From The WB To The CW
On January 24, 2006, Time Warner's Warner Bros. Entertainment division and CBS Corporation announced that their respectively-owned broadcast networks, The WB (which Time Warner jointly-owned with Tribune Company) and UPN, would cease operations with programming from both networks consolidated onto a single broadcast network created as a joint venture between the two companies called The CW Television Network (the "CW" name representing the first initials of each of the network's corporate parents), which would replace The WB and UPN starting on September 18, 2006.
On March 8, Belo signed an affiliation agreement with the network that saw KASW become The CW's Phoenix charter affiliate, while the market's UPN affiliate KUTP became an owned-and-operated station of MyNetworkTV thirteen days before the launch of The CW on September 5 (MyNetworkTV was created by KUTP parent News Corporation after the company's UPN affiliates owned by News Corporation's Fox Television Stations unit were passed over for initial affiliations with The CW in favor of stations owned by CBS Television Stations and Tribune Broadcasting).
KASW only tweaked its branding to reflect its new network affiliation, keeping the "6" that represents its position on the area's dominant cable system (satellite providers carry KASW on channel 61). The station was also airing its own CW "man-on-the-street" promos before the switch. Quick6.com's images and links were revamped a week before the change and feature a new "Quick6" logo.
The station currently runs Vortexx, a successor of The CW4Kids (which in turn, was the successor of Kids' WB), on Saturday mornings. It also aired children's programming from 4Kids TV on Sunday mornings until the block was discontinued by Fox on December 27, 2008 (therefore, both Saturday and Sunday mornings were essentially programmed by one company, 4Kids Entertainment, for seven months). These properties, in one form or another, were carried on KTVK when that station was the market's original charter affiliate of The WB in 1995 and were moved to KASW in September 1995 and 1996, respectively. The same situation occurred on several duopolies, where stations like KFRE-TV/Fresno and WBNX-TV/Cleveland picked up the rights to the 4Kids lineup from a local Fox affiliate (in KFRE's case, KMPH-TV) or due to rejection by stations that were inherited from New World Communications (as was the case with WBNX).
Famous quotes containing the words from the:
“How did they meet? By chance, like everybody.... Where did they come from? From the nearest place. Where were they going? Do we know where we are going?”
—Denis Diderot (1713–1784)