USA Broadcasting

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USA Broadcasting was an American media company owned by veteran entertainment industry executive Barry Diller.

USAB dates back to the mid-1990s when Diller purchased Silver King Broadcasting from Lowell W. "Bud" Paxson and Roy Speer. Paxson and Speer had assembled the group to expand their company, Home Shopping Network, onto broadcast television. The stations carried the Home Shopping Club (now America's Store).

Diller planned to remove shopping shows from most of the stations' broadcast days and replace them with local and syndicated programs. He wanted to tie each of the stations very closely to the communities they served, and to open up opportunities for locally-produced programs.

By 2000, four stations were transformed into Diller's new model: WAMI (Miami 69) in Miami, WHOT (Hot-Lanta 34) in Atlanta, WHUB (Hub 66) in Boston, and KSTR (K-Star 49) in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. WAMI, WHOT and KSTR aired local news, talk shows and sporting events. WAMI aired Miami Heat basketball and Florida Marlins baseball games. WHOT and KSTR also carried pro basketball games of, respectively, the Atlanta Hawks and Dallas Mavericks. WHUB aired syndicated programming, and acquired the rights to the annual Beanpot hockey tournament between four of Boston's colleges. HSC/America's Store continued to air on late nights and weekends.

There were also plans to convert stations in New York and Los Angeles to the new local-TV model. However, in late 2001, Diller suddenly sold the stations to Univision, which converted them into the Spanish language. Some USAB stations joined Univision, but most joined its new sister network, Telefutura, which launched in January 2002. Diller still owns HSN and other interactive and shopping services on television and online.

[edit] Other stations

Silver King/USAB also briefly owned four Fox affiliate stations: WLUK (Green Bay, Wisconsin), KHON (Honolulu, Hawaii), WALA (Mobile, Alabama), and WVUE (New Orleans, Louisiana). That ownership was in 1999 and 2000 before the four stations were sold to Emmis Communications. Three of the four stations (all but WVUE) have since been sold again.

[edit] Stations owned by USA Broadcasting

Market	Station	Now called	Currently
New York	WHSI 67 WHSE 68	WFTY 67 WFUT 68	Telefutura
Los Angeles	KHSC 46	KFTR	Telefutura
Chicago	WEHS 60	WXFT	Telefutura
Philadelphia	WHSP 65	WUVP	Univision
Boston	WHUB 66 (was WHSH)	WUTF	Telefutura
San Francisco-Oakland	KPST 66	KFSF	Telefutura
Dallas-Fort Worth	KSTR 49 (was KHSX)	KSTR-TV	Telefutura
Atlanta	WHOT 34	WUVG	Univision
Houston	KHSH 67	KFTH	Telefutura
Tampa-St. Petersburg	WBHS 50	WFTT	Telefutura
Cleveland	WQHS 61	WQHS	Univision
Miami-Fort Lauderdale	WAMI 69 (was WYHS)	WAMI	Telefutura
Melbourne-Orlando	WBSF 43	WOTF	Telefutura