The United Paramount Network (UPN) was an American broadcast television network founded on October 27, 1993. It operated from January 16, 1995 to September 15, 2006. It merged with The WB to form The CW on September 18, 2006.
UPN was originally a joint venture between Chris-Craft Industries (later sold to News Corporation's subsidiary, United Television) and Viacom's then-recently acquired subsidiary, Paramount Television (which produced most of UPN's programming), then became solely owned by Viacom in 2000 after subsequently purchasing Chris-Craft's remaining stake. On December 31, 2005, UPN was kept by CBS Corporation, which was the new name for Viacom when it split into two separate companies. On January 24, 2006, CBS Corporation and Time Warner jointly announced that the companies would shut down UPN and competitor The WB to launch a new joint venture network later that year. UPN ceased broadcasting on September 15, 2006, with The WB following two days later. Select programs from both networks moved to the new network, The CW, when it launched on September 18, 2006.
History
1948–1994: Origins of the network Paramount Pictures had played a pivotal role in the development of network television. It was a partner in the DuMont Television Network, and the Paramount Theaters chain, which was spun off from the corporate/studio parent and merged with ABC in a deal that helped cement that network's status as a major network. The Paramount Television Network was launched in 1948, but dissolved in the 1950s.
Paramount had long had plans for its own television network with the Paramount Television Service. Set to launch in early 1978, it would have run its programming for only one night a week. Thirty "Movies of the Week" would have followed Star Trek: Phase II on Saturday nights. Plans for the new network were scrapped when sufficient advertising slots could not be sold, 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. Star Trek: Phase II was reworked as the theatrical film, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, absorbing the costs already incurred from the aborted television series.
Paramount, and its eventual parent Viacom (which bought the studio's then-parent, Paramount Communications, in 1994), continued to consider launching their own television network. Independent stations, even more than network affiliates, were feeling the growing pressure of audience erosion to cable television in the 1980s and 1990s; there were unaffiliated commercial television stations in most of the major television markets, even after the foundation of Fox in 1986. Meanwhile, Paramount, which had long been successful in syndication with repeats of Star Trek, launched several first-run syndicated series by the 1990s, including 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, Time Warner and Chris-Craft Industries entered into a joint venture to distribute programs via a prime time programming service, the Prime Time Entertainment Network (PTEN), which is UPN's partial parent. Chris-Craft later became a partner in UPN, and Time Warner launched The WB in a joint venture with the Tribune Company at roughly the same time.
1994–1999: Launch and early years
Paramount formed the Paramount Stations Group in 1991 when it purchased the assets of the TVX Broadcast Group, which owned several independent stations in major markets. This was not unlike the purchase of the Metromedia stations by News Corporation five years earlier, which were used as the nucleus for Fox. In another parallel, 20th Century Fox (the News Corporation subsidiary behind the Fox network, which was spun off with the company's other entertainment assets to 21st Century Fox on June 28, 2013 before Disney acquired them on March 20, 2019), like Paramount, had long been a powerhouse in television syndication. All indicators suggested that Paramount was about to launch a network of its own.
In April 1993, the Federal Communications Commission ended the fin-syn rules that prohibited networks from owning the rerun rights to programs they broadcast. Fear that networks would stop buying programs from independent studios was another reason for Paramount to start a network.
On October 27, 1993, Viacom and Chris-Craft announced the formation of a new television network, later to be named the United Paramount Network, with initial plans to run two hours of programming in prime time for two nights per week. The new network would be co-owned by United & Paramount Television, while most of its shows were to be produced by Paramount Television.
Initially, the network was to simply be called "U", but the "U Network" trademark was held by the now-defunct National Association of College Broadcasters (NACB), which had been operating a satellite television programming network featuring programs largely produced by college students since 1991. The founder and first head of UPN, Lucie Salhany, approached NACB with an offer of US$50,000 to transfer the name. Due to the costs related to rebranding the student network, and under the advice of its then-volunteer legal counsel, Cary Tepper, the non-profit association countered with a request of $100,000, which Salhany refused. At one point, the network was set to be titled the U/P Network before its current name was decided. Ultimately, the "U" in UPN stood for Chris-Craft subsidiary United Television, which owned the network's two largest stations, WWOR-TV in New York City and KCOP-TV in Los Angeles; the "P" represented Paramount Television, the studio that formed a programming partnership with Chris-Craft to create the network. Chris-Craft and Paramount/Viacom each owned independent stations in several large and mid-sized U.S. cities, and these stations formed the nuclei of the new network.
Warner Bros. announced plans to launch a similar network, which would become known as The WB, in close proximity to UPN. The belief that a new broadcast network could grow to be competitive was predicated on the idea that the network in question would not have a fledgling rival to contend with. With the change in landscape, the joint understanding of assured defeat prompted executives from Viacom and Time Warner (at the time, UPN and The WB's respective owners, with the latter owning most of The WB) to discuss the prospect of merging the networks together. Both sides reached an agreement on the division of affiliates, but Chris-Craft expressed extreme skepticism and declined to proceed with the merger. A merger would ultimately come in 2006 with the creation of The CW.
UPN launched on January 16, 1995, initially carrying programming only on Monday and Tuesday nights from 8:00 to 10:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific Time. The first telecast, the two-hour pilot episode of Star Trek: Voyager, was an auspicious start, with 21.3 million viewers; however, Voyager would neither achieve such viewership levels again, nor would any of the series premiering 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 series to premiere on UPN were Platypus Man, starring Richard Jeni, and Pig Sty, with both shows airing Monday nights in the 9:00 p.m. hour; both received mixed reviews. Neither lasted long.
Other early UPN programs included the action series Nowhere Man, starring Bruce Greenwood and Marker, starring Richard Grieco; the comic western Legend starring Richard Dean Anderson; the sci-fi themed action series, The Sentinel; and Moesha, a sitcom starring R&B musician Brandy Norwood. Of the network's early offerings, only Star Trek: Voyager, Moesha and The Sentinel would last longer than one season. As a result of the lack of viewership, UPN operated on a loss and had lost $800 million by 2000.
Within nearly two years of the network's launch, on December 8, 1996, Paramount/Viacom purchased a 50% stake in UPN from Chris-Craft for approximately $160 million. Like Fox had done nine years earlier, UPN started with a few nights of programming each week, with additional nights of primetime shows gradually being added over the course of several seasons. Because of this, UPN's affiliates were basically independent stations for all intents and purposes during the network's early years, with these stations airing either syndicated programs or movies during primetime on nights when the network did not provide programming. The first expansion of its primetime lineup came with the addition of programming on Wednesday nights on March 6, 1996 (during the second half of the 1995–96 season); that expansion also saw UPN assume the broadcast rights to the Blockbuster Entertainment Awards, which aired its inaugural broadcast on CBS the year before.
UPN ordered 36 sci-fi films to air as part of its weekly movie presentations beginning in 1998; the films were supplied by four production companies, with most of the titles coming from Paramount. Some titles would be shown on Showtime first, which allowed the premium cable channel to cooperate in advertising the movies.
UPN completed its prime time expansion in the 1998–99 season, with Thursdays and Fridays as the last nights of programming to be added to the network's evening slate. That season saw the debut of The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer, a sitcom set during the Civil War that centered on a black English nobleman who becomes the valet to Abraham Lincoln; even before its premiere, the series was riddled by controversy and protests from several African American activist groups (including the Los Angeles chapter of the NAACP, who picketed outside Paramount Studios one week before the originally scheduled pilot episode) and some advertisers for its perceived lighthearted take on American slavery in the 19th century. Despite the publicity Desmond received from the controversial approach it applied to its topic, the series suffered from low ratings (with the first episode on October 5, 1998, placing 116th out of 125 programs aired that week on network television) and was canceled after four episodes.
1999–2005: Viacom era and decline
Six months before Viacom announced its $36 billion merger with (the original) CBS Corporation, in March 1999, Viacom applied a contractual clause that would – within a 45-day grace period – force Chris-Craft to either buy Viacom out of UPN, or have Chris-Craft sell its ownership stake in UPN to Viacom. Three days later on February 8, Chris-Craft subsequently filed a lawsuit against Viacom in the New York Supreme Court to block Viacom's merger with CBS, claiming that a pact signed between the two partners in 1997 had prevented either from owning "any interest, financial or otherwise" in "any competing network", including CBS, for a four-year period through January 2001. On March 17, New York Supreme Court judge Herman Cahn ruled against Chris-Craft's move for a permanent injunction to curtail the Viacom-CBS merger and the enforcement of Viacom's ultimatum.