WUPA
Channel 69 in Atlanta first began broadcasting in 1981 as WVEU. Years of technical issues provoked by interference to mobile radio users and consequent limitations on the station's operating hours and signal strength contributed to the failure of subscription television (STV) and a music video service that operated the station. WVEU's local founders sold the station to CBS in 1994 at a time when CBS needed to find a new affiliate in Atlanta, but the network was able to negotiate to affiliate with another, more built-up station instead. WVEU became an affiliate of UPN and was then sold to the Paramount Stations Group. Under the new WUPA call sign, Paramount substantially improved the station's programming and ratings in the years that followed before UPN was replaced with The CW in 2006. After successive owner Paramount Global sold the majority of its stake in The CW to Nexstar Media Group in 2022, WUPA disaffiliated from the network on September 1, 2023, reverting to independent status.
History
Construction, land mobile dispute, and STV years (1981–1984)
In 1978, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) received two applications for new television stations to use channel 69 in Atlanta. On August 19, 1980, the FCC awarded a construction permit to a consortium of Atlanta-based investors known as Broadcast Corporation of Georgia (BCG), which proposed a hybrid operation consisting of conventional ad-supported programming in the daytime and a subscription television (STV) service in evening hours. According to BCG's majority owner and president, Atlanta attorney David Harris, when the backers of a California STV company visited him, he thought they were seeking advice on how to build the station. He was surprised to find out they wanted him to put together a consortium to run channel 69.
The antenna atop the Peachtree Plaza Hotel from which channel 69 would radiate had been hoisted into place in mid-August, days before the license decision was publicized. The subscription programming would be supplied under the Superstar TV name by Subscription Television of Greater Atlanta, a consortium originally reported to be co-owned by Clint Murchison—who had subscription television holdings in other cities, including the Super TV service in the Washington, D.C., and Baltimore markets—and Atlanta electronics manufacturer Dynacom, which would produce the decoders subscribers would need to view Superstar programming. In actuality, the owner was not Clint Murchison but Clyde A. Murchison, whom a 1982 article in The Atlanta Constitution described as Clint's great-nephew.
WVEU began broadcasting on August 22, 1981. However, a planned full launch on October 1 had to be scuttled because the station's broadcasts on channel 69—at the top of the TV band, 800 to 806 MHz—were interfering with two-way land mobile radio transmissions. Further, the station had planned to fill daytime hours with programming from a business news service known as The Market Report, which ran into financial difficulties and was unable to start on time. Superstar TV was able to begin operating before the end of the year, with an official kickoff held on January 8, 1982. The FCC continued to curtail WVEU's operating hours; WVEU was only allowed to sign on after 7 p.m. on weekdays and after 3 p.m. on Saturdays, though it was allowed to operate all day on Sundays. It only offered commercial, non-STV programming on Sundays from 7 a.m. to 3 pm, running Superstar TV at all other times it was on the air.
The two-way radio dispute continued to loom large over every facet of WVEU's operations for several years, as the station subsisted on production contracts. In June 1983, the FCC ruled that the station could begin operating at 50 percent power before 7 p.m. if it paid an estimated $250,000 to relocate all of the land mobile users affected by interference. However, these users protested the decision and filed for reconsideration with the commission. In February 1984, the FCC ordered the station to engage the users or pay them to relocate on penalty of losing the provisional program test authority under which WVEU had operated since 1981. While the dispute was resolved by July 1984, when the FCC granted a full license to BCG, the issue had doomed Superstar TV, which filed for bankruptcy in April 1983 and made its last broadcasts on the morning of July 23 with fewer than 3,000 subscribers.
The independent years (1984–1995)
To replace Superstar TV, WVEU signed an operating agreement with VideoMusic Channel, which had broadcast music videos on Atlanta-area cable systems, to program nearly all of channel 69's airtime. The station brought the programming in-house in August 1984 before eventually canceling it altogether and replacing it with syndicated shows and reruns because, it learned, music videos were not very "salable" to advertisers. That same year, negotiations were held and an initial agreement reached to sell the station to the RBP Corporation of Massachusetts, but no transaction was consummated.
The station also made its first entry into the television sports market, airing what was to be a package of 30 Atlanta Hawks NBA games in the 1984–85 season, with John Sterling as the play-by-play announcer. This package was whittled down to 19 games because of insufficient advertiser interest. A new 20-game package was carried in the following season, this time with the Hawks selling the advertising time; the Hawks later added a game at The Omni that sold out, their first home telecast in two years.
We are owned by six people, none of whom is extremely wealthy. We are, then, at a competitive disadvantage when it comes to funds. At the same time, we never make a purchase for which we don't know how we are going to pay. We have almost no debt.
Vance Eckersley, general manager, WVEU, on the station's programming resources
Through the mid-1990s, WVEU became Atlanta's television station of last resort while a stabilizing WATL (channel 36) and a growing WGNX (channel 46) became the city's primary local independents. In a 1991 article by Prentis Rogers in The Atlanta Constitution, it was described as the city's "quicker picker-upper", constantly airing shows that the local network affiliates passed on. These included CBS's morning news program (under the titles of the CBS Morning News, The Morning Program, and CBS This Morning) from 1986 through 1994 and its late night programming, as well as numerous preempted network sports telecasts that the local affiliates could not air due to scheduling conflicts. Beyond displaced network programs, WVEU featured an eclectic mix, a function of being what Business Atlanta writer Russell Shaw called the "poor cousin" of Atlanta independent television. There were telecasts of martial arts movies under the banner Black Belt Theater and later hosted by Morgus the Magnificent, a character first introduced decades prior in Detroit and New Orleans; professional wrestling; a weekday public access show, Community; The Auto Doctor, a locally produced weekly magazine show about cars; and jazz music video show Jazz Beat. After another proposed sale, this one to the Home Shopping Network in 1989, fell through, the station added Japanese-language programming under the title 600 Station to its morning lineup.
Almost a CBS affiliate
On May 23, 1994, as a result of the network winning the rights to air NFC football games, New World Communications announced an affiliation deal with Fox to switch the affiliations of most of New World's stations to the network. One of the stations involved was Atlanta's longtime CBS affiliate, WAGA-TV (channel 5), which would replace Fox-owned WATL as that network's Atlanta outlet. The New World deal was attractive to Fox because many of its stations were CBS affiliates in NFC markets. This left CBS in the position of seeking a new Atlanta-area affiliate.
In July, BCG approached CBS and proposed to sell WVEU to the network. Two months later, CBS had still not lined up a new affiliate in Atlanta, even though WAGA was due to join Fox at year's end. Unable to find a higher-profile station, CBS agreed to buy WVEU for $22 million and relaunch it as a CBS owned-and-operated station. On the same day, CBS announced it was buying another lower-tier independent in a major market, WGPR-TV in Detroit. As was the case in Atlanta, CBS was being displaced from its longtime affiliate in Detroit as a result of the New World-Fox deal. Bill Carter of The New York Times characterized the purchases of WVEU and WGPR-TV as "little more than acquisitions of broadcasting licenses", since both stations lacked the facilities and staff typical of network affiliates. CBS faced having to mount an unprecedented campaign to build up WVEU to a level commensurate with a major-market owned-and-operated station. This would have entailed major expenses in promotion and starting a local news department. One consultant interviewed by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution estimated that CBS would have to spend as much as $100 million over several years to upgrade WVEU. Those expenses potentially included replacing channel 69's facilities off I-85, which were of inadequate size for a full-service, news-producing station owned by a major network. It also faced losing significant viewership in northeastern Georgia, as WVEU's signal did not penetrate nearly as far into this region as that of WAGA. Additionally, while CBS was guaranteed to have most of its programming air in Atlanta after years of rampant pre-emptions on WAGA, it faced the prospect of a sharp ratings decline for the CBS Evening News until it could build a local news department to serve as a lead-in. For the outgoing Broadcast Corporation of Georgia, the sale to CBS was an unexpected windfall. Harris, for instance, stood to make as much as $16 million, a substantial return on his investment of 13 years prior. WVEU had never turned a profit in its entire history; in 1993, it became cash flow–positive for the first time.
As 1994 continued, CBS took only minimal steps to close on the WVEU purchase. The network actively sought a better partner, even if it was only an affiliate. It continued to negotiate with Fox and with Tribune Broadcasting, then-owner of WGNX. By mid-November, CBS had not filed paperwork for the deal at the FCC, even though WAGA was scheduled to join Fox within a month. CBS executives refused to confirm that they were still moving forward with the deal. On November 16, it was announced that CBS would not be moving to WVEU but instead to WGNX. CBS had preferred to move to a station that already aired local news; WGNX was the only independent station in the market that already had a functioning news department. CBS committed to buy WVEU and immediately resell it.
UPN affiliation (1995–2006)
Even though channel 69 was not to be the CBS affiliate in Atlanta, WVEU emerged from the sale to CBS having secured a valuable network affiliation. Two new networks, UPN and The WB, were due to launch in 1995. By the time The WB announced an affiliation with WATL starting in January, UPN still had not signed up an Atlanta affiliate. With no other realistic options available, UPN signed an agreement with WVEU in December, a month before its launch. Behind UPN came a buyer: the Paramount Stations Group, which began to negotiate with CBS to acquire WVEU. Paid programming was reduced from 40 hours a week to 13, and stronger syndicated and UPN shows lifted channel 69's ratings.
In May 1995, CBS agreed to sell WVEU to Viacom, the parent company of the Paramount Stations Group, for $27 million; to stay under the 12-station ownership limit of the time, the company sold one of its non-UPN stations, KSLA in Shreveport, Louisiana. After closing on the purchase, Viacom began a significant makeover of the station. This included a new call sign, WUPA (for United Paramount/Atlanta), which it assumed on December 11, as well as a more aggressive stance to purchasing syndicated programming. Household ratings tripled, and the network recognized WUPA as its first affiliate of the year.
In the late 1990s, WUPA began to add local sports programming. When TBS converted from a superstation to a basic cable channel, it was forced to reduce the number of Atlanta Braves baseball games it telecast. WUPA picked up an 11-game package of Braves games sold by TBS for the 1998 season, which became a 30-game package for 1999 before being reclaimed for the new Turner South regional cable channel in 2000. When Atlanta got a hockey team, the new Atlanta Thrashers aired 15 games a year on WUPA. The Hawks returned to channel 69 in 2001 after 15 years when their existing carrier, WHOT-TV (channel 34), was sold to be changed to Spanish-language programming.
Over the course of the early 2000s, WUPA sought to bolster its local identity. It changed its branding from "UPN 69" to "UPN Atlanta" in 2003 and began producing non-news specials; it also sponsored the Music Midtown festival.
The CW (2006–2023)
On January 24, 2006, the Warner Bros. unit of Time Warner and CBS Corporation (which had been created as a result of the split of Viacom at the start of the year) announced that the two companies would shut down The WB and UPN and combine the networks' respective programming to create a new "fifth" network called The CW; the day of the announcement, it was revealed that 11 of CBS Corporation's 15 UPN affiliates, including WUPA, would become CW stations.
Return to independence (2023)
On October 3, 2022, Nexstar Media Group acquired majority ownership of The CW. Under the agreement, CBS was given the right to pull its affiliations from WUPA and its seven other CW stations. On May 5, 2023, CBS announced it would exercise that right and WUPA would cease airing the network's programming at the end of August, returning to independent status. The CW affiliation was moved to Gray Television-owned WPCH-TV as part of a larger contract extension between Gray and the network. The station was rebranded as "Atlanta 69" as part of a larger naming convention among the disaffiliated stations highlighting the city and channel number.
Local programming
Newscasts
On April 5, 2004, NBC affiliate WXIA-TV began producing a half-hour prime time newscast at 10 p.m. for WUPA titled UPN Atlanta News at Ten. This program, for which WXIA-TV sold the advertising, was accompanied by a separately produced, live half-hour talk program at 10:30 p.m. titled Atlanta Tonight. Up against stiff competition from the incumbent 10 p.m. newscast on WAGA, both programs seen on channel 69 suffered, and the 10 p.m. newscast and Atlanta Tonight were canceled on August 28, 2005, for "economic reasons".
On January 17, 2020, CBS Television Stations announced that it would be introducing a nightly 10 p.m. newscast for WUPA, produced by New York City sister station WCBS-TV; the program debuted February 17. In March 2020, following the temporary shutdown of the CBS Broadcast Center during the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City, and for the next five months, WUPA began simulcasting WBZ News at 10 from sister station WSBK-TV in Boston, with local coverage limited to a news ticker and prerecorded weather forecasts.
On August 11, 2020, the Atlanta-oriented newscast was relaunched, with production shifted to KTVT in Fort Worth, Texas. On July 18, 2022, this newscast was relaunched as Atlanta Now News under a new hybrid local/national format which continued to be produced from Fort Worth. On September 1, 2023, the Now format was discontinued elsewhere in favor of newscasts produced by the parent CBS O&O. However, WUPA would maintain the branding, moving it to an 8 p.m. timeslot, and shifting production back to WCBS-TV.
In addition to the newscast, WUPA produces a weekly public affairs program called Focus Atlanta.
Sports
In 2014, WUPA became the official television station of the Atlanta Falcons, gaining rights to its preseason games and introducing weekly programs dedicated to the team. The preseason broadcasts were initially produced by CBS Sports but have been produced by Tupelo Raycom since 2017. The Falcons partnered with WAGA-TV in 2020.
In 2017, as part of a broadcasting deal with the city's new Major League Soccer franchise Atlanta United FC and Fox Sports Networks, WUPA began to air the team's overflow games. WUPA was replaced in this role by WPCH-TV for the 2022 season.
Technical information
Subchannels
The station's signal is multiplexed:
| Channel | Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 69.1 | 1080i | 16:9 | WUPA-DT | Main WUPA programming |
| 69.2 | 480i | Start | Start TV | |
| 69.3 | TBD | TBD | ||
| 69.4 | MeTV | MeTV (WGTA) | ||
| 69.5 | FAVE | Fave TV | ||
| 69.6 | Charge! | Charge! | ||
| 69.7 | H&I | Heroes & Icons (WGTA) |
Analog-to-digital conversion
The station shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 69, on June 12, 2009, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television; its digital broadcasts remained on UHF channel 43.
The station was repacked from channel 43 to 36 in 2019.