2006 United States Broadcast TV Realignment - Stations

Stations

Following the CW network announcement, the new network immediately announced ten-year affiliation agreements with the Tribune Company and CBS Television Stations Group. Tribune committed 16 stations (including its flagship broadcast stations WGN-TV in Chicago, KTLA in Los Angeles and WPIX in New York) that were previously affiliated with The WB, while CBS committed 11 of its UPN stations (including WKBD in Detroit, WPSG in Philadelphia and WUPA in Atlanta). These stations combined to reach 48 percent of the United States. Both groups also owned several UPN/WB stations that did not join The CW in overlapping markets. As part of its agreement, Tribune agreed to divest its interest in The WB and did not take an ownership interest in The CW.

The network would eventually reach 95 percent of the United States. In markets where both UPN and The WB affiliates operated, only one station became a CW affiliate. CW executives were on record as preferring the "strongest" stations among existing The WB and UPN affiliates. However, as the reorganization was structured not as a merger in the legal sense, but as a new network launching concurrent with the WB/UPN shutdown, The CW was not obligated by existing affiliations with The WB and UPN. It had to negotiate from scratch with individual stations.

As a result, in some markets, the new CW affiliate was a different station than either the former The WB and UPN stations. In Helena, Montana, Ion affiliate KMTF became a CW station. In Las Vegas, Nevada, independent station KVCW signed for CW affiliation. In Honolulu, Hawaii, The CW did not appear until early December 2006, where it was carried on a digital subchannel of local Fox affiliate KHON-TV. The network also affiliated with some digital channels, mainly newly-launched subchannels of a local Big Four affiliate, in several markets.

Under the new network, a new service titled The CW Plus began serving Nielsen DMAs with rankings of 100 and lower. The CW Plus is similar to The WB 100+ Station Group, which supplied locally-branded WB-affiliated cable channels. In most cases, distribution for The CW Plus covers not only cable but broadcast as well, including the digital subchannels discussed above.

On March 1, five affiliates—four WB, one UPN—were the first outside the CBS/Tribune core to sign CW affiliate deals. By May 18, 2006, 174 stations had become affiliates of The CW, reaching 105 million households and covering 95.3% of the country (the latter two figures excluding the CW stations in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands).

Station groups with a large number of CW affiliates include Pappas Telecasting, ACME Communications, and Sinclair Broadcast Group, although many other large groups, including Hearst-Argyle, Clear Channel, and Belo have signed up selected stations. Sinclair signed on in early May despite reservations with The CW's reported demands for reverse compensation.

While WGN-TV in Chicago became part of the CW network, its out-of-market WGN America feed, which stopped airing WB programming in 1999, similarly does not air programs from The CW Network.

Several affiliates changed their call letters to reflect their new affiliation with the CW (e.g. KPWB-TV (Des Moines) to KCWI, WNPA-TV (Pittsburgh) to WPCW-TV, WJWB (Jacksonville) to WCWJ, WHCP (Portsmouth, Ohio (Charleston, West Virginia market)) to WQCW, WEWB (Albany, New York) to WCWN, KWCV (Wichita, Kansas) to KSCW, WBDC (Washington, D.C.) to WDCW, KBHK (San Francisco) to KBCW, and KHWB (Houston) to KHCW). Some stations, however, still kept call signs referring to UPN and The WB, such as WUPA in Atlanta and KWBA-TV in Tuscon, Arizona, respectively. In August 2006, CBS Corporation's CW stations dropped all references to UPN from their branding.

Due to the availability of "instant duopoly" digital subchannels, and the overall lack of a need to settle for a secondary affiliation with shows aired in problematic timeslots, both The CW and MyNetworkTV launched with far greater national coverage than that enjoyed by UPN and the WB when they started in 1995. For several years, UPN had coverage gaps in the top 30 markets, and by 2005 had only managed to reach 86% of the population. This resulted in secondary affiliations with other networks and diluted ratings when programs were shown out of their intended timeslots, or the lack of the program airing at all (a problem experienced by many Star Trek fans with Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Enterprise).