UPN

[garoo1980]

With all this talk of a new series being used to launch a network I thought I'd look back at the sad story of UPN. The wiki is pretty interesting, it says quite clearly that the pilot of Voyager was the largest ratings the network ever had, by a mile. It also looks like it didn't have affiliates in a lot of cities

Does anyone remember not being able to watch Voyager or Enterprise when they were on, but wanting to? Someone lived where UPN wasn't available, even if they were willing to get cable? People are citing the streaming cost at $6 for CBS All Access as a reason why they might not watch the new show. I'm curious if we've already had this problem.

Thanks!

 

[Christopher]

As I recall, Voyager and Enterprise were syndicated in cities that didn't have UPN affiliates. There's also the example of Showtime's The Outer Limits and Stargate SG-1, which were unavailable in first-run to people who didn't pay for premium cable, but which were syndicated on commercial TV a year behind the first-run stuff.

So it's quite possible that the new series will premiere on All Access but will then later be made more widely available, whether in syndication or on Hulu or something else. And of course it'll probably show up on Netflix and DVD eventually.

 

[garoo1980]

As I recall, Voyager and Enterprise were syndicated in cities that didn't have UPN affiliates. There's also the example of Showtime's The Outer Limits and Stargate SG-1, which were unavailable in first-run to people who didn't pay for premium cable, but which were syndicated on commercial TV a year behind the first-run stuff.

So it's quite possible that the new series will premiere on All Access but will then later be made more widely available, whether in syndication or on Hulu or something else. And of course it'll probably show up on Netflix and DVD eventually.

That explains a lot. I live in Canada so all that stuff was syndicated here the whole time. I saw no different in TNG/VOY/ENT when it came to that. They all aired on the same channels at the same time-ish

And presumably if someone was watching those shows in syndicated markets their viewing would still count in the ratings for the show?

 

[Corran Horn]

It's like people have totally forgotten Pig Sty and Platypus Man.

 

[Nebusj]

It's like people have totally forgotten Pig Sty and Platypus Man.

Hey, I remember Platypus Man! In like its first ten minutes one of the characters joked about something being as utterly impossible as a Conan O'Brien 25-year anniversary show. Since Conan O'Brien's the currently longest-running American late-night talk show host that joke just keeps getting funnier.

 

[trekshark]

I remember getting started with voyager then having it go upn only and not having an affiliate. I then moved to go to college and got to see the last couple seasons. I had to tape enterprise and take them with me wheb I went to visit my family so that my brother could watch them.

 

[RoJoHen]

DS9 was the show I had a hard time watching. It was syndicated and often got preempted for sporting events. Voyager and Enterprise were both readily available on UPN until the end.

 

[Melakon]

And then UPN began bumping them for wrestling specials.

 

[Goji]

I had terrible reception on UPN during the mid to late 90s. Voyager usually had a solid amount of snow when I tried to watch it, and depending on weather conditions, sometimes it was unwatchable. Later on my family moved and got a satellite dish, and our provider had some weird contractual issues that prevented it from getting local channels, so I would watch them over at a friend's house. But I had pretty much lost all interest in Voyager by that point, and I didn't really get into Enterprise until long after it had ended. Still, I think the only time I was able to really watch UPN at my house was from 2002 on. I can probably count on one hand the number of times I took advantage of that opportunity.

 

[od0_ital]

When I was in college, the same channel was used for the WB (now the CW) and UPN. Monday through Thursday, it aired WB programming, and Friday to Sunday, UPN shows were on.

It was so sad.

 

[Reanok]

I watched Enterprise first run on my local Cbs channel and it was constantly preempted for local college football and basketball games. It was really hard to record the Enterprise the first 3 season shows on my local cbs channel. My local cbs station canceled Enterprise after season 3. Thankfully our Fox local station aired season 4 without being interrupted for sports games.

 

[Joanna McCoy-Kirk]

I remember the first few episodes of Voyager airing on the local ABC affiliate (WAAY, Huntsville, AL) as a replacement for NYPD Blue, which the station refused to air.

 

[Bad Thoughts]

I remember the first few episodes of Voyager airing on the local ABC affiliate (WAAY, Huntsville, AL) as a replacement for NYPD Blue, which the station refused to air.

A station in the south used Star Trek to replace another show? What a strange reversal.

Anyway, I watched Star Trek vi whatever outlet it came. It might have aired at incredibly wretched times if it were played in syndication rather than on a broadcast station (even TNG). UPN being a broadcast station didn't mean I made a big effort to see it. I tended to tape episodes of Voyager and Enterprise, and watch the episodes in one sitting once per month. One hour of Trek wasn't enough to make me schedule a time to watch it.

Regardless of the quality of Voyager and Enterprise, UPN didn't reward viewers with a good lead out. Paramount TV put out a lot of wretched programming, but even decent and good programs could be hastily cancelled. Michael Piller's Legend, with Robert Dean Anderson and John de Lancie, might have picked up some audience had UPN given it a chance. Conversely, I watched almost every episode of DS9 when it aired (when I could) despite being at wretched hours. It was always bookended by quality syndicated programs, including B5.

 

[RapidNadion]

Just finished reading the Wikipedia article on UPN. Never realized the poor saps passed on the opportunity to snap up Firefly for a second season! Also, sad to hear the network went out with no fanfare or celebration, just unceremoniously fading to black at 9:59pm after an episode of WWE Smackdown.

I have fond memories of watching Voyager in first run on WWOR in New York, on a small color TV in my mother's kitchen. But as others have said, I rarely stuck around for anything afterward. Wrestling wasn't my thing and neither were the sitcoms that flanked Voy. There was the occasional passable sci-fi flick (anyone remember Star Command?) but aside from those the lineup on UPN was pretty terrible. I remember wondering if they really knew who their target audience was.

 

[Christopher]

UPN had a few good shows other than Trek and Buffy. Veronica Mars was at the top of the list, along with 1995's Legend ('95), a superb steampunk Western from Trek's Michael Piller, starring Richard Dean Anderson and John DeLancie. It was basically "Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla become steampunk crimefighters in the Old West," and with a premise like that, it's amazing that it wasn't a huge hit. And Anderson was fantastic as the dissolute, completely un-MacGyverish antihero Ernest Pratt. Unfortunately, UPN totally mismanaged it; by the time they realized they should schedule it after Voyager and promote it as being from VGR's co-creator, they'd already made the decision to cancel it. (Luckily, I gather it's finally out on DVD or is about to be. I'll definitely have to pick it up.)

 

[Squiggy]

People are citing the streaming cost at $6 for CBS All Access as a reason why they might not watch the new show. I'm curious if we've already had this problem.

The media climate in 2015 is as close to 1995 as 1995's was to 1975.

Read as: not at all

It's not going to be a #1 show no matter what network it airs on. The thing is, streaming gives it a chance to survive. Being on CBS would doom it to an early grave.

 

[tomalak301]

The only thing I don't like about UPN was that it ruined a great independent station here in the Bay Area. This station not only was the home of TNG and DS9, but they also had Babylon 5, and Kung Fu: The Legend Continues. When UPN came, it was pretty much the end of that independent station even though DS9 was allowed to finish on it. When it switched to CW, I never watched it, and I'm only getting back into it the last year because of The Flash.

 

[stardream]

For the most part I liked Legends but there was something about the way they portrayed female characters (or maybe it was just one female character) or maybe it was the general attitude of the male characters toward women that I did not like but for the life of me I can't remember what it was. So I stopped watching.

 

[tomalak301]

Does anyone remember Nowhere Man? I liked that first episode. Don't remember it lasting long though.

 

[Christopher]

For the most part I liked Legends but there was something about the way they portrayed female characters (or maybe it was just one female character) or maybe it was the general attitude of the male characters toward women that I did not like but for the life of me I can't remember what it was. So I stopped watching.

Well, that would fit the attitudes of the period, of course, but I don't quite remember Legend well enough to say how it treated female characters. It definitely had an all-male regular cast, and I'm sure Ernest was a womanizer as well as a drunk and a gambler, but beyond that, I'd have to rewatch the show (which I intend to once I can afford the indulgence).

Does anyone remember Nowhere Man? I liked that first episode. Don't remember it lasting long though.

I felt it would've made a decent movie or miniseries but was a total mess as an ongoing series. The problem was that it was trying to be a cross between The Prisoner and The Fugitive, but a story where the hero is constantly surrounded by agents of the conspiracy makes no sense when it's spread out across the entire country rather than in a controlled location. It pretty much would've required most of the population in the United States to be participating in the "secret" conspiracy against one man.