WUPL

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WUPL

Slidell / New Orleans, Louisiana
Branding	UPN New Orleans
Slogan
Analog channel	54 (UHF)
Digital channel	24 (UHF)
Affiliations	UPN
Owner	Viacom
Founded	1995
Call letters meaning	UPN Louisiana
Former affiliations	None
Website	www.upn54.com

WUPL 54 is the UPN owned-and-operated station for the Greater New Orleans, Louisiana area. It is licensed to the New Orleans suburb of Slidell. Viacom recently agreed to sell WUPL to Belo Corporation, owners of CBS affiliate WWL-TV; this is pending regulatory approval.

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History

The station signed on in June 1995 as the market's UPN affiliate. Along with UPN programming, the station runs a general entertainment format, offering vintage off-network sitcoms, talk shows, court shows, and other syndicated shows.

WUPL was sold to Cox Communications in 1997, which in turn sold the station to United Television, a subsidiary of Chris-Craft Industries (which partly owned UPN). After Chris Craft sold its TV assets to Fox, Fox decided to sell WUPL 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. However, since early 2005, WUPL has been broadcasting CBS's The Early Show (which WWL-TV pre-empts).

Viacom briefly considered buying WWL-TV, thus creating a duopoly with WUPL. However, after Belo turned down Viacom's offier, Viacom decided instead to sell WUPL to Belo. WUPL and WWL-TV will become sister stations under Belo ownership, pending FCC approval.

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External links

Broadcast television in the New Orleans market
WWL 4 (CBS) - WDSU 6 (NBC) - WVUE 8 (Fox) - WYES 12 (PBS) - WHNO 20 (LeSea) - WGNO 26 (ABC) - WLAE 32 (PBS) - WNOL 38 (WB) - WPXL 49 (i) - WUPL 54 (UPN)