Lowell “Bud” Paxson

Chairman, Paxson Communications, PAX-TV, Co-Founder of the Home Shopping Network

Bud Paxson is a pioneer in the media industry. He and a partner founded the Home Shopping Network and grew the company until it was earning over a billion dollars a year. Bud was a great success when it came to business, but he was failing at home. Being on the road 265 days a year can do that. On Christmas Day in 1986, his wife left him for another man. He was devastated. His success seemed pointless. However, this low point changed Bud from the inside out, and he emerged a renewed man eager to make his life count. The result has been the birth of PAX-TV.

PAX-TV is the nation’s seventh and newest broadcast network. “Our network is dedicated to providing family television, free from gratuitous violence, explicit sex, and foul language,” says Bud. “Since 1998 we’ve worked very hard at PAX-TV to show that you can be successful and make money in American television by providing programming that is wholesome and entertaining, and I’m very proud of that.” It has become a growing and profitable venture, and it is available in 89% of America’s TV homes.

As a teenager, Bud’s first job was retrieving records and coffee for disc jockeys. During his four years at Syracuse University, he was a radio announcer at several local stations. In 1956 he bought his first radio station, WACK in Newark, New York. In 1977 he began selling merchandise on a Florida AM radio station. That experience led him to the founding of the Home Shopping Network which has changed the way America buys merchandise.

Bud has won numerous awards and recognitions for his broadcasting excellence including: Broadcaster of the Year Award (Florida Association of Broadcasters); the NIMA International Lifetime Achievement Award (Worldwide Electronic Marketing Association); the American Free Enterprise Award; the Outstanding Business Leader Award (Northwood University); and the Florida Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

Since the breakup of his first marriage, Bud has remarried and now lives and operates his television empire, surprisingly, from south Florida.