms, drama and animated series that WTTO did not hold the rights to broadcast as well as local newscasts. That same year, the Hunt Valley, Maryland–based Sinclair Broadcast Group acquired WTTO, WDBB and WNAL when it merged with Abry Communications, which also assumed a local marketing agreement with WABM (a deal signed the previous year when WABM was sold to a locally based group). In 1995, WNAL was purchased by Fant Broadcasting, but continued to simulcast WTTO's programming through a time brokerage agreement.

In March 1994, Great American Communications agreed to sell WBRC to New World Communications, as part of a deal that also involved three of the former group's other television stations (WDAF-TV in Kansas City, KSAZ-TV in Phoenix and WGHP in High Point, North Carolina). Subsequently, three weeks later, New World agreed to purchase WVTM and three other stations (KTVI in St. Louis, KDFW in Dallas, and KTBC in Austin, Texas) from Argyle Television Holdings. New World was now faced with the prospect of having to divest as many as three of the acquired stations as the FCC forbade broadcasting companies from owning two commercial television stations in the same market, and restricted them from owning more than twelve stations nationwide (the concurrent acquisitions of the Argyle and Citicasters stations put New World three stations over the national television ownership cap).