USA Broadcasting
USA Broadcasting was an American television broadcasting company owned by the veteran entertainment industry executive Barry Diller. This company was the over-the-air broadcasting arm of USA Networks. Before founding USA Broadcasting, Diller was a helper in Gulf+Western's failed Paramount Television Service and News Corporation's new Fox Broadcasting Company that was launched on October 9, 1986.
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| Subsidiary | |
| Industry | Broadcast television |
| Fate | Stations sold |
| Predecessor | Silver King Broadcasting (1986-1998) |
| Successor | Univision Communications |
| Founded | 1986 |
| Defunct | January 14, 2002 |
| Headquarters | Newark, New Jersey |
Area served | United States |
Key people | Lowell "Bud" Paxson, Roy Speer (former Silver King Owners), and Barry Diller |
| Products | Broadcast television |
| Parent | USA Networks, Inc. Vivendi Universal Entertainment |
USAB dates back on in 1995 when Diller purchased Silver King Broadcasting and its parent company, Home Shopping Network, Inc., from Lowell W. "Bud" Paxson and Roy Speer. Paxson and Speer had assembled the group to expand Home Shopping Network onto broadcast television. The stations carried the Home Shopping Club (now America's Store). Home Shopping Network, Inc. later brought Universal's television units from Seagram, renaming them USA Networks, Inc., and its broadcast television subsidiary USA Broadcasting in 1998.
Diller planned to remove shopping shows and infomercials from most of the stations' broadcast days and replace them with local and syndicated programs, including a few produced by sister production unit Studios USA that also aired nationally on USA Network. He wanted to tie each of the stations very closely to the communities they served, and to open up opportunities for locally produced programs. This format was dubbed "CityVision", and took heavy influence from the format used by CITY-TV in Toronto (and more prominently, that station's sister broadcast television properties that became charter stations of Citytv, when CHUM Limited expanded the format to other Canadian markets as a television system in 2002).
By 2000, four stations were transformed into Diller's new model: WAMI-TV (WAMI "Whammy" 69) in Miami, WHOT ("Hotlanta 34") in Atlanta, WHUB ("Hub" 66) in Boston, and KSTR ("K-Star" 49) in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. WAMI and KSTR aired local news, talk shows and sporting events. WHOT and WHUB broadcast syndicated programming as well as local sports. WAMI broadcast Miami Heat basketball and Florida Marlins baseball games. WHOT and KSTR also carried professional basketball games of, respectively, the Atlanta Hawks and Dallas Mavericks. WHUB acquired the rights to the annual Beanpot hockey tournament between four of Boston's colleges and also rights to Boston University's men's ice hockey games. HSC/America's Store continues to broadcast late at night and on weekends.
There were also plans to convert stations in New York (proposed callsign: WORX, "The Works"), Los Angeles (proposed callsign: KLIK, "Click"), Chicago (proposed callsign: WNDE, "Windy") and Atlantic City (proposed callsign: WACY, "Wacky"), to the new local-TV model. However, due to financial troubles in 2000, USAB had scrapped those plans and reduced programming on its existing independent stations. In the summer of 2000, Diller suddenly put the entire station roster up for sale. Disney/ABC and Univision were the companies in the running to buy the stations, but Univision outbid Disney in a close race. On May 21, 2001, Univision purchased the stations and converted them into Spanish language outlets. Some affiliated with Univision, but most joined its new sister network, Telefutura (renamed UniMás in 2013), which was launched on January 14, 2002.
USA Networks eventually exited the television market by selling USA Network to Vivendi Universal Entertainment, a subsidiary of Vivendi Universal SA that owns Universal Studios, also in 2001, which in May 2004, sold Vivendi Universal's entertainment assets (excluding Universal Music Group) to General Electric, which later transferred its NBC (including another Spanish-language network Telemundo) assets to Vivendi Universal Entertainment, and later renamed it NBCUniversal, this marked USA Network's slight return to the broadcast industry as NBCU owns the flagship NBC network, and NBCU owns its own NBC and Telemundo stations. NBCUniversal is now owned by Comcast, after the latter half-acquired the percent of the company in 2011, and fully acquired it in 2013.
Other stations
Silver King/USA Broadcasting briefly owned four Fox affiliate stations, formerly owned by SF Broadcasting: WLUK (Green Bay, Wisconsin), KHON (Honolulu, Hawaii), WALA (Mobile, Alabama), and WVUE (New Orleans, Louisiana). That ownership was between from November 27, 1995 until April 1, 1998, before the four stations were sold to Emmis Communications. Emmis eventually departed from television ownership and resold the stations to other parties, including LIN TV Corporation and in WVUE's case, a group led by the owner of the New Orleans Saints, Tom Benson in 2008.
Stations owned by USA Broadcasting
| Market | Station | Now called | Currently |
|---|---|---|---|
| New York | WHSI 67 WHSE 68 |
WFTY 67 WFUT 68 |
Justice Network UniMás |
| Los Angeles | KHSC 46 | KFTR | UniMás |
| Chicago | WEHS 60 | WXFT | UniMás |
| Philadelphia | WHSP 65 | WUVP | Univision |
| Boston | WHUB 66 (was WHSH) |
WUTF | UniMás |
| San Francisco-Oakland | KPST 66 | KFSF | UniMás |
| Dallas-Fort Worth | KSTR 49 (was KHSX) |
KSTR-TV | UniMás |
| Atlanta | WHOT 34 (was WNGM) |
WUVG | Univision |
| Houston | KHSH 67/61 | KFTH | UniMás |
| Tampa-St. Petersburg | WBHS 50 | WFTT | UniMás |
| Cleveland | WQHS 61 | WQHS-TV | Univision |
| Miami-Fort Lauderdale | WAMI 69 (was WYHS) |
WAMI | UniMás |
| Melbourne-Orlando | WBSF 43 | WOTF | UniMás |