UPN Bullets

• According to a report by Cynthia Littleton and Matthew Doman of the Hollywood Reporter, UPN CEO Dean Valentine recently sent out an upbeat letter to the 100-plus affiliate stations not now owned by News Corp.

  "We are confident that UPN will continue to succeed in the long term and will bring increased value to any stations affiliated with the network", said the letter. "Although the affiliation agreements for Chris-Craft UPN affiliates currently expire in January 2001, it is our hope that they will remain UPN affiliates for the long term. We look forward to working with all of our affiliate partners in realizing the full value that comes from network television."

  The Hollywood Reporter article also contains a quote from Joel Day, general manager of the UPN affiliate in Camarillo, California, who said he thinks "they're going to be around this fall and they're going to be around in 2001".

• At least for the short term, UPN's nationwide reach has increased by a bit, as the Binghamton Press is reporting that, as of Monday, a new station called WBPN started broadcasting UPN on the air in the Triple Cities area. Looking ahead to the upcoming UPN name change, the new station's full name is the Binghamton Paramount Network.

• According to Studio Briefing, analysts are backing down from their earlier predictions that UPN will go down, pointing at the large investments made and the hundreds of millions of dollars tied up for programming commitments.

  In addition, Studio Briefing also reports UPN CEO Dean Valentine told the Bloomberg news service he expects the network to be "profitable soon", adding that "stations need programming. Fox needs programming. Viacom needs programming and that's what we are -- a programming service".

• And work is also still progressing on some of UPN's midseason replacements for January. Reiko Aylesworth has been cast as the female lead in Spelling Television's 'All Souls', which starts shooting six episodes in Montreal next month. Furthermore, Party of Five's Alexondra Lee has been cast in a regular role on 'Special Unit 2'. Thanks go out to this Variety article for this news.

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