USA Broadcasting
 |
|
| Subsidiary | |
| Industry |
Broadcast Television Television Production |
| Fate | Stations sold |
| Predecessor | Silver King Broadcasting (1986-1998) |
| Successor | Univision Communications |
| Founded | 1986 |
| Defunct | January 14, 2002 |
| Headquarters | Newark, New Jersey |
|
Area served
|
 United States (Nationwide) |
|
Key people
|
Lowell "Bud" Paxson, Roy Speer (former Silver King Owners), and Barry Diller |
| Products | Broadcast television |
| Parent | USA Networks |
USA Broadcasting (USAB) was an American television broadcasting company owned by the veteran entertainment industry executive Barry Diller. This company was the over-the-air broadcasting arm of USA Networks.
USAB dates back to the mid-1990s when Diller purchased Silver King Broadcasting and its parent company, Home Shopping Network, Inc., from Lowell W. "Bud" Paxson and Roy Speer. Paxson and Speer had assembled the group to expand Home Shopping Network onto broadcast television. The stations carried the Home Shopping Club (now America's Store). Home Shopping Network, Inc. later brought Universal's cable/TV production units, renaming them USA Networks, Inc., and its broadcast television subsidiary USA Broadcasting in 1998.
Diller planned to remove shopping shows from most of the stations' broadcast days and replace them with local and syndicated programs. He wanted to tie each of the stations very closely to the communities they served, and to open up opportunities for locally produced programs.
By 2000, four stations were transformed into Diller's new model: WAMI-TV (WAMI "Whammy" 69) in Miami, WHOT ("Hotlanta 34") in Atlanta, WHUB ("Hub" 66) in Boston, and KSTR ("K-Star" 49) in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. WAMI and KSTR aired local news, talk shows and sporting events. WHOT and WHUB broadcast syndicated programming as well as local sports. WAMI broadcast Miami Heat basketball and Florida Marlins baseball games. WHOT and KSTR also carried professional basketball games of, respectively, the Atlanta Hawks and Dallas Mavericks. WHUB acquired the rights to the annual Beanpot hockey tournament between four of Boston's colleges and also rights to Boston University's men's ice hockey games. HSC/America's Store continues to broadcast late at night and on weekends.
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Wikipedia