WUPL
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| WUPL | |
|---|---|
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| Slidell / New Orleans, Louisiana | |
| Branding | My 54 |
| Channels | 54 (UHF) analog, 24 (UHF) digital |
| Affiliations | My Network TV |
| Owner | CBS Corporation |
| Founded | 1995 |
| Call letters meaning | UPN Louisiana |
| Former affiliations | UPN (1995-2006) |
| Website | wupltv.com |
WUPL, My 54, is the My Network TV affiliate for the Greater New Orleans, Louisiana area. It is licensed to the New Orleans suburb of Slidell. CBS Corporation recently agreed to sell WUPL to Belo Corporation, owners of CBS affiliate WWL-TV; this is pending regulatory approval. Belo Corp. disclosed in February that it is being sued for reneging on a deal to buy the station from CBS Corp [1]. Somewhat unusual for a US television station, WUPL's analog and digital transmitters are not co-located, and are in fact, almost 30 miles from one another. WUPL's digital transmitter is located in the Algiers neighborhood of New Orleans. Their analog transmitter is located in the town of Lacombe Louisiana.[2]
[edit] History
The station signed on in June 1995 as the market's UPN affiliate. Along with UPN programming, the station runs a general entertainment format, offering vintage off-network sitcoms, talk shows, court shows, and other syndicated shows.
WUPL was sold to Cox Enterprises in 1997, which in turn sold the station to Paramount Stations Group, which made WUPL a UPN owned-and-operated station.
Viacom, Paramount Stations Group's parent company, merged with CBS in 2000. Despite Viacom's ownership of WUPL, the market's CBS affiliation remained on WWL-TV, the highest-rated television station in New Orleans and CBS' strongest affiliate for over 20 years. However, since early 2005, WUPL has been broadcasting CBS's The Early Show (which WWL-TV pre-empts). WUPL also offers The Daily Buzz newscast weekday mornings starting at 5 AM for two hours before The Early Show, and both shows are under the umbrella title My Morning News.
Viacom briefly considered buying WWL-TV, thus creating a duopoly with WUPL. However, after Belo turned down Viacom's offer, Viacom decided instead to sell WUPL to Belo. WUPL and WWL-TV will become sister stations under Belo ownership, pending FCC approval. Before then, WUPL was one of two network O&O's in New Orleans (Tribune-owned WNOL was the other) back then.
On February 9, 2006, Viacom filed a law suit against Belo Corp. over the failure to close on the sale of WUPL. The deal was slated to close by the end of 2005, but skidded to a halt when Hurricane Katrina devastated the market in late August.
[edit] Present and Future
On January 24, 2006, the UPN and WB networks announced they would merge. The newly combined network would be called The CW, the letters representing the first initial of its corporate parents CBS (the parent company of UPN) and the Warner Bros. unit of Time Warner. The merger would take effect on-the-air in September 2006, and current WB station WNOL was announced as the CW's New Orleans affiliate.
Even though the current lawsuit with Belo Corp provided some doubt, it was announced that WUPL would become an affiliate of My Network TV on July 12. Since NewsCorp owns FOX and MNTV, CBS Corporation, which tentatively owns WUPL, originally relented on allowing any of its current UPN affiliates to affiliate with the new network because Newscorp's UPN stations were left out of the deal to affiliate with The CW.
[edit] External links
| Broadcast television in the New Orleans market (Nielsen DMA #54) | ||
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WWL 4 (CBS) - WDSU 6 (NBC) - WVUE 8 (Fox) - WYES 12 (PBS) - WHNO 20 (LeSEA) - WGNO 26 (ABC) - KFOL-CA 30 / KJUN-CA 7 (Ind) - WLAE 32 (PBS) - WNOL 38 (The CW) - WPXL 49 (i) - WUPL 54 / WBXN-CA 18 (MNTV) |
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| Local cable television channels | ||
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WBXH-CA 39 (Baton Rouge) - KSHV 45 (Shreveport) - K47DW 47 / K61GO 61 / K51FO 521 (Alexandria/Hicks/Leesville) - WUPL 54 (Slidell) - KLAF-LP 62 (Opelousas) |
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| See also: ABC, CBS, CW, Fox, NBC, PBS, and Other stations in Louisiana | |
