UPN

UPN
United Paramount Network

Type	Defunct broadcast television network
Country	United States
Availability	United States, Canada
Founded	by United Television & Paramount Pictures
Owner	Chris-Craft Television (1995-1996) Chris-Craft Television/Viacom (1996-2000) Viacom (2000-2006) CBS Corporation (2006)
Launch date	January 16, 1995
Dissolved	September 15, 2006
Callsign meaning	United Paramount Network

United Paramount Network (UPN) was a television network that broadcast in over 200 markets in the United States from 1995 to 2006. UPN was originally owned by Viacom/Paramount and Chris-Craft Industries, the former of which through the Paramount Television Group produced most of the network's series. It was later owned by CBS Corporation. Its first night of broadcasting was on January 16, 1995. UPN shut down on September 15, 2006, and merged with The WB, which was shut down two days later, to form The CW Television Network.

History

Origins (1949–1993)

Paramount Pictures (the "P" in UPN) has played a pivotal role in the development of network television; it was a partner in the DuMont Television Network, and the Paramount Theaters chain, spun off from the corporate/studio parent, was an early, important component of the ABC television network's survival in the 1950s. The Paramount Television Network was launched in 1949, but dissolved in the 1950s.

In the wake of the successful Universal Studios ad hoc syndicated package Operation Prime Time, which featured first a miniseries adaptation of John Jakes' novel The Bastard and went on to several more productions, Paramount had earlier contemplated its own television network with the Paramount Television Service. Set to launch in early 1978, its programming would have consisted of only one night a week. Thirty "Movies of the Week" would have followed Star Trek: Phase II on Saturday nights. When the decision was made to transform Phase II into Star Trek: The Motion Picture, plans for the new Paramount network were scrapped, though Paramount would contribute some programs to Operation Prime Time, such as the mini-series A Woman Called Golda, and the weekly pop music program, Solid Gold.

Paramount, and its eventual parent Viacom, did not try to forget about the possibility. Independent stations, even more than network affiliates, were feeling the growing pressure of audience erosion to cable television in the 1980s and 1990s, and there were unaffiliated commercial stations in most of the major markets, at least, even after the foundation of Fox in 1986. Meanwhile, Paramount, long successful in syndication with repeats of Star Trek, found itself with several first-run syndicated series by the turn of the 1990s, in Entertainment Tonight, The Arsenio Hall Show, Friday the 13th: The Series, War of the Worlds, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

In 1993, Warner Bros. and Chris-Craft Industries went into a joint venture to distribute programming via a prime time programming block, which grew into its own network, the Prime Time Entertainment Network (PTEN). PTEN can be seen as the ancestor of what would become UPN and The WB, since Chris-Craft later became a partner in UPN, while Warner Bros. launched The WB, at roughly the same time (which slowly eroded PTEN into a mere programming block that was eventually cancelled in 1997), before both merged to form The CW Television Network in September 2006.

Launch (1994–2000)

The UPN colorful shapes logo, used from 1995 to 1998, and in various versions from 1998 to 2002.

Paramount had formed Paramount Stations Group when it purchased the TVX Group, which owned several independent stations in major markets. This was not unlike of the purchase of the Metromedia stations by News Corporation 10 years earlier, which were used as the nuclei for Fox. In another parallel, 20th Century Fox had long been a powerhouse in television syndication. All indicators suggested that Paramount was about to launch a network of its own. In late 1994, Paramount announced formation of the United Paramount Network. The new network was a joint venture between Paramount and Chris-Craft Industries. The "U" in UPN came from United Television, a Chris-Craft subsidiary. Both companies owned independent stations in several large cities in the United States. Chris-Craft owned the network. The new network launched on January 16, 1995; a few months earlier, Paramount had been bought by Viacom. The next year, 50 percent of the network was sold to Viacom.

To promote its launch of UPN, on January 16, a promo was aired on independent stations when they would become UPN affiliates, beginning around December 1994. The promo featured a bride, opera singers, and a rock composer composing the drums. To promote this, images of Paramount Television programming through the years such as Laverne & Shirley, Taxi, and Happy Days with the lyrics: "Meet the 30 years of television right there on the screen, comedy and drama's different years". Then a narrator would talk about new shows on the then-new television network. It ends with that same person saying "What more do you need to know? Coming January 16, look for it.".

The first telecast, the two-hour pilot of Star Trek: Voyager, was an auspiciously widely viewed start; however, Voyager would never achieve such viewership levels again, nor would any of the series debuting on UPN's second night of broadcasting survive the season. In contrast, The WB debuted one week earlier, on January 11, with four series, only one of which, Muscle, would not survive its first season. The first comedy shows to debut were Platypus Man, starring Richard Jeni, and Pig Sty, with both shows airing Monday nights in the 9 PM hour. Both received mixed reviews and neither lasted long. Other early UPN programs included the action show Nowhere Man starring Bruce Greenwood, the action show Marker starring Richard Grieco, the comic western Legend starring Richard Dean Anderson, the science-fiction themed action show, The Sentinel, and Moesha, a sitcom starring Brandy Norwood. Of the network's first few seasons, only Star Trek: Voyager, Moesha, and The Sentinel would last longer than one season.

Viacom era and decline (2000–2006)

Proposed logo for the stillborn Paramount Network.

In 2000, Paramount's parent company, Viacom, bought Chris-Craft's share stake to gain 100 percent control of the venture. Shortly afterward, Viacom dropped the "United" name for its new network, opting to change the official corporate name to the three-letter initials, "UPN". Viacom also aimed to relaunch UPN as Paramount Network, using a logo based on the famous Paramount Pictures mountain logo and the "P" triangle of the UPN logo, which already stood for Paramount, as the new network logo. This idea was abandoned after many affiliates protested, citing that the new branding might cause confusion and erode viewership. A few months before, Viacom bought CBS, thus creating CBS-UPN duopolies in Philadelphia (KYW-TV and WPSG), Boston (WBZ-TV and WSBK-TV), Miami (WFOR-TV and WBFS-TV), Dallas/Fort Worth (KTVT and KTXA), Detroit (WWJ-TV and WKBD-TV), and Pittsburgh (KDKA-TV and WNPA). It is said that Viacom's purchase of CBS was the "death knell" for the FCC's "no duopolies at all rule". Further transactions added San Francisco (KPIX-TV and KBHK), which was traded to Viacom/CBS by Fox, and Sacramento (KOVR and KMAX-TV) to the mix.

At the time of UPN's launch, the network's flagship station was WWOR-TV in New York City, owned by Chris-Craft. Even after Chris-Craft sold its share of the network to Viacom, WWOR was still commonly regarded as the flagship station since it had long been common practice to accord this status to a network's New York station. For this reason, some cast doubt on UPN's future after Fox bought most of Chris-Craft's television holdings. Several UPN stations were part of the deal, including WWOR and West Coast flagship KCOP-TV in Los Angeles. Fox later bought the third-largest UPN affiliate, WPWR-TV in Chicago. After Chris-Craft sold its stake in UPN, the network's largest owned-and-operated station was WPSG in Philadelphia.

In 2001, UPN acquired Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Roswell for their final seasons from network rival The WB in a public bidding war between the two with producing studio 20th Century Fox Television. UPN eventually outbid The WB for the shows and aired them together on Tuesday nights until Roswell ended its run in 2002 and Buffy the following year in 2003. New shows began to breathe life into the network starting in fall 2003 with America's Next Top Model and Will Smith's All of Us, in fall 2004 with Veronica Mars, and in fall 2005 with Chris Rock's Everybody Hates Chris.

When Viacom split into two companies at the end of 2005, its over-the-air broadcasting interests, including UPN, became part of CBS Corporation.

UPN quietly went off the air on September 15, 2006; WWE SmackDown was the last official program (although some affiliates aired the optional weekend encore block), ending its existence after 11 years. However, UPN affiliates owned by Fox Television Stations Group ended all ties to the network on August 31, 2006. Before that, within days of the new network's announcement, Fox-owned UPN affiliates stopped using the UPN branding and dropped all advertisement for UPN. As a result UPN did not air its last two weeks of programming in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and six other media markets in which Fox owned the UPN station, also due in part to then upstart Fox owned MyNetworkTV, which was set to debut September 5, 2006 on those stations. With the exception of WWE SmackDown, all programming during the final three months were reruns. SmackDown!, however, was aired in those markets on WB stations owned by Tribune, which have since become CW stations.

After the network's official closure, UPN's website was redirected to The CW website, and then CBS's website.

Executive management

• Lucie Salhany was the first CEO, from the network's launch in 1995 until 1997.
• Dean Valentine was CEO from 1997 to 2001.
• Tom Nunan was President, Entertainment from 1997 to 2001.^[1]
• Adam Ware was Chief Operating Officer from 1999 to 2002.
• Dawn Ostroff was President, Entertainment from 2002 to 2006.^[1]

Availability

Although it was considered a major network by the Nielsen ratings, UPN was not available in all areas of the United States. In some areas, UPN programming was shown off-pattern by affiliates of other networks or by otherwise independent stations, such as in the case of KIKU-TV in Honolulu, Hawaii. Some affiliates were also known to extensively preempt network programming in order to broadcast local sporting events. These factors led to the network struggling in the ratings over the past few years, with its most recent Star Trek franchise, Star Trek: Enterprise, perhaps suffering the most and ultimately being cancelled by the network in a controversial decision in February 2005. The most consistent ratings performer for the network was WWE SmackDown. In the 2004-2005 season, the network was getting consistently better ratings than The WB, much of this thanks to WWE.^[2]

It was estimated in 2003 that UPN was viewable by 85.98% of all households, reaching 91,689,290 houses in the United States. In contrast, The WB was viewable in 91.66% of homes. This is mainly because The WB had The WB 100+ Station Group, of group of cable-only stations in markets below the top 100, and UPN did not have such a service. Despite this, WNFM-TV in Southwest Florida became a UPN affiliate in 1998. UPN had approximately 143 full-power owned-and-operated or primary affiliate stations in the U.S. and another 65 stations aired some UPN programming as secondary affiliates.

Programming

Most of UPN's programming through the years was produced by Paramount Television or a sister company (such as Viacom Productions, Spelling Television, or CBS Productions).

The first official UPN network programming was the series Star Trek: Voyager. The first comedy shows to debut were Platypus Man, starring Richard Jeni, and Pig Sty, with both shows airing Monday nights in the 9 PM hour. Both received mixed reviews and neither lasted long. Other early UPN programs included the action show Nowhere Man starring Bruce Greenwood, the action show Marker starring Richard Grieco, the comic western Legend starring Richard Dean Anderson, the science-fiction themed action show, The Sentinel, and Moesha, a sitcom starring Brandy Norwood. Of the network's first few seasons, only Star Trek: Voyager, Moesha, and The Sentinel would last longer than one season.

UPN bought Buffy the Vampire Slayer from 20th Century Fox in 2001 when The WB chose not to renew it when the license fees skyrocketed. Buffy continued on UPN for two more seasons.^[3]

UPN also bought the rights to broadcast television shows Clueless (formerly on ABC), The Hughleys (formerly on ABC), and Roswell (formerly on The WB). The former show was produced by Paramount Television, while the latter two were produced by 20th Century Fox Television.

After Voyager's 7-season run came to an end, UPN began broadcasting the newest Star Trek spin-off, Star Trek: Enterprise.

The network also produced some special programs, including the Iron Chef USA program during Christmas 2001. UPN also showed WWE's SmackDown! show, America's Next Top Model, Girlfriends, The Parkers, a spin-off from Moesha, Veronica Mars, and Everybody Hates Chris, loosely based on the childhood of comedian Chris Rock. In the summer of 2005, UPN aired R U the Girl, in which R&B group TLC searched for a woman to join them on a new song.

In its later years, as part of the network's desire to maintain its own unique identity with its own unique shows, UPN had a policy of "not picking up other networks' scraps," which was a strong argument when fan pressure was generated in 2004 for them to pick up Angel, the spin-off of Buffy the Vampire Slayer which was dropped from The WB.

UPN aired only one regular network sports event program: the much-hyped XFL aired in 2001, as part of a package from co-creator Vince McMahon which also included what was then WWF SmackDown! UPN had planned to air a second season of the league in 2002, but it also demanded a reduction in the airtime of SmackDown! by 30 minutes. McMahon did not agree to the change and the XFL folded just after that.

Like The WB, UPN never aired a national newscast.

Children's programming

In its last three seasons, UPN was one of only two of the major broadcast networks (Ion Television was the other) not to air a children's programming block on weekend mornings. When UPN launched in 1995, the station aired cartoons on weekends; the lineup was known as UPN Kids. In 1998, UPN went a different way with its children's program block by airing reruns of the syndicated Sweet Valley High and a new series, Breaker High on weekdays and weekends aiming the programs at teenagers. As opposed to ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox and WB stations, some UPN affiliates aired the weekend children's program block on Sunday mornings instead of Saturdays.

In 1999, UPN made a deal with Disney to air select programming from ABC's One Saturday Morning block (now ABC Kids) in place of the teen series. The new lineup would be called Disney's One Too. Recess and Sabrina, the Animated Series were among the programming on the original lineup. Many UPN affiliates were already airing the syndicated Disney Afternoon block anyway. The Disney cartoons therefore were no longer syndicated but now aired on UPN stations. The block was reinstated to two hours. In some markets it ran weekday mornings, while in other markets it aired weekday afternoons. In 2002, Digimon: Digital Monsters moved to the lineup from Fox Kids. This was due to Disney's acquisition of Fox's children's programming department (then known as Jetix until 2009. now known as Disney XD) as well as the Fox Family Channel, now renamed ABC Family.

After eight years of airing children's programming, UPN dropped out of the kids program business in September 2003 when Disney's contract with UPN came to an end. Reasons included U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) restrictions on quantity of advertising on children's programs, the content of such advertising, the fact syndicators were moving their most popular product to cable only, and the growth of cable channels directed at children (which have fewer advertising restrictions). As of January 2006, UPN had no plans of returning kids programming to the network, but it became a moot point due to its merger with The WB creating The CW. When The CW launched, they carried over the Kids' WB (now Toonzai!) Saturday morning lineup from The WB.

Some Fox stations decided to carry over Fox's 4kids.tv block to a UPN, WB, or independent station, so the Fox affiliate could air general entertainment or local news programming on Saturday mornings. WFLD Fox 32 in Chicago, for example, moved the 4Kids TV schedule to co-owned UPN (now MyNetworkTV) affiliate WPWR-TV Channel 50, while Channel 32 airs news and different children's programming in place of the shows. Also, some UPN stations aired a block of cartoon programming from DIC Entertainment (such as Trollz and Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century) which was designed to meet the minimal three hours of E/I programming required by the FCC, and usually airs either six days a week for a half-hour each day, or in three hour-long blocks throughout the week.

Television movies

During the late 1990s, UPN produced a number of television movies branded "Blockbuster Shockwave Cinema," in conjunction with sponsor (and sister company) Blockbuster Video. Almost all were science fiction films.

From UPN's inception until 2000, the network also offered a hosted movie series called the UPN Movie Trailer to their stations. The show featured mostly older Hollywood action and comedy films, often those made by Paramount Pictures. Movie Trailer was discontinued in 2000 to give stations that opted for them room for a second weekend run of Star Trek: Enterprise and America's Next Top Model (and later, Veronica Mars). There were also three Paramount-branded blocks on the company's owned-and-operated stations ("O&Os") only: Paramount Teleplex as the main brand for movies at any given timeslot, Paramount Prime Movie for primetime features, and the Paramount Late Movie on late nights.

Shows that almost aired on UPN

• According to Simon Cowell's biography and Bill Carter's book Desperate Networks, UPN was offered American Idol before FOX and turned it down.
• As part of the contract for picking up Buffy the Vampire Slayer, UPN was obligated to pick up Angel if it was cancelled by The WB while UPN was still airing Buffy. However, Angel was axed by The WB the year after Buffy went off UPN. Despite a large fan campaign, UPN declined to pick up the show.
• Firefly was offered to UPN after being cancelled, but was declined.^[4]
• Malcolm in the Middle was originally developed for UPN before being picked up by FOX.^[5]
• Talkshow with Spike Feresten was reportedly to air on UPN; it debuted on FOX one day after UPN's closure.
• According to The TV IV, nine new scripts for the third season of The Critic were written for UPN.^[6][7]

Station standardization

When it was launched, UPN began having most of its stations branded as "UPN" or "Paramount," then the channel number, with the call signs nearby. By the late 1990s, the call signs were minimized to be just barely readable to meet FCC requirements, and the stations were simply known as "UPN", then channel number or city (e.g., WPWR-TV in Chicago had been referred to as "UPN Chicago" and WWOR-TV in New York was referred to as "UPN 9" until The CW merger was announced in late January 2006). But most UPN O&Os under CBS branded it by network and city according to the CBS Mandate. For example, KBCW in San Francisco was branded "UPN Bay Area," WKBD in Detroit was branded "UPN Detroit" and WUPL in New Orleans was branded "UPN New Orleans."

However, that didn't always apply, as WSBK-TV in Boston was branded "UPN 38" and KMAX-TV in Sacramento was branded "UPN 31," for example. WPCW Channel 19 in Pittsburgh (formerly WNPA) originally branded itself as "UPN 19", but changed over to "UPN Pittsburgh" soon after the UPN logo change, making it one of the few that had carried both standardization styles. Many non-O&O UPN affiliates followed the same branding scheme; for example KFVE in Honolulu, during its UPN affiliation, used the brand "UPN Hawaii".

This would be a continuation of the trend for networks to do such naming schemes, originated at Fox (and even earlier at CBC in Canada), especially at CBS, who uses the CBS Mandate on almost all of their O&O stations. The WB, NBC and ABC also do similar naming schemes, but not to that extreme.

However, while the traditional "Big Three" don't require their affiliates to have such naming schemes (though some affiliates choose to adopt it anyway) and only on their O&O's is the style required, UPN mandated it on all stations (as Fox currently does), though The WB did not. In one case, though, WCGV in Milwaukee branded as Channel 24 from 1998-2001 with no UPN imagery. The station had disaffiliated from the network in 1998 for eight months (previously it was "UPN 24") in a compensation dispute.

Slogans

Since in lanuch in 1995 until it ceased as it merged with The WB Television Network in 2006, UPN only had a few slogans in its 11-year exsistence. For a short time in 1995, when the network was revamped, UPN used "You're Watching UPN: The New United Paramount Network". This was shortned to "You're Watchning UPN" on March 31, 1995. When Viacom took control of it, part of the slogan, "UPN", during a period between May 9, 2000 and September 21, 2002, was shouted as "U! P! N!" by the narrator. The network later changed it to "Turn It Up" until being replaced by "It's Time For U".

See also

• The CW Television Network
• List of programs broadcast by UPN
• List of United States over-the-air television networks
• List of UPN affiliates
• Weekday cartoon
• 2006 United States broadcast TV realignment
• UPN Kids

Notes

External links

• Archive copy at the Wayback Machine.
• The Evolution of UPN, WB, Fox, PBS, and PAX
• An ad promoting UPN on RetroJunk.com