UPN and the WB have been canceled — and a new, fifth broadcast network will be formed from the remains of the two.
After competing for almost exactly 11 years and racking up hundreds of millions of dollars in losses, the corporate owners of the two networks, CBS and Time-Warner, have announced they will cease operations for UPN and the WB in September — and launch The CW as a new entity.
In Utah, the announcement raises an immediate question — what will become of WB affiliate KUWB-Ch. 30 and UPN affiliate KPNZ-Ch. 24? Only one of them will get to be the local CW affiliate.
The CW will be a 50-50 joint venture of CBS (UPN's parent company) and Time-Warner (the WB's parent). UPN Entertainment president Dawn Ostroff will be in charge of programming, marketing, scheduling, publicity and research for the new network. John Maata, chief operating officer at the WB, will be COO of the new network and oversee business operations.
Current WB programmers, already thought to be in danger of losing their jobs because of the network's ratings woes, are out.
An argument could be made that combining the two could result in an attractive prime-time lineup, with such WB shows as the Utah-made "Everwood," "Gilmore Girls," "Smallville," "Supernatural," "Reba" and "Beauty and the Geek" and UPN shows like "Veronica Mars," "Everybody Hates Chris," "America's Next Top Model" and "WWE Smackdown."
"It will clearly be greater than the sum of its parts, delivering excellent demographics to advertisers, and building a strong new affiliate body," CBS president and CEO Leslie Moonves said in announcing the surprise pact.
The new network has already signed two huge affiliation agreements — the 12 CBS-owned UPN stations and the 16 Tribune Broadcasting stations are on board with 10-year deals. (Tribune gave up its part-ownership in the WB in return for the affiliation agreement.) Those stations alone cover 48 percent of the country, and by next fall The CW's reach is "expected to exceed 95 percent of the country."
Fox, which spent $4.4 billion to buy the Chris-Craft station group in 1991, has been left out in the cold. Fox owns nine UPN affiliates, five in top 10 markets (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington and Houston) where either CBS or Tribune already owns a station.
It's also going to leave a Salt Lake station feeling similarly chilly. According to Dana McClintock, senior vice president at the CBS Communications Group, "It remains to be seen which of the two stations (in Utah) will become a CW affiliate."
Adding to the uncertainty is the fact that KUWB is in the process of being sold to Clear Channel, the parent company of KTVX-Ch. 4. Should Ch. 30 fail to secure The CW affiliation, its value (currently pegged at $18.5 million) would certainly fall. And Clear Channel would have to re-evaluate its options.
A Clear Channel spokesman deferred comment, saying "we just found out" about the new network and had no time to process the information.
Similar questions hang over Ch. 24, a start-up operation that might not survive the loss of a network affiliation. And they are similarly surprised at that station.
"We were not expecting it," said Matt Elggren, KPNZ's creative services director. "We're just trying to go about business as usual as we try to find out what this means for us."
The new network will operate on the WB's current schedule — 13 hours of prime-time programming (7-9 p.m. Monday-Friday; 6-9 p.m. Sunday); two hours of pre-prime time Sundays from 4-6 p.m.; an afternoon programming block (Monday-Friday 3-5 p.m.); and the Saturday-morning cartoon lineup (7 a.m.-noon).
No decisions have been made yet about programming or scheduling.
E-mail: pierce@desnews.com