WUPL

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WUPL
Slidell / New Orleans, Louisiana
Branding	My 54
Channels	54 (UHF) analog, 24 (UHF) digital
Translators	WBXN-CA 18, New Orleans, Louisiana
Affiliations	MyNetworkTV
Owner	WUPL: Belo Corporation WBXN-CA: CBS Corporation (Acquisition by Belo Corporation in progress)
Founded	1995
Call letters meaning	UPN Louisiana
Former affiliations	UPN (1995-2006)
Website	wupltv.com

WUPL, My 54, is the My Network TV affiliate for the Greater New Orleans, Louisiana area. It is licensed to the New Orleans suburb of Slidell. CBS Corporation recently agreed to sell WUPL to Belo Corporation, owners of CBS affiliate WWL-TV; the deal has received regulatory approval. Belo Corp. disclosed in February 2006 that it was being sued for reneging on a deal to buy the station from CBS Corp [3]. Somewhat unusual for a US television station, WUPL's analog and digital transmitters are not co-located, and are in fact, almost 30 miles from one another. WUPL's digital transmitter is located in the Algiers neighborhood of New Orleans. Their analog transmitter is located in the town of Lacombe, Louisiana.[4]

Contents 1 History 2 Present and Future 3 Future Newscast 4 References 5 External links

[edit] History

The station signed on in June 1995 as the market's UPN affiliate. Along with UPN programming, the station runs a general entertainment format, offering vintage off-network sitcoms, talk shows, court shows, and other syndicated shows.

WUPL was sold to Cox Enterprises in 1997, which in turn sold the station to Paramount Stations Group, which made WUPL a UPN owned-and-operated station.

Viacom, Paramount Stations Group's parent company, merged with CBS in 2000. Despite Viacom's ownership of WUPL, the market's CBS affiliation remained on WWL-TV, the highest-rated television station in New Orleans and CBS' strongest affiliate for over 20 years. However, since early 2005, WUPL has been broadcasting CBS's The Early Show (which WWL-TV pre-empts). WUPL also offers The Daily Buzz newscast weekday mornings starting at 5 AM for two hours before The Early Show, and both shows are under the umbrella title My Morning News.

Viacom briefly considered buying WWL-TV, thus creating a duopoly with WUPL. However, after Belo turned down Viacom's offer, Viacom decided instead to sell WUPL to Belo. WUPL and WWL-TV became sister stations under Belo ownership. Before then, WUPL was one of two network O&O's in New Orleans at the time (Tribune-owned WNOL was the other).

On February 9, 2006, CBS Corporation (which took over WUPL after Viacom split into two companies) filed a law suit against Belo Corp. over the failure to close on the sale of WUPL. The deal was slated to close by the end of 2005, but skidded to a halt when Hurricane Katrina devastated the market in late August. On February 26, 2007, Belo announced that they would go forward with the purchase of WUPL from CBS.^[1] A Belo press release also said the sale - which has already received FCC approval - "settles litigation between Belo and CBS over the purchase that arose after Hurricane Katrina."^[2] At that time, Belo closed on WUPL, and is in the process of acquiring its low-power repeater, WBXN-CA on channel 18 in New Orleans (previously a separate station, affiliated with The Box and later MTV2). Although WUPL is now owned by Belo, its website continued to use the old Viacom/CBS-era format until early April 2007. WUPLTV.com now redirects to the cbslocal.com domain, as Belo is currently in the process of moving WUPL's operations into the WWL-TV facility. Once the move is completed, WUPL will share its website with WWL.

[edit] Present and Future

On January 24, 2006, the UPN and WB networks announced they would merge. The newly combined network would be called The CW, the letters representing the first initial of its corporate parents CBS (the parent company of UPN) and the Warner Bros. unit of Time Warner. The merger would take effect on-the-air in September 2006, and former WB station WNOL was announced as the CW's New Orleans affiliate.

Even though the lawsuit with Belo Corp at the time (but has since been settled) provided some doubt, it was announced that WUPL would become an affiliate of My Network TV on July 12. Since NewsCorp owns FOX and MNTV, CBS Corporation, which owned WUPL at the time of MNTV's launch, originally relented on allowing any of its current UPN affiliates to affiliate with the new network because Newscorp's UPN stations were left out of the deal to affiliate with The CW.

WUPL may take on the responsibility of airing CBS prime-time programs when WWL-TV is not able to such as in a news-related emergency.

[edit] Future Newscast

Rumors of starting a newscast become known as Eyewitness News at 9 on My54, to go up against WVUE's one-hour newscast and WNOL's 30-minute newscast.

There may eventually be a new morning newscast on WUPL as well.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• WUPL Website
• WWL-TV Website
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WUPL
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WBXN-CA

Broadcast television in the New Orleans market  (Nielsen DMA #54)
WWL 4 (CBS) - WDSU 6 (NBC) - WVUE 8 (Fox) - WYES 12 (PBS/LPB) - WHNO 20 (LeSEA) - WGNO 26 (ABC) - KFOL-CA 30 / KJUN-CA 7 (Ind) - WLAE 32 (PBS) - WNOL 38 (The CW) - WPXL 49 (ION) - WUPL 54 / WBXN-CA 18 (MNTV)
Local cable television channels
NewsWatch 15
See also: Broadcast television stations in the Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Biloxi/Gulfport, Mississippi Markets