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The United Paramount Network (1995-2006). Initially owned by boat company Chris-Craft (through subsidiary United Television, hence the "United" in "United Paramount Network"), [[Viacom]] (whose [[Paramount]] Pictures is part of the namesake) bought one-half of the network in 1996, and bought CC's share in 2000. CC's UPN stations were sold to Fox the next year; they later became the nucleus of [[My Network TV]]. During UPN's last nine months of operation it was owned by CBS Corporation (the new name for the original incarnation of Viacom). In September 2006, it merged with [[The WB]] to form [[The CW]], which is owned half by [[CBS]] and half by Warner Bros.
UPN's most popular shows were its flagship shows, from Paramount's flagship franchise -- ''[[Star Trek]]'', in the form of ''[[Star Trek Voyager]]'' and ''[[Star Trek Enterprise]]'' (in fact, ''Voyager'' was UPN's first show period). The rest of UPN's lineup [[Your Mileage May Vary|was of varying quality]], but was largely made up of mostly forgettable comedies, action dramas, and various sci-fi shows that, for whatever reason or another, struggled or completely failed to catch on. The main exceptions were ''[[Roswell]]'' and ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'', which the network (ironically, in hindsight) acquired from The WB. There were a good number of other interspersed successes, such as ''[[Veronica Mars]]'', ''[[Moesha]]'', ''[[The Parkers]]'' and ''[[Everybody Hates Chris]]'', the lattermost migrating over to The CW along with another hit, ''[[
Most of UPN's comedies succeeded by targeting an audience that, for decades, had been largely ignored by the major networks -- African-Americans. This led to it getting a reputation of being "the black people's channel" (complete with such backronyms as "the [[Fun With Acronyms|Urban People's Network]]"), frequently winning the ratings in that demographic even though, overall, it lagged far behind the "Big Four" broadcast networks ([[CBS]], [[NBC]], [[ABC]] and [[FOX]]) for its entire existence. During the creation of [[The CW]], there was a lot of concern that the merger would see the WB side "whitewash" the UPN side in order to attract the former network's more lucrative white, upper-middle class audience -- fears that seemed to have been confirmed when shows like ''[[Everybody Hates Chris]]'' and ''[[The Game (TV)|The Game]]'' got canceled after just a few years of running on The CW.
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