The WB was an American broadcast television network operated as a joint venture between the Warner Bros. Entertainment division of Time Warner (which acted as controlling partner) and the Tribune Broadcasting subsidiary of the Tribune Company. Launched on January 11, 1995, it was one of two networks developed by major film and television studios in late 1993—alongside the United Paramount Network (UPN, a joint venture between Paramount Television and Chris-Craft/United Television)—to compete with Fox and the longer established Big Three television networks (ABC, NBC and CBS).
Like Fox, the network's programming targeted certain demographics underserved by the Big Three; it notably carved a niche catering to teenagers and young adults between the ages of 13 and 35 (with series such as 7th Heaven, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dawson's Creek, Smallville, One Tree Hill and Supernatural), although it also featured programs aimed at Black audiences (such as Sister, Sister, The Wayans Bros., The Jamie Foxx Show and The Steve Harvey Show) before gradually ceding that demographic to UPN—which had cemented its own niche among that audience with its slate of sitcoms—beginning in the early 2000s. The network also offered a children's program block, Kids' WB, which launched in September 1995 and featured primarily animated series targeted at children aged 4 to 12.
This article details the history of The WB tracing to its founding by Time Warner in November 1993, and its operational history from the network's January 1995 launch until its closure in September 2006, when Time Warner and CBS Corporation (then-owner of rival UPN) launched The CW, a new broadcast network formed by the two companies as a 50/50 joint venture that utilized certain resources and initially featured programming carried over from the predecessor networks.
Background With the success with Fox, several other media companies started to enter the broadcasting world in the 1990s to create the fifth commercial broadcast network that would allow a station to brand itself better and to stand out amongst the increasing number of television channels, particularly cable networks. Chris-Craft Industries subsidiary United Television and Warner Bros. Television Distribution jointly launched the Prime Time Entertainment Network, a consortium created in attempt at creating a new "fifth network," in September 1993. By early 1994, PTEN, Spelling Premiere Network (operated by Worldvision Enterprises), Universal Family Network (a children's and family programming service operated by Universal Television), and proposed networks in development from Time Warner and Paramount Television were being shopped to prospective stations, alongside syndicated blocks such as Buena Vista Television's The Disney Afternoon and MCA/Universal's Action Pack. Spelling Premiere Network would launch in August 1994. All American Television considered launching a first-run movie network with 22 movies by November 1994.
Chris-Craft/United Television then partnered with Paramount (by then recently merged with Viacom) to create the United Paramount Network (UPN), which launched in January 1995. Warner Bros. parent Time Warner then formed a partnership with the Tribune Company to create The WB, which also launched less than a week after UPN made its debut. Concurrently, United left PTEN's parent, the Prime Time Consortium, to focus on UPN, leaving PTEN as primarily a syndicator of its remaining programs; the service shared affiliations with its respective parents' own network ventures (in some cases, resulting in PTEN's programming airing in off-peak time slots) until it finally folded in September 1997.
1990s
Controversial from the very beginning, the Financial Interest and Syndication Rules (or "fin-syn"), implemented by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 1970, were relaxed slightly during the 1980s. In the wake of substantial changes to the television landscape, such as the rise of the Fox network and cable television, the FCC fully repealed the fin-syn rules in 1993. It was the repeal of fin-syn that ultimately made newer broadcast networks such as UPN and The WB financially interesting for their highly vertically integrated parent media conglomerates Paramount Pictures (Viacom) and Time Warner, respectively.
On November 2, 1993, Time Warner announced the formation of The WB Television Network, a venture developed in partnership with the Tribune Company (which, prior to acquiring an 11% interest in August 1995, was a non-equity partner in the new network) and former Fox network executive Jamie Kellner (who would serve as the original president of and would hold a minority ownership stake in The WB). Tribune committed six of the seven independent stations it owned at the time to serve as charter affiliates of the network, though it initially exempted the WGN-TV Chicago signal from the agreement, as station management had expressed concerns about how the network's plans to expand its prime time and daytime program offerings would affect WGN's sports broadcast rights and the impact that the potential of having to phase them out to fulfill network commitments would have on the superstation feed's appeal to cable and satellite providers elsewhere around the United States. Tribune would reverse course on December 3, 1993, reaching a separate agreement with Time Warner to allow WGN-TV to become The WB's charter affiliate for the Chicago market and allow the WGN superstation feed to serve as a de facto national network feed intended for American media markets that did not initially have a local affiliate; this would bide The WB enough time to fill remaining gaps in affiliate coverage in "white area" regions that lacked a standalone independent station following its launch. In exchange, Time Warner agreed to reduce the network's initial program offerings to one night per week (from two) in order to limit conflicts with WGN's sports programming. The superstation feed, which reached 37% of the country by that time, would extend the network's initial coverage to 73% of all U.S. households that had at least one television set. Alt URL
1995
The WB launched on January 11, 1995, with an initial two-hour lineup of sitcoms on Wednesday nights. The inaugural lineup consisted of The Wayans Bros. (a star vehicle for comedians Shawn and Marlon Wayans, who also co-created the series), Unhappily Ever After (a dysfunctional family sitcom from Married... with Children co-creator Ron Leavitt), and Muscle (a parody of primetime soap operas from Paul Junger Witt and Tony Thomas, utilizing a similar concept as their groundbreaking 1970s ABC satirical comedy Soap); a fourth series, The Parent 'Hood (a family sitcom starring and co-created by Robert Townsend), debuted the following week (January 18). Of the four series on the initial lineup, Muscle was the only one not to be renewed for the 1995–96 season; it was canceled before the completion of its first season due to low ratings.
In January 1995, Tribune Broadcasting became a minority partner in The WB, acquiring a 12.5% ownership interest in the network from Time Warner (which operated the network through its Warner Bros. Television division);Tribune Broadcasting Joins with Warner Bros. to Launch Fifth Television Network , TheFreeLibrary.com. Retrieved 12–10–2010. Tribune would eventually increase its equity stake in the network to 22%. In addition, partly as a result of its November 1993 affiliation deal with the network, most of Tribune's television properties became charter WB affiliates; one of its stations, WGNX-TV (now WANF) in Atlanta, was slated to join The WB, but instead became a CBS affiliate after a major realignment of network affiliations resulted in CBS losing its former Atlanta affiliate, WAGA-TV, to Fox. (Former Fox station WATL, which the network sold to accommodate the switch resulting from Fox's broader affiliation deal with WAGA owner New World Communications, instead took the WB affiliation.) On July 2, 1996, Tribune acquired Renaissance Broadcasting, which owned Fox- and WB-affiliated stations in six large and mid-sized markets.
The WGN-TV local and superstation feeds became charter affiliates of The WB when the network launched on January 11, 1995. (In the case of the Chicago signal, this marked the first time that WGN-TV was affiliated with a major broadcast network since DuMont ceased operations in August 1956.) The WGN cable agreement resulted in The WB becoming the second American broadcast television network to distribute its programming directly to a cable-originated service to provide extended coverage in designated "white areas" without broadcast affiliate clearances and one of three network-to-cable undertakings stewarded by Jamie Kellner. As The WB was under development, Kellner was in process of developing The WeB, a proposed national WB cable feed for smaller markets based upon a service that he launched as President of the Fox Broadcasting Company, Foxnet, which operated from June 1991 until September 2006. The use of WGN as a national relay feed gave The WB an early advantage over the United Paramount Network (UPN) – another fledgling network that made its national debut on January 16, 1995, as a joint venture between Chris-Craft/United Television and Paramount Television – which declined to allow the WWOR EMI Service to act as its national conduit in spite of similar initial gaps in UPN's broadcast affiliate coverage. The WGN superstation feed accounted for roughly 18% of the national coverage that The WB had at launch, with the rest of the network's initial 62% total reach coming from the 60 broadcast affiliates (including WGN-TV) that were willing to adhere to its reverse compensation plan for prospective affiliates. In some areas where cable systems did not carry the superstation feed and maintenance of a local WB affiliate was not yet possible, satellite distribution was the only method in which viewers could see the network's programming over WGN. (The WGN national feed served as the default WB affiliate for residents in 152 markets and the entirety of 21 U.S. states—Alaska, Arkansas, Delaware, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming—at varying periods of time up through the launch of The WeB.) United Video intended to provide an alternate feed of WGN with substitute programming for markets that had a WB-affiliated station; however, no such measure was taken, creating network duplication in markets where over-the-air WB affiliates were forced to compete with the WGN cable feed.