Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Networks’ demise traces to show

The WB’s loss of “Buffy” - which breathed new life into the struggling UPN - set in motion a pitched battle that would doom both networks.

HOLLYWOOD - When the obituary is written of The WB, the cause of death should probably read: complications resulting from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”

When the money-losing WB and UPN networks announced that they were pulling the plug to form a single new broadcast network, many television veterans traced the roots of the decision back five years, when a fight over the fate of “Buffy” drove what would prove to be a fatal stake through The WB’s heart.

The show, produced by 20th Century Fox Television, was a runaway hit with teenage girls. But in early 2001, The WB balked when Fox executives demanded $44 million to license a single season. That fall, the show shifted to UPN, and with it went The WB’s identity as the go-to destination for young viewers.

Now, as CBS Corp. and Time Warner Inc. develop the CW, their new jointly owned network, what killed The WB and UPN is a hot topic in the offices of TV executives. 1/4 In the end, many agree, The WB’s loss of “Buffy” set in motion a pitched battle for the coveted youth market that would eventually doom both networks.

“It came down to two very large and very well-funded media companies trying to take one seat at the table,” said Warner Bros. Television Group President Bruce Rosenblum, who was put in charge of The WB last year. “Rather than battling the network business, we were battling each other.”

Rosenblum is particularly interested in what went wrong because it is now up to him and CBS Paramount Network Television Entertainment Group President Nancy Tellem to make things right. The two will oversee the CW network, which is scheduled to launch in September.

CBS will control the CW’s programming, marketing and research functions. Time Warner’s former WB employees will run the CW’s business operations. One company executive said about a third of the nearly 300 WB and UPN employees would lose their jobs in the consolidation. But Tellem and Rosenblum said no such decision had been made.

The cautionary tale of the little networks that couldn’t begins in the early 1990s. That is when the relaxation of federal rules allowed broadcasters for the first time to own the content they aired. This gave such longtime TV production juggernauts as Warner Bros. and Paramount the chance to get into the network game.

Ironically, the brass at both companies talked about working together to build a single network. Instead, each company aligned with a separate, powerful independent TV station group - Paramount with Chris-Craft Industries, and Warner Bros. with Chicago-based Tribune Co. Both Chris-Craft and Tribune, which now publishes the Los Angeles Times, wanted their local stations - not each other’s - to form the backbone of the new network.

Ultimately, that meant they formed two networks.

In Los Angeles, Tribune’s KTLA Channel 5 became the WB affiliate, and Chris-Craft’s KCOP Channel 13 became the local UPN affiliate. (Fox later outbid Viacom Inc. to acquire the Chris-Craft stations, but still aired the UPN programming.)