Three years ago, when the fledgling WB and UPN both decided to put on not just a show but an entire television network, it looked like UPN had the upper hand in the battle to become the fifth national broadcasting service.
The United Paramount Network was carried on more and better stations across the country. It also had an established franchise, “Star Trek,” and could make the new “Star Trek: Voyager” its flagship series.
The Warner Bros. Network, as it was sometimes known, had a passel of executives who made the Fox network startup work back in the mid 1980s and a cartoon frog mascot that made it the butt of jokes.
When the trade magazine Broadcasting and Cable asked TV station general managers at an annual meeting in January 1996 which of the two most likely would survive, assuming only one could, UPN held a 70 to 29 percent edge.
Three years later the numbers were nearly reversed: 60 percent of GMs said WB would be left standing in a sole survivor scenario, while 32 1/2 percent said UPN.
The change in attitude, albeit from a group not known for long-term thinking, comes down to one thing: hit shows.
“Star Trek: Voyager” remains the most successful program on UPN (seen in Chicago on WPWR-Ch. 50), and the network has shifted directions seemingly as often as Captain Kirk shifted love interests.
WPWR officials are enthused, however, about the new executive team at UPN, which recently announced that it is now aiming at middle America, “the mainstreet USA consumer who has a family, has kids, wants entertainment and doesn’t want to look at yuppies in Manhattan grappling a $22 martini,” in the words of executive vice president Robert Rene.
WB, meanwhile, (seen on WGN-Ch. 9 and one-quarter owned by Tribune Co., the corporate parent of WGN and the Chicago Tribune) is riding a programming buzz wave that it says is the result of stable management and a stable target niche: families with kids.
First “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” launched in March 1997, caught the attention of TV critics and hip viewers who like its mix of clever pop-culture references and somewhat tongue-in-cheek horror as a California high school girl does weekly battle with the undead.
“7th Heaven,” which tries to be a contemporary drama for the whole family to watch, slowly began to gain momentum of its own.
And this January came the network’s biggest success yet: “Dawson’s Creek,” a series about four Cape Cod teenagers, their dreams and their sexuality. It has quickly established itself as a passionate favorite among teenage girls, and last week’s mail found the show placed on a cultural pedestal of the late ’90s: The leading cast members, identified by the show’s title, are splayed across the pages of the latest J. Crew catalog, modeling the popular retailer’s drably au courant casual wear.
And the enduring and confusing battle over who has better distribution seemed to shift last summer when five UPN affiliates jumped to WB.
“The momentum is certainly behind the WB at this point,” says Michael A. Kupinski, a media and entertainment industry analyst with A.G. Edwards & Sons Inc., the St. Louis-based nationwide brokerage firm.
“The network itself has had a better launch than even the Fox network did when it first launched and at least for now it seems to be winning the battle.”
Neither network is giving NBC or CBS executives nightsweats, to be sure. To find any of the WB and UPN programs in the national ratings list, you simply start from the bottom, where the two networks’ entire schedules are clumped together like passengers in steerage.
Both networks run nights of African-American-themed sitcoms that, although indifferent creatively, do well with black audiences. But analysts say these shows are unlikely to draw the kind of overall viewership necessary to push either network to the level of Fox.
But after years of trailing, WB has beaten UPN in national viewership for more than three months straight and can also claim to be the number one network with teens, an identity executives feel is an important way to build loyalty for the future.
“We have hit shows that we created, and they have `Star Trek,’ which they inherited,” crows Jamie Kellner, the head of the WB. “It’s a winner-take-all contest, and if you can’t create programs . . .”
“Obviously, `Dawson’s Creek’ hit a nerve,” acknowledges Rene, who heads marketing for UPN. But with the new management in place, “we look at this as a three-year process. And it’s about the shows, the shows, the shows.”
A new hit or two, he says, and the picture could turn right back around again.
In the meantime, though, even WB’s mascot, the Michigan J. Frog character from the classic Warner Bros. cartoon era, looks smart in retrospect. It gives WB a brand identity that UPN still lacks, according to Kupinski.
WB runs four nights of prime-time programming per week, Sunday-Wednesday, compared to UPN’s three, Monday-Wednesday plus a weekend movie, and WB has a more aggressive morning kids’ schedule.
WB, which has a new Shelley Long comedy called “Kelly Kelly” coming up, expects to add a fifth night next season.
UPN, with a “Love Boat” remake on the horizon and a series based on “Dilbert” coming as well, is expected to add fourth and possibly fifth nights of prime-time as well, though Rene says those decisions depend on how good the shows that are in development look.
While both are planning aggressive moves in the future, the networks, however, are both still seeing red on the bottom line.
UPN, though, claims its losses, though larger than WB’s, aren’t as painful as they would seem because its partners own 26 of its stations, which have been increasing in value.
“The network is really there to support the value of the stations,” says Rene.
WB says its losses are less meaningful than at first glance, as well, because the network is helping keep its own studio’s programming alive long enough so that it can be sold into syndication. Its schedule, however, is not top heavy with Warner Bros. product.
One outside observer says the real WB payoff thus far is going to Tribune Co. through increases in value to its stations.
Tribune Co. obviously agrees. It recently spent $8 million to increase its ownership in WB from 22 to 25 percent. And Tribune Broadcasting’s WGN-TV had already announced that it will cut back on its schedule of Cubs baseball broadcasts in part to help WB programming be a more consistent presence.
But Tom Feie, the program director at UPN’s local affiliate, WPWR, says he is optimistic about the UPN future as well and he does not share Kellner’s view that there is room for only five national networks.
He says he met with the new UPN executives in January and came away impressed by their verve.
“We’ve been patient and we know some changes are going to happen,” says Feie, who points out that UPN locally does much better than it does nationally.
“Would we like to see them immediately? Yes. But when you look at some of the successes of the WB, it hasn’t just happened over night. It takes time.”
