UPN: Going through the motions? (1 Viewer)

[Malcolm R]

There's been some specuation that UPN may be a short-timer in the world of network television, and that the plug will be pulled on the #6 "netlet" sometime this year. Well, based on the behavior of my local UPN station, I'm beginning to believe this is true.

They have basically pulled all programming other than the UPN prime time shows. Overnight they show "Shop at Home" broadcasting and during the day they seem to show what I can only imagine is material they are pulling from the public domain. God-awful cartoons, lots of old westerns, and a lot of no-name, black and white "shows."

Plus the local edition of the "TV Guide" has dropped the station from the daily listings, showing only the prime time lineup in the nightly grids. So, whenever I want to find out if a UPN show is a rerun, I have to visit the UPN website.

Is this a localized phenomenon, or are other UPN stations beginning a death spiral as well?

 

[Joel C]

They have basically pulled all programming other than the UPN prime time shows.

That's all UPN is. Primetime, with movies on Friday.

 

[Malcolm R]

That's all UPN is. Primetime, with movies on Friday.

Right, but at other times the station used to show syndicated talk shows, game shows, sitcoms, the usual recycled fare. But now all that is gone, replaced by this generic filler. As I said, I bet it's all public domain stuff that they don't have to pay for.

 

[Glenn Overholt]

Last year, Fox bought some of the UPN stations. I'm not sure if it was all, but in Portland, Oregon, where we had both UPN and FOX, they switched channels on us.

Fox was 13 and UPN was 12 before. Enterprise went from UPN-12 to UPN-13 and previous Fox shows went from Fox-13 to Fox-12.
Confused? We were too.

Glenn

 

[Bill Street]

I think UPN is too small to be a mass market network, which means they need to fill a niche. A niche they have been fairly successful filling is the urban market with a number of popular African-American themed shows.

But instead of building on this niche and creating a coherent identity, they have made what look like to me, rather random and ineffectual steps to "broaden their audience." You look on Tuesday nights and you get Buffy the Vampire Slayer, followed by Abby and Girlfriends. This is obviously incongruent programming and the amount of carryover audience from one show to the next has to be negligible.

If you are limited in your reach it makes more sense to try to excel at one thing (i.e. the "Urban" network) than a few apparently unrelated things (i.e. the Urban, Wrestling, and a little Science Fiction Network.)

Their scheduling decisions don't seem to make much sense.

BTW: Everything other than prime-time on UPN affiliates is programmed locally by the station. If they went with public domain things, instead of normal syndicated fair, that's probably more indicative of that affliate falling on hard times.

Bill S.

 

[Rex Bachmann]

Malcolm R wrote:

Not in my area (one of the major U.S. broadcast markets). Here the UPN outlet is owned and operated by CBS and co-ordinated with the local CBS affiliate. It's even got its own nighttime newscast using the affiliate's personnel. And it still has all the usual daytime junk fare that you mention.

No particular evidence of "GOING OUT OF BUSINESS".