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WRBU
WRBU (channel 46) is a television station licensed to East St. Louis, Illinois, United States, broadcasting the Ion Television network to the St. Louis, Missouri, area. Owned and operated by the Ion Media subsidiary of the E. W. Scripps Company, the station has offices on Richardson Road in Arnold, Missouri, and its transmitter is located near Missouri Route 21 and East Four Ridge Road in House Springs.
The station first signed on the air on September 11, 1989, as WHSL, originally operating as a full simulcast of the Home Shopping Network (HSN). Unlike most full-time HSN affiliates of the period, it was not founded by the network's broadcasting arm, Silver King Communications; instead, it was originally owned by St. Louis-based Roberts Broadcasting, a family-owned firm owned by African American businessmen Steven, Mike and Mark Roberts. WHSL was the first full-power television station to sign on in the St. Louis market since KNLC (channel 24) debuted in September 1982.
What was a placid relationship between HSN and Roberts for the station's first seven years on air soured in 1996, when HSN sued the station for breach of contract; Roberts sought to air more infomercials and fewer hours of home shopping. The move came after HSN reduced the number of local commercial minutes per hour from 5 to 2 and after Roberts considered leasing the station's airtime to River City Broadcasting (owners of KDNL-TV) or Koplar Communications, which owned KPLR-TV. A judge found in favor of HSN in the dispute. With few exceptions, Roberts was thus locked into airing HSN's programs in an arrangement that did not expire until 2003.
In June 2001, Roberts announced that it had signed an agreement to become an affiliate of UPN, a move that would give the network its first primary affiliate in St. Louis and end the market's status as the largest U.S. city by market size that did not have a full-time affiliate of the network. The deal would begin in 2003, when the HSN contract expired. Despite the fact that St. Louis was large enough to support exclusive affiliations with all six major broadcast networks that were in operation after January 1995, WHSL's commitment to HSN prevented UPN from having a stable exclusive affiliate in the market. When the network launched, it had no affiliate in St. Louis. It finally found one in KDNL-TV, by then an ABC affiliate, which aired its programming in late night time slots from August 1995 until January 1998. When KDNL-TV opted to focus on ABC programming, it was another 16 months until UPN reached an agreement with religious independent station KNLC—which ended after just a year and with KNLC refusing to clear three-fourths of UPN's shows as inconsistent with its programming philosophy. KPLR-TV took on a part-time affiliation with UPN—although delaying its prime time shows until after the station's 9 p.m. newscast—in September 2000.
In July 2002, KPLR decided to disaffiliate from UPN and exclusively align with The WB, a move which would have affected fans of two of the network's most popular series of the period, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Star Trek: Enterprise, forcing them to watch both shows either through UPN-affiliated superstations offered by Dish Network or by way of tape trading. Roberts management sought to remedy this by obtaining permission from HSN to allow WHSL to preempt two hours a week of programming during prime time to carry both shows starting in September 2002.
On January 17, 2003, the station changed its call sign to WRBU (a partial reference to its corporate parent). The remainder of the UPN programming lineup moved to channel 46 three months later on April 1. On that date, WRBU replaced the HSN programming with a lineup of syndicated programs to fill out the schedule, consisting of a mix of sitcoms, drama series and first-run syndicated talk, court and reality shows.
In February 2003, Roberts Broadcasting sold a 50% interest in WRBU to the TeleFutura subsidiary of Univision Communications, under the joint venture licensee St. Louis/Denver LLC; under the terms of the deal, Roberts continued to operate the station through a time brokerage agreement and was given right of first refusal on appointees for the directors of WRBU's licensee. Through its involvement in the venture, Roberts in turn transferred operational responsibilities for its station in Denver, KTVJ (now KTFD-TV), to Univision, which converted that station into a TeleFutura affiliate. Roberts Broadcasting would eventually acquire other television stations in the Midwestern and Southeastern U.S., signing on two UPN-affiliated stations (WZRB in Columbia, South Carolina, in 2005 and WRBJ-TV in Jackson, Mississippi, in 2006) and acquiring WB affiliate WAZE-TV in Evansville, Indiana, from South Central Communications in 2006.
On January 24, 2006, the respective parent companies of UPN and The WB, CBS Corporation and the Warner Bros. Entertainment division of Time Warner, announced that they would dissolve the two networks to create The CW Television Network, a joint venture between the two media companies that initially featured programs from its two predecessor networks as well as new series specifically produced for The CW. On that date, The CW also signed a ten-year affiliation agreement with Tribune Broadcasting, under which sixteen of the group's eighteen WB-affiliated stations would serve as the network's charter stations. One of the stations included in the agreement was KPLR-TV, which was announced as the network's St. Louis affiliate over WRBU; although, since the network chose its affiliates based on which television station among The WB and UPN's respective affiliate bodies was the highest-rated in each market, it is likely that KPLR would have been chosen over WRBU in any event, as channel 11 had been the higher-rated of the two stations even before it became a network affiliate upon joining The WB in January 1995 and had been one of The WB's strongest affiliates for the near entirety of that network's eleven-year existence.
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WRBU
WRBU (channel 46) is a television station licensed to East St. Louis, Illinois, United States, broadcasting the Ion Television network to the St. Louis, Missouri, area. Owned and operated by the Ion Media subsidiary of the E. W. Scripps Company, the station has offices on Richardson Road in Arnold, Missouri, and its transmitter is located near Missouri Route 21 and East Four Ridge Road in House Springs.
The station first signed on the air on September 11, 1989, as WHSL, originally operating as a full simulcast of the Home Shopping Network (HSN). Unlike most full-time HSN affiliates of the period, it was not founded by the network's broadcasting arm, Silver King Communications; instead, it was originally owned by St. Louis-based Roberts Broadcasting, a family-owned firm owned by African American businessmen Steven, Mike and Mark Roberts. WHSL was the first full-power television station to sign on in the St. Louis market since KNLC (channel 24) debuted in September 1982.
What was a placid relationship between HSN and Roberts for the station's first seven years on air soured in 1996, when HSN sued the station for breach of contract; Roberts sought to air more infomercials and fewer hours of home shopping. The move came after HSN reduced the number of local commercial minutes per hour from 5 to 2 and after Roberts considered leasing the station's airtime to River City Broadcasting (owners of KDNL-TV) or Koplar Communications, which owned KPLR-TV. A judge found in favor of HSN in the dispute. With few exceptions, Roberts was thus locked into airing HSN's programs in an arrangement that did not expire until 2003.
In June 2001, Roberts announced that it had signed an agreement to become an affiliate of UPN, a move that would give the network its first primary affiliate in St. Louis and end the market's status as the largest U.S. city by market size that did not have a full-time affiliate of the network. The deal would begin in 2003, when the HSN contract expired. Despite the fact that St. Louis was large enough to support exclusive affiliations with all six major broadcast networks that were in operation after January 1995, WHSL's commitment to HSN prevented UPN from having a stable exclusive affiliate in the market. When the network launched, it had no affiliate in St. Louis. It finally found one in KDNL-TV, by then an ABC affiliate, which aired its programming in late night time slots from August 1995 until January 1998. When KDNL-TV opted to focus on ABC programming, it was another 16 months until UPN reached an agreement with religious independent station KNLC—which ended after just a year and with KNLC refusing to clear three-fourths of UPN's shows as inconsistent with its programming philosophy. KPLR-TV took on a part-time affiliation with UPN—although delaying its prime time shows until after the station's 9 p.m. newscast—in September 2000.
In July 2002, KPLR decided to disaffiliate from UPN and exclusively align with The WB, a move which would have affected fans of two of the network's most popular series of the period, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Star Trek: Enterprise, forcing them to watch both shows either through UPN-affiliated superstations offered by Dish Network or by way of tape trading. Roberts management sought to remedy this by obtaining permission from HSN to allow WHSL to preempt two hours a week of programming during prime time to carry both shows starting in September 2002.
On January 17, 2003, the station changed its call sign to WRBU (a partial reference to its corporate parent). The remainder of the UPN programming lineup moved to channel 46 three months later on April 1. On that date, WRBU replaced the HSN programming with a lineup of syndicated programs to fill out the schedule, consisting of a mix of sitcoms, drama series and first-run syndicated talk, court and reality shows.
In February 2003, Roberts Broadcasting sold a 50% interest in WRBU to the TeleFutura subsidiary of Univision Communications, under the joint venture licensee St. Louis/Denver LLC; under the terms of the deal, Roberts continued to operate the station through a time brokerage agreement and was given right of first refusal on appointees for the directors of WRBU's licensee. Through its involvement in the venture, Roberts in turn transferred operational responsibilities for its station in Denver, KTVJ (now KTFD-TV), to Univision, which converted that station into a TeleFutura affiliate. Roberts Broadcasting would eventually acquire other television stations in the Midwestern and Southeastern U.S., signing on two UPN-affiliated stations (WZRB in Columbia, South Carolina, in 2005 and WRBJ-TV in Jackson, Mississippi, in 2006) and acquiring WB affiliate WAZE-TV in Evansville, Indiana, from South Central Communications in 2006.
On January 24, 2006, the respective parent companies of UPN and The WB, CBS Corporation and the Warner Bros. Entertainment division of Time Warner, announced that they would dissolve the two networks to create The CW Television Network, a joint venture between the two media companies that initially featured programs from its two predecessor networks as well as new series specifically produced for The CW. On that date, The CW also signed a ten-year affiliation agreement with Tribune Broadcasting, under which sixteen of the group's eighteen WB-affiliated stations would serve as the network's charter stations. One of the stations included in the agreement was KPLR-TV, which was announced as the network's St. Louis affiliate over WRBU; although, since the network chose its affiliates based on which television station among The WB and UPN's respective affiliate bodies was the highest-rated in each market, it is likely that KPLR would have been chosen over WRBU in any event, as channel 11 had been the higher-rated of the two stations even before it became a network affiliate upon joining The WB in January 1995 and had been one of The WB's strongest affiliates for the near entirety of that network's eleven-year existence.