WUPL

WUPL

Slidell/New Orleans, Louisiana
Branding	"WUPL 54", or "My 54"
Channels	Digital: 24 (UHF) Virtual: 54 (PSIP)
Translators	WBXN-CA 18 New Orleans (city)
Affiliations	MyNetworkTV
Owner	Belo Corp. (Belo TV, Inc.)
First air date	June 1, 1995
Call letters' meaning	UPN (referring to former affiliation) Louisiana
Sister station(s)	WWL-TV
Former channel number(s)	Analog: 54 (UHF, 1995–2009)
Former affiliations	UPN (1995–2006)
Transmitter power	1000 kW
Height	272 m
Facility ID	13938
Transmitter coordinates	29°55′13.1″N 90°1′28.6″W
Website	Station site on wwltv.com

WUPL, virtual channel 54, is the MyNetworkTV-affiliated television station for the Greater New Orleans, Louisiana area. It is licensed to the Northshore community of Slidell. It is currently owned by the Belo Corp., in a duopoly with CBS affiliate WWL-TV.

Digital television

The station's digital signal is broadcast on UHF 24.

Channel	Video	Aspect	Name	Programming
54.1	1080i	16:9	WUPL-HD	Main WUPL programming / MNT

On June 12, 2009, WUPL ceased broadcasting on channel 54 and continued broadcasting its HD 1080i signal on channel 24 to complete its analog to digital conversion. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers will display WUPL's virtual channel as "54". The station carries programming in 1080i rather than 720p, MyNetworkTV's default broadcasting format, as WWL (and the majority of all Belo stations, regardless of network) carries their programming in 1080i.

History

The station signed on in June 1995 as the market's UPN affiliate. Along with UPN programming, the station ran 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. 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. [2] On February 26, 2007, Belo announced that they would go forward with the purchase of WUPL from CBS. 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." At that time, Belo closed on WUPL, and later acquired its low-power repeater, WBXN-CA on channel 18 in New Orleans (previously a separate station, K10NG, affiliated with The Box and later MTV2) on April 20, 2007. In mid-April 2007, Belo moved WUPL's operations into the WWL-TV facility. The URL for the former WUPL website, WUPLTV.com, later served as a redirect to the main page of the WWL-TV website; it now redirects to a separate section of the WWL-TV Web site.

Present and future

On January 24, 2006, TimeWarner and CBS announced that they would merge The WB and UPN to from The CW, which is a 50/50 joint venture between these two companies. 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 MyNetworkTV on July 12. Since News Corporation 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 News Corp'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 shows when WWL-TV is not able to such as in a news-related emergency.

Newscasts

Since early 2005, WUPL has broadcast CBS's morning programs, The Early Show (until 2012), and currently CBS This Morning (which WWL-TV pre-empts in favor of its 4 ¹⁄₂-hour local newscast). WUPL also offered The Daily Buzz and both shows were run under the umbrella title My Morning News. Currently the station only carries CBS This Morning, with Better leading into it.

On June 4, 2007, WUPL began airing a half-hour 9 pm newscast called My54 Eyewitness News at 9 to compete against WVUE's Fox 8 News at 9 and WGNO's ABC 26 News at 9:00 on New Orleans' CW38. The newscast is produced by WWL-TV, and features the anchor lineup of Channel 4's 10 pm newscast Eyewitness News Nightwatch. Unlike the 9 pm newscast on WVUE, the WUPL newscast currently airs on weeknights only. WGNO cancelled the newscast it produced for WNOL after the June 4, 2010 edition due to dismal ratings; by that time, the newscast on WUPL had passed the WNOL newscast at a distant second behind WVUE.

As of September 2010, the 9 pm newscast is broadcast in 16:9 widescreen standard definition, the same format as the newscasts on sister station WWL-TV.

My54 Eyewitness News at 9 ended its run after the April 26, 2013 edition due to consistently low ratings; on April 29, it was replaced by The 504, a pre-recorded interview show hosted by WWL-TV morning co-anchor Melanie Herbert.

External links

• Official website
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WUPL
  • Query the FCC's TV station database for WBXN-CA
• BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on WUPL-TV