WUPA

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WUPA is a UPN owned-and-operated television station in Atlanta, Georgia, broadcasting locally on channel 69. It is set to become an affiliate of The CW on September 18, 2006, remaining an owned-and-operated station.

History

The station first began operations on August 22, 1981, under the callsign WVEU. It was originally owned by locally-based BCG Communications. Initially, its programming line-up conisted of business news during the day and "VUE", a subscription TV service during the evenings and weekends. By 1982, it was running subscription TV most of the day. In 1984, WVEU dropped "VUE" programming and turned towards a general entertainment format. The station added cartoons, low budget syndicated shows, preempted CBS and NBC programs and music videos to its line-up. However, it struggled in the ratings as its comptetitors, WATL (channel 36) and WGNX-TV (channel 46) picked the best choices clean.

The station began running Home Shopping Network for about fifteen hours a day in 1986, as the network tried to buy the station and make them its full-time Atlanta affiliate. However, the deal fell through in 1987, thus the Home Shopping Network failed to buy WVEU -- but it did arrange for WNGM-TV in Athens (channel 34, now WUVG) to air HSN programming 24 hours a day. From 1989 to 1994, WVEU primarily aired Home Shopping Network programming, but also aired some religious shows, infomercials, NBC and ABC programs preempted by WXIA-TV and WSB-TV, and a few syndicated shows. It continued to struggle in the ratings.

On May 22, 1994, New World Communications, by then the owners of Atlanta's longtime CBS affiliate, WAGA, announced an affiliation deal with the Fox Broadcasting Company in which most of New World's stations would become affiliates of the network. This deal came after Fox won the rights to air NFC football games. Because of this, Fox decided to sell its existing O&O in Atlanta (and that market's original Fox affilate), WATL. Meanwhile, CBS was left looking for an affiliate in the 9th-largest market. First, it approached WSB and WXIA -- but neither of those stations were interested. Also not interested at first were WATL and Atlanta's other independent, WGNX -- the latter, then owned by Tribune Broadcasting, was slated to join the WB Television Network, which it co-owned with Time Warner -- while WATL was most likely to become Atlanta's affiliate for the United Paramount Network (UPN), which was co-owned by Paramount Pictures and Chris-Craft Industries. Almost out of desperation, CBS agreed to buy WVEU in October, even though the station had the lowest-rated of all of Atlanta's full-power stations, in addition to having the weakest signal of them all. However, at the 11th hour, Tribune Broadcasting, relented and agreed to allow WGNX to join CBS, while WATL would become the WB affiliate (and eventually purchased by Tribune, with a current pending sale to Gannett). WGNX (which later became WGCL-TV) sold WVEU many of its syndicated cartoons as well as Disney Afternoon cartoons along with off network classic sitcoms -- not only did this give WVEU a stronger lineup than ever before, it also ushered in a new era for the station.

WVEU became one of the charter affiliates of UPN in January 1995. That summer, Paramount Stations Group, a subsidiary of Viacom (which had purchased original parent Paramount Pictures not long after UPN was founded), bought the station and changed its call letters to WUPA to reflect its new status as an O&O and significantly boosted the station's signal. Over the years, more first run syndicated shows were added to the station's schedule. When the Disney cartoon block ended in 2003, WUPA stopped running kids programming except for the weekends.

In April 2004, the station launched "UPN Atlanta News at Ten", a 10pm newscast produced by WXIA-TV as well as a live program at 10:30pm titled "Atlanta Tonight". Both suffered in the ratings, and they were cancelled in August 2005.

Recently, rumors have spreaded about CBS Corporation (which split from Viacom in 2005) purchasing WGCL, making it sister to WUPA. Meanwhile, other rumors persist about CBS selling WUPA to either Meredith Corporation (current owners of WGCL) or Cox Television (owners of WSB). Tribune has stated it they intend to sell some stations, and has already announced the sale of WATL to Gannett, giving them a duopoly in Atlanta (with WXIA).

On January 24, 2006, CBS and Time Warner announced they were "merging" their respective UPN and WB networks into The CW Television Network, effective September 2006. WUPA will be Atlanta's CW affiliate. It is not yet known whether it will change its call letters to reflect its new affiliation.

Logos

Station timeline

• 1981: Independent WVEU-TV
• 1995: Became UPN WUPA "UPN69"
• 2002: Renamed "UPN Atlanta"
• 2004: Began a short-lived news partnership agreement with WXIA and an sports and entertainment variety show
• 2006: Committed to The CW and to be renamed "CW Atlanta"

Transmission tower

The original tower still houses the auxiliary (backup) antenna shared by both WZGC FM and a construction permit for WVEE FM, and which was originally used for regular broadcasting of WWWQ FM. It may have also been the previous location for WSTR FM as well (the allotment is still listed there, according to the FCC database). [link]

The current tower is very near several other Atlanta area broadcast stations.

List of Old Shows

• Star Trek (1996-1999)
• Benson (2003-
• Good Times (1997-2001)
• Home Improvement (2001-

External links

• [UPN Atlanta]
• [Query the FCC's TV station database for WUPA]

.54 billion USD (2005) | Employees: Unknown at this time. | Stock Symbol: NYSE: [CBS] | Website: [www.cbscorporation.com]

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