UPN News Bullets

With both the Viacom takeover of UPN and the network presenting some of the shows it is developing for next year, there are quite a few news bits related to UPN today:

• Tonight at 9:00pm, following the second episode of its new 'Secret Agent Man' series, UPN will be premiering the cop show 'The Beat'. Developed by the team behind 'Homicide: Life on the Street', The Beat has actually been gaining pretty solid reviews from people such as TV Guide's Matt Roush and ABC's Frazier Moore.

• Variety's Michael Schneider is reporting that UPN is currently in discussions to return the 'Mortal Kombat' franchise to television next season. On Friday the 28th of April, after a one-hour WWF wrestling special, the network will be airing 'Federation of Martial Arts', a live-action, scripted program pitting fighters against 'dark warriors' in arena fights. If successful, the pilot could be turned into a regular series next season, similar to what happened with 'WWF Smackdown!'. More on this can be read here.

• In an article by Variety's Jill Goldsmith, she mentions that most exports expect the Federal Communications Commission to do away with the rule barring companies from owning more than one network. The main reason for this is apparently that UPN could well go under if Viacom wouldn't be allowed to keep it, and as UPN currently has more minority talent and minority viewers than any other network, this is not something the FCC would like to see happen. The full article looks at how UPN will fare as part of Viacom, and what will happen to Chris-Craft Industries now.

• Finally, an article by Reuters' Bob Tourtellotte contains a few quotes from UPN CEO Dean Valentine, who said that "if there had to be changes at all, I suspect this is one of the better outcomes because Viacom...has a studio and it has TV stations and those are both things we need to reach our audience."

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