IF UPN can live without Ch. 9, then Ch. 9 can live without UPN.
Fox-owned Ch. 9 yesterday removed the “UPN” from its on-screen logo and renamed its nightly newscast, which is now called “9 News at 10” – deleting any reference to UPN.
The abrupt changes came in the wake of Tuesday’s mega-merger between UPN and The WB – creating The CW network and leaving Ch. 9 out in the cold without a network affiliation.
UPN will not officially go out of business until the August merger, but Ch. 9 moved quickly to distance itself from the network that cut the station off without notice.
Ch. 9 is owned by Fox, a division of News Corp., which also owns The Post.
Yesterday, Ch. 9 and Fox execs were scrambling to fill in its prime-time schedule for next fall.
The station has only eight months to figure out how to fill 13 hours of prime-time once occupied by UPN shows like “America’s Next Top Model” and “Veronica Mars.”
Experts say Ch. 9 could always borrow some shows from corporate cousins Fox and cable network FX.
“Fox may pull the reigns in and take some stuff from FX or re-purpose something off their own network – maybe get a second run of ‘Bones‘ on Ch. 9,” says a high-placed syndication source.
” ‘The Shield‘ has been sold into syndication already, but what about ‘Rescue Me‘ or ‘Nip/Tuck‘? Those would be kind of challenging shows for broadcast, but that’s possible.”
Another possibility for Ch. 9 could be to air syndicated shows. But that market is extremely thin.
“There’s no major stuff available in syndication. Shows like ‘The George Lopez Show‘ are spoken for, and the cupboard is pretty bare in the sitcom market,” says the source. “New York is traditionally an extremely tight marketplace with options that are kind of narrow.
“But this [UPN-WB] event is so huge that it may shake free some stuff that none of us could’ve expected a couple of months ago.
“Given the limitation of what the syndication community can do, I suspect what you see [on Ch. 9] in the fall of 2006 may not much resemble what you’ll see in the fall of 2007 – or even next January.”
