From HSN to UPN
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.[7] 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.[8]
In July 2002, KPLR decided to disaffiliate from UPN and exclusively align with The WB,[9] 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.[10]
On January 17, 2003, the station changed its call sign to WRBU (a partial reference to its corporate parent).[11] The remainder of the UPN programming lineup moved to channel 46 three months later on April 1.[9] 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,[12] 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.[12] 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.
