WQED's sister station, WQEX, Channel 16, will lose its home shopping channel, America's Store, when the network ceases broadcasting April 3, WQED president George Miles said last night.

WQED Multimedia has been generating income from the rent of Channel 16 to the home shopping channel for several years. The home shopping contract was to be up for renewal in May.

WQEX had ceased original programming and began to simulcast WQED beginning in November 1997, in anticipation of a sale of WQEX, which fell through.

There had been other offers and other failed deals before the home shopping channel began to lease WQEX, bringing in more than $1 million a year for WQED, Mr. Miles said in March of last year.

"We have to figure out what our options are," Mr. Miles said of the most recent turn of events in the long saga of WQEX. "Maybe by mid-March we'll have something more definitive."

WQEX, created almost 50 years ago to broadcast educational programming into local schools, was re-outfitted with a commercial license to enter into the three-year deal with the shopping channel.

Barring the emergence of a new buyer, WQED's most likely options are to return the station to a simulcast of WQED or find another home shopping channel that might want to rent WQEX.