The Rise and Fall of UPN

UPN: The Rise of the 5th TV Network (pt. 1) 

Notes:

• I was freshly fifteen when I made this, and it shows. This is video is a mess. I am not proud of it.

• At the 10:30 mark, I promise a dedicated video about the history of The WB. That video obviously never happened. All I have to say about that: maybe one day...

• Overall, this video is missing a lot of solid information on the early days of UPN. It focuses much more on programming and logistics than some of the influential figures behind the project. It's a lot of the "what" and not a lot of the "why." I don't even mention Lucie Salhany, the network's original CEO, which is an embarrassingly significant omission.

Redactions:

• In the original version of this video, I inserted a very stern disclaimer declaring absolute neutrality on matters of race. I don't know why I thought that was necessary. The warning came off extremely aggressive and overly defensive. I've since removed it from the upload.

• I have also removed a couple of poorly phrased remarks about The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer.

Corrections:

• Around the 8:40 mark in this video, I talk about the reason that UPN came into being in the first place. I cite an FCC regulation that prohibited networks from owning programming, which was slated to come to an end in the mid-90s. My framing of this conveys that this regulation had been a detriment to Paramount (and large TV production entities in general), when really, it was the other way around. The repeal of these rules allowed for the broadcasting companies to further vertically integrate, meaning that Paramount's largest suitors were about to start competing with them. UPN and The WB came into existence largely out of the need to protect their television production operations in the face of deregulated competition.

• I mix up the words station, network, and affiliate a bunch in this video, especially in the first half.

  • • To clear things up, a television network (ABC, NBC, UPN, etc.) commissions programming and provides it to stations for broadcast. Some stations are owned by the networks themselves (called Owned & Operated stations, or O&Os), others have deals with a specific network to carry that network's programming despite not being owned by the network (usually referred to as affiliate stations), while some don't carry any network programming and instead only carry local or syndicated content (called independent stations, or just "independents").

• Don't let this video inform your entire opinion of me. I believe I have so much more to offer than I did when I was 15.

Notes:

• I'm happier with how this one turned out. Someone should make a movie about the Viacom/CBS saga I detail here.

• I know that a few people found it odd that I chose to announce that I would be referring to Dawn Ostroff by her first name. When I wrote that part of the script, many of the sources I was referring to used her full name (Dawn Tarnofsky-Ostroff), and I thought it'd be a fun little gag to put that long name on the screen and then cut it off since her full name would be comically unfamiliar to a typical English speaker. But I had trouble relocating those articles while editing, so I just used "Dawn Ostroff", which defeated the point of the gag. No doubt that I botched the joke, but some people have accused me of trying to demean or minimize a female executive by doing this. That is absolutely not the case.

• After this video went out, I had one or two people reach out with concerns that the "end of UPN" clip that I feature at 50:10 may not actually be the right clip. Apparently, some WWE broadcasts were scheduled differently for Australian broadcast, which is where I got that clip from (as it was the only one I could find). I've investigated in the years since and corresponded with an individual who knows way more about WWE than I, and I'm now reasonably confident that I actually did include the right clip (although I definitely should have further verified that before upload).

Corrections:

• I did manage to mispronounce Roswell as "Rose-well" at two separate points in this video (as I really should have known, it's "Roz-well"). That's really embarrassing. I still cringe a little every time someone points it out.

• The video I refer to as the final thing to air on The WB (a montage of the network's stars followed by a bow from Michigan J. Frog) was actually not the very last thing shown. The final thing shown was actually just the credits sequence for an episode of Dawson's Creek. I think I'm just a sucker for sappy sign-offs and wrongly assumed that The WB had one too.

• Turns out that CBS's $550,000 FCC fine for the 2004 Super Bowl incident was ultimately overruled in court after an eight-year legal battle that almost went to the Supreme Court. 

• Of course, the epilogue in this video is outdated by now. Fun story: I published this video on July 27, 2018. The epilogue on CBS executive Les Moonves mentioned that he was slated for a 2021 retirement, but that didn't happen. He resigned amid sexual harassment allegations about two months after this video went out. Do you know when the first article outlining those allegations was published? July 27, 2018. The same day the video was published, probably just hours after it went out. Talk about timing.

  • • Also, in the intervening years, Sumner Redstone has passed away (though he did hang on until age 97!) and the corporate situation surrounding Viacom and CBS has been, in generous terms, a mess. A majority stake in The CW has been acquired by Nexstar.