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Fox to switch for college students
SCSU students will find some of their favorite television programs, including Sunday football, on a different channel this fall.
It’s time to “Make the Switch.”
Two Twin Cities television stations will swap network affiliation on Sunday. The local UPN network, KMSP-TV Channel 9, and the Fox network, WFTC-TV Channel 29 (locally WFTC is channel 12 on Charter cable) are trading primetime programs and juggling syndicated and news programs in an effort to make both stations more marketable.
“The switch,” simply put, will make KMSP 9 part of the Fox network, while WFTC 29 will become affiliated with UPN. UPN’s primetime programs will be seen on WFTC, and Fox’s on KMSP. Sunday football, as well as the Major League Baseball playoffs and World Series, will also be seen on KMSP 9 this fall. In addition to normal adjustments in syndicated programming for the fall season, some syndicated shows on both networks have been juggled around.
“We had a certain degree of flexibility in being able to shuffle around some of the shows, some of the syndicated shows, just to try to make combinations work a little better,” said Dale Bluestein, program director of both KMSP and WFTC.
“The switch” was spurred by Fox’s recent purchase of the stations, said Carol Rueppel, the general manager of KMSP and WFTC.
“(Fox) just took a look at the programming lineup of both the stations and decided which programs seemed to go best on which station,” she said.
For example, she explained, KMSP has a strong 9 p.m. local newscast, which has been competing with more local news on WFTC at the same timeslot.
“Fox believes highly in local news,” she said. “They liked the idea of marrying their primetime with the number one nine o’clock newscast. Plus, KMSP has the three-and-a-half hour local news in the morning, and that is very much a Fox model.”
Now, the new UPN 29 news will be at 10 p.m. Both the KMSP and WFTC news teams and anchor personalities will remain the same; only the newscast time on WFTC is changing.
Rueppel said, “Rather than doing two newscasts at nine that divide our resources-we kind of butt our heads together-we will now take all of our combined resources and program news for both the nine o’clock time period and also the ten o’clock time period.”
For WFTC, the syndicated 5-7 p.m. programming slot, not news, is the station’s key point. The two-hour period features two episodes of The Simpsons, one of King of the Hill, and new this fall, one of That ‘70s Show. These shows, which appeal to a younger audience, fit better with UPN’s primetime programs, Rueppel said.
“We felt that that younger programming going into UPN’s younger programming would be a real good match between that five to seven period and primetime,” Rueppel said. “That makes perfect sense for (SCSU’s) audience, because they probably are exactly that audience that watches Simpsons, King, Simpsons and ‘70s Show, instead of watching the evening news. Our belief is that that will build UPN prime, which was the fastest growing network last season for young adults ages 18-34.”
Bluestein said the goal of the switch is to attract different audiences to each station, so the stations are not competing with one another.
After the switch, KMSP Fox 9 will still feature local news in the morning from 5:30-9 a.m. Fox primetime will air 7-9 p.m. on KMSP, with local news at 9 p.m. On Sept. 23, the sitcom Will & Grace will also be added to the station’s syndicated program list, showing at 6 and 10 p.m.
WFTC UPN 29 will broadcast UPN primetime 7-9 p.m., with syndicated episodes of Seinfield and Everybody Loves Raymond showing at 9 and 9:30 p.m. respectively. A half-hour newscast follows at 10 p.m. The sitcom That ‘70s Show will also debut on Sept. 16 in syndication, showing at 6:30 and 10:30 p.m.
“The Switch” kicks off with the Sunday’s first game of the National Football League season, the Minnesota Vikings vs. the Chicago Bears. Viewers can catch the game on KMSP Fox 9 at 12 p.m.
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