USA Broadcasting

USA Broadcasting

Former type	Subsidiary
Industry	Broadcast Television Television Production
Predecessor(s)	Silver King Broadcasting (1986-1998)
Founded	1986
Defunct	January 14, 2002
Headquarters	Newark, New Jersey
Area served	United States (Nationwide)
Key people	Lowell "Bud" Paxson, Roy Speer (former Silver King Owners), and Barry Diller
Products	Broadcast television
Parent	USA Networks

USA Broadcasting was an American media company owned by veteran entertainment industry executive Barry Diller. This network was the over-the-air broadcasting arm of USA Network.

USAB dates back to the mid-1990s when Diller purchased Silver King Broadcasting and its parent company Home Shopping Network, Inc. from Lowell W. "Bud" Paxson and Roy Speer. Paxson and Speer had assembled the group to expand their company, Home Shopping Network, onto broadcast television. The stations carried the Home Shopping Club (now America's Store), Home Shopping Network, Inc. later brought Universal's cable/TV production units, renaming as USA Networks, Inc. and its broadcast television subsidiary USA Broadcasting in 1998.

Diller planned to remove shopping shows from most of the stations' broadcast days and replace them with local and syndicated programs. He wanted to tie each of the stations very closely to the communities they served, and to open up opportunities for locally-produced programs.

By 2000, four stations were transformed into Diller's new model: WAMI-TV (WAMI "Whammy" 69) in Miami, WHOT ("Hotlanta 34") in Atlanta, WHUB ("Hub" 66) in Boston, and KSTR ("K-Star" 49) in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. WAMI and KSTR aired local news, talk shows and sporting events. WHOT and WHUB aired syndicated programming as well as local sports. WAMI aired Miami Heat basketball and Florida Marlins baseball games. WHOT and KSTR also carried pro basketball games of, respectively, the Atlanta Hawks and Dallas Mavericks. WHUB acquired the rights to the annual Beanpot hockey tournament between four of Boston's colleges and also rights to Boston University's Men's Hockey games. HSC/America's Store continued to air on late nights and weekends.

There were also plans to convert stations in New York (proposed callsign: WORX, "The Works"), Los Angeles (proposed callsign: KLIK, "Click") and Chicago (proposed callsign: WNDE, "Windy") to the new local-TV model. However, due to financial troubles in 2001, USA Broadcasting had scrapped those plans and reduced programming on their existing independent stations. That same year, Diller has suddenly put the entire station roster up for sale. Disney/ABC and Univision were the companies in the running for buying the stations, but Univision had outbid Disney in a close race. In August 2001, Univision purchased the stations and converted them into Spanish language outlets; some affiliated with Univision, but most joined its new sister network, Telefutura (now UniMás), which launched in January 2002. Diller still owns HSN and other interactive and shopping services such as TicketMaster and Expedia.com.

Other stations

Silver King/USAB also briefly owned four Fox affiliate stations: WLUK (Green Bay, Wisconsin), KHON (Honolulu, Hawaii), WALA (Mobile, Alabama), and WVUE (New Orleans, Louisiana). That ownership was in 1999 and 2000 before the four stations were sold to Emmis Communications. Emmis eventually departed from television ownership and resold the stations to other parties, including LIN Television and in WVUE's case, a group led by New Orleans Saints owner Tom Benson.

Stations owned by USA Broadcasting

Logos of the stations USA Broadcasting converted to its local TV model.

Market	Station	Now called	Currently
New York	WHSI 67 WHSE 68	WFTY 67 WFUT 68	UniMás
Los Angeles	KHSC 46	KFTR	UniMás
Chicago	WEHS 60	WXFT	UniMás
Philadelphia	WHSP 65	WUVP	Univision
Boston	WHUB 66 (was WHSH)	WUTF	UniMás
San Francisco-Oakland	KPST 66	KFSF	UniMás
Dallas-Fort Worth	KSTR 49 (was KHSX)	KSTR-TV	UniMás
Atlanta	WHOT 34	WUVG	Univision
Houston	KHSH 67	KFTH	UniMás
Tampa-St. Petersburg	WBHS 50	WFTT	UniMás
Cleveland	WQHS 61	WQHS-TV	Univision
Miami-Fort Lauderdale	WAMI 69 (was WYHS)	WAMI	UniMás
Melbourne-Orlando	WBSF 43	WOTF	UniMás