Remember UPN/the WB?
March 15, 2023 4:19 PM Subscribe
The short-lived TV networks that featured shows like Star Trek Voyager, Moesha, Dilbert, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. There's a two part Youtube video detailing the history of the network, the first of which is here.
Have we as a society decided to erase Gilmore Girls from our collective memory? I mean, I'm not not OK with that.
posted by Johnny Assay at 5:17 PM on March 15, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Johnny Assay at 5:17 PM on March 15, 2023 [4 favorites]
If I remember correctly, when Buffy and Roswell moved to UPN it was basically unprecedented for a currently airing show to switch networks. Now of course it’s totally commonplace, but those two shows are kinda what made it a viable option initially.
posted by showbiz_liz at 5:41 PM on March 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by showbiz_liz at 5:41 PM on March 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
In my head “The WB” and its successor “The CW” are so linked that I forgot the name had changed. Positively the same dame network.
posted by fedward at 5:51 PM on March 15, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by fedward at 5:51 PM on March 15, 2023 [10 favorites]
I've sometimes wondered about a world where more television networks managed to thrive or survive across 20th century American history (the pre-cable era)...
The also rans were RKO, the Dumont Network, and FTN- the Fort Television Network, which largely became the basis for PBS when PBS was formed.
How would culture have been if America had six, or eight networks, right from the start?
posted by LeRoienJaune at 5:52 PM on March 15, 2023 [5 favorites]
The also rans were RKO, the Dumont Network, and FTN- the Fort Television Network, which largely became the basis for PBS when PBS was formed.
How would culture have been if America had six, or eight networks, right from the start?
posted by LeRoienJaune at 5:52 PM on March 15, 2023 [5 favorites]
I hated UPN for existing because there was no local affiliate where I lived at the time and when we did get one it was a low power station so far on the other side of the market that I couldn't get it even with an antenna on the roof, cable service wasn't available at the place I lived, and DirecTV and Dish weren't offering locals yet and I had missed out on being grandfathered in to getting the NYC and LA stations. No Voyager for me! (At least not until people started uploading episodes to various places online)
There was also no WB! affiliate for the longest time, but there was nothing I knew to miss, so that didn't bother me.
posted by wierdo at 5:54 PM on March 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
There was also no WB! affiliate for the longest time, but there was nothing I knew to miss, so that didn't bother me.
posted by wierdo at 5:54 PM on March 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
BTW Gilmore Girls ended after five seasons and there was never a revival. But the first five seasons definitely happened.
posted by fedward at 5:55 PM on March 15, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by fedward at 5:55 PM on March 15, 2023 [3 favorites]
The creation of these networks also marked a turning point for the previously independent UHF stations they gobbled up. Boston lost WSBK Channel 38 and Dana Hershey's Movie Loft to UPN. And we lost WLVI Channel 56 and it's Kid's Club to the WB.
WLVI is still the CW affiliate and WSBK is back to being independent, but it's not the same.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:29 PM on March 15, 2023 [4 favorites]
WLVI is still the CW affiliate and WSBK is back to being independent, but it's not the same.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:29 PM on March 15, 2023 [4 favorites]
Pinky and the Brain, Freakazoid and Earthworm Jim were WB shows too, along with Waynehead, Road Rovers, Hysteria, and later seasons of Animaniacs.
posted by JHarris at 6:37 PM on March 15, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by JHarris at 6:37 PM on March 15, 2023 [3 favorites]
I wonder how well Nowhere Man holds up.
Knock yourself out, hoss. I'd say not great, but there's only one season to wade through.
This show just came up between my wife and I because we were talking about pre-portlandia media that shows off the city (after watching the battered bastards of baseball) and I remembered this show was filmed in Portland. Some nice oldschool tri-met footage peppered in there.
posted by furnace.heart at 7:40 PM on March 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
Knock yourself out, hoss. I'd say not great, but there's only one season to wade through.
This show just came up between my wife and I because we were talking about pre-portlandia media that shows off the city (after watching the battered bastards of baseball) and I remembered this show was filmed in Portland. Some nice oldschool tri-met footage peppered in there.
posted by furnace.heart at 7:40 PM on March 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
So back when UPN was still fairly new, the ad agency I worked for was hired to create a series of interstitial station identification pieces that channels could air, MTV-style, to give the network a little more personality. My partners and I created about 10 of them, centered around two late night workers at a UPN satellite outpost, with a then-unknown comic named Judah Friedlander. They never aired.
posted by Mchelly at 8:03 PM on March 15, 2023 [29 favorites]
posted by Mchelly at 8:03 PM on March 15, 2023 [29 favorites]
Mchelly.... those are incredible.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 8:10 PM on March 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by vibratory manner of working at 8:10 PM on March 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
Mchelly - so good! You should Tweet that YouTube link to @JudahWorldChamp.
posted by MattD at 8:26 PM on March 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by MattD at 8:26 PM on March 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
I'll take a look at these when I can, because as someone who watched Trek slide downhill in both quality and ratings under the UPN banner, I am dying to know how much of it was due to direct interference from the network. The works that should have dealt with it--the second volume of the Trek oral history The Fifty-Year Mission and Season Finale, about both the WB and UPN from a former WB executive--didn't give enough inside dirt IMO. I mostly ignored their other shows, although I still have a lingering fondness for Special Unit 2, which is sort of like "what if X-Files but funny, or at least funnier."
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:46 PM on March 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:46 PM on March 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
If I remember correctly, when Buffy and Roswell moved to UPN it was basically unprecedented for a currently airing show to switch networks.
Extremely rare, but not unprecedented. Sister, Sister spent two seasons on ABC before jumping to the WB in 1995.
Pinky and the Brain, Freakazoid and Earthworm Jim were WB shows too, along with Waynehead, Road Rovers, Hysteria, and later seasons of Animaniacs.
And Pinky and the Brain even aired in primetime!
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:32 AM on March 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
Extremely rare, but not unprecedented. Sister, Sister spent two seasons on ABC before jumping to the WB in 1995.
Pinky and the Brain, Freakazoid and Earthworm Jim were WB shows too, along with Waynehead, Road Rovers, Hysteria, and later seasons of Animaniacs.
And Pinky and the Brain even aired in primetime!
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:32 AM on March 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
My wife and I still have a Pink and the Brain shtick. I'm Pinky, natch.
What we gonna do tonight, Brain?
Same thing we do every night, Pinky.
posted by jquinby at 6:01 AM on March 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
What we gonna do tonight, Brain?
Same thing we do every night, Pinky.
posted by jquinby at 6:01 AM on March 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
Just stopping by to drop links to the WB's 1999 "Crawl" promo and its more upbeat follow-up version from 2000 set to "Oh What a Night".
posted by mhum at 7:51 AM on March 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by mhum at 7:51 AM on March 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
I've always wondered why they picked Michigan J. Frog to be the mascot for the WB. Were they afraid of overusing Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck? Did they consider any other, less prominent Looney Tunes characters? Or maybe someone just thought it would be cool if the network came to be known as "the frog"?
posted by RonButNotStupid at 8:37 AM on March 16, 2023
posted by RonButNotStupid at 8:37 AM on March 16, 2023
List of TV Shows Switching Networks. It's very long, and includes things like Get Smart, Leave it to Beaver or The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.
posted by mark k at 9:37 AM on March 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by mark k at 9:37 AM on March 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
Why the Frog and not the Bunny or the Duck? Bugs Bunny is not the kind of character who would unironically hawk something. (Unlike a cousin of his who I've taken to calling Insects Rabbit.) Daffy is mostly not someone whose advice should be taken. Porky Pig could probably do it but isn't really an A-lister. Of course, neither is Michigan J., but in this case that's appealing, at the time he had only been in one cartoon, so he was largely a blank slate, yet, a memorable one. Not a big marketable character, they at least weren't ruining a beloved character's reputation.
I liked the implication with Michigan J. Frog that the commercials were all figments if the viewer's imagination, that if someone were to walk in it'd just be a spot with the frog sitting and croaking. Maybe that was the intent, to cause the viewer to think they were privy to something secret?
Generally I liked Michigan J. as a channel spokesfrog overall, it was at least something new and different. It's very easy to look at someone or something taking a big chance that didn't work out and laughing at them for daring to do it, but that's why showbiz is full of so much dreadful conformity, everyone is afraid of being the next legendary laughing stock.
posted by JHarris at 1:46 PM on March 16, 2023 [4 favorites]
I liked the implication with Michigan J. Frog that the commercials were all figments if the viewer's imagination, that if someone were to walk in it'd just be a spot with the frog sitting and croaking. Maybe that was the intent, to cause the viewer to think they were privy to something secret?
Generally I liked Michigan J. as a channel spokesfrog overall, it was at least something new and different. It's very easy to look at someone or something taking a big chance that didn't work out and laughing at them for daring to do it, but that's why showbiz is full of so much dreadful conformity, everyone is afraid of being the next legendary laughing stock.
posted by JHarris at 1:46 PM on March 16, 2023 [4 favorites]
Is this something I would have to have a TV to understand?
I was unaware the WB no longer existed
posted by dmd at 5:25 AM on March 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
I was unaware the WB no longer existed
posted by dmd at 5:25 AM on March 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
The existence of the WB caused some confusion even among its own employees.
posted by darksasami at 9:24 AM on March 17, 2023
posted by darksasami at 9:24 AM on March 17, 2023
The second video has some interesting facts. UPN passed on both Malcolm and the Middle and American Idol. Talk about a boneheaded move. He also breezed past a mention that Blockbuster was working on a video-on-demand platform with Enron! And LOL at the executive Redstone fired because he didn't want to acquire MySpace.
The thing about UPN poaching Buffy and Rosewell is that usually when a TV show jumps networks, it's because the first network cancelled it. But UPN outbid the WB for those shows just to spite their main rival. I admire any business move that is driven by spite.
posted by riruro at 11:05 AM on March 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
The thing about UPN poaching Buffy and Rosewell is that usually when a TV show jumps networks, it's because the first network cancelled it. But UPN outbid the WB for those shows just to spite their main rival. I admire any business move that is driven by spite.
posted by riruro at 11:05 AM on March 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
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How dare you just walk past Homeboys In Outer Space like that!
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 4:36 PM on March 15, 2023 [8 favorites]