The Big Network Switch Of NATPE 2006
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If you saw my blog from last week, I wrote about my experiences going to the annual meetings of the National Association Of Television Program Executives (NATPE). And as I have been reading some of the news in the trades this week, it reminded me of the big news 10 years ago this week: the consolidation of The WB and UPN Television Networks to become the CW Network.
WB and UPN were launched and partnered by what had been independent TV station groups who were losing prime time programming to basic cable networks. For years the staple of programming in prime on an indie was movies and sports. Prior to KTVT becoming a CBS station, it aired over 150 movies a year in prime (accounting for a 95 Texas Rangers game schedule and 30 Dallas Mavericks games annually) and over 300 movies on the weekends. It had a movie library of approximately 5,000 titles when I first started here in 1987. We had quarterly movie scheduling meetings between myself, Sales, Promotion, and the General Manager. This was a meeting taken very seriously, almost as much as a budget meeting.
By 1990, the landscape was changing rapidly. Basic cable networks started to compete for the rights to feature films and gobbled up most of the titles stations had come to depend on for years. The first salvo was USA's acquisition of a first run movie package from Disney in 1990: great titles that slipped out of the broadcasters' hands. At that point, broadcasters realized they had to act. And act quickly.
In 1993, the Tribune Company and Warner Brothers announced they would form the WB Network: 2 hours of prime Monday-Friday with some weekend programming. In that same year, Chris-Craft (who owned a number of TV stations) and Paramount Television announced the formation of UPN (United/Paramount Network) with a similar amount of programming provided. The objective was to create and exhibit brand new, first run programming targeting a younger and different ethnicity of people who spent more time in front of the set. And it was to provide programming to eventually let local sales department charge a higher rate for advertising than they could with movies. By 1995, these networks were up and running. When I returned to KTVT as "CBS11" and along with KTXA ("UPN21"), you could easily see that UPN and the WB were programming for the same audience but neither network really getting a lasting dominance over each other. It was like two boxers in the ring duking it out but no one winning at the end. Some great shows were created as a result of these two networks.
This week in 2006, NATPE broke the news that UPN and WB would merge together to become the CW Network (the "C" was for CBS and the "W" for Warner Brothers to which the two companies today operate the network as a joint venture). Then decisions were made as to who would become the CW affiliate. In our market, KDAF (Channel 33), which had been a WB station, was granted the CW affiliation. KTXA, who had been the one and only UPN station for 11 years, reverted back to its roots as an indie but launched 2 hours of prime time news Monday-Sunday: "TXA21 News: First In Prime." It now airs off-network programming during the weekdays and Sunday, with Saturday airing a mix of off-network and feature films, and some live sports. On September 15, 2006, the WB and UPN became a part of American broadcasting history, and the CW took over on September 18, 2006.
This was such big news that many attendees at NATPE with station management responsibilities left the convention early to get back to their stations!
It is events that like this that keeps this business so fascinating to me! See you next time.
