WRBU
From Free net encyclopedia
WRBU is the UPN television affiliate for the St. Louis, Missouri area. However, the station operates out of East Saint Louis, Illinois. WRBU is owned and operated by Roberts Broadcasting and operates on channel 46. WRBU-DT (WRBU's digital channel) operates on channel 47. The station does not broadcast in stereo.
The channel's call letters, WRBU, reflect the owner and the television network: Roberts Broadcasting (RB) and UPN (U).
History
From its September, 1989 sign on until September, 2002, WRBU operated as WHSL and showed the Home Shopping Network 24 hours per day. St. Louis finally received a pseudo UPN affiliate when WHSL added UPN prime time programming in the Fall of 2002. On April 1, 2003, the station became a full UPN affiliate and added cartoons from UPN, sitcoms, syndicated talk shows and reality shows to fill out the schedule. Until this switch, St. Louis had been the largest television market without a UPN affiliate. The Disney UPN Cartoons disappeared in the fall of 2003 when UPN ended the kids block on all affiliates.
On January 24, 2006, the WB and UPN networks announced they would merge. The newly combined network would be called "The C-W", the letters representing the first initial of its corporate parents CBS (the parent company of UPN) and the Warner Bros. unit of Time Warner. The merger would take effect on-the-air in September 2006, and at that time WRBU will switch, as announced on March 9 to an affiliation with My Network TV, the sister network to Fox. Meanwhile, current WB station KPLR was announced as The CW's St. Louis affiliate.