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WUPL (channel 54) is a television station licensed to Slidell, Louisiana, United States, serving the New Orleans area as an affiliate of MyNetworkTV. It is owned by Tegna Inc. alongside CBS affiliate WWL-TV (channel 4). The two stations share studios on Rampart Street in the historic French Quarter district; WUPL's transmitter is located on Cooper Road in Terrytown, Louisiana.
Viacom merged with CBS in 2000. Despite Viacom's ownership of WUPL, the market's CBS affiliation remained on WWL-TV (channel 4), the highest-rated television station in New Orleans and CBS' strongest affiliate for over 20 years. Viacom briefly considered buying WWL-TV, in which it would create a duopoly with WUPL. However, after Belo Corporation turned down Viacom's offer to buy the station, Viacom decided instead to sell WUPL to Belo in July 2005 for $14.5 million.
Three weeks later, on February 9, CBS filed a lawsuit against Belo Corporation over the failure to finalize the sale of WUPL to Belo. The deal was slated to close by the end of 2005, but was placed on hold when Hurricane Katrina devastated the New Orleans metropolitan area in late August of that year. Nice Price, Broadcasting & Cable, February 19, 2006. CBS Sues Belo Over WUPL, Broadcasting & Cable, February 9, 2006. Though the lawsuit provided some doubt as to its future affiliation, on July 12, 2006, it was announced that WUPL would become an affiliate of MyNetworkTV. Since News Corporation owns Fox and MyNetworkTV, CBS originally relented on allowing any of its UPN affiliates to affiliate with the new network because The CW did not affiliate with any of News Corporation's UPN stations (CBS and Time Warner instead chose Tribune and CBS Television Stations as The CW's core station groups, with Tribune getting affiliations in the three largest media market of WPIX, KTLA and WGN-TV among other markets, along with Tribune's WNOL-TV in New Orleans).
On February 26, 2007, Belo announced that it would go forward with the purchase of WUPL from CBS.[5] "Belo Nabs WUPL-TV, CBS' New Orleans Affil." By Katy Bachman, MEDIAWEEK. A Belo press release also said the sale—which had already received FCC approval—"settles litigation between Belo and CBS over the purchase that arose after Hurricane Katrina". Belo Purchases WUPL-TV, Expanding Its Presence in New Orleans. 02/26/07 Belo press release. Retrieved September 15, 2013. At that time, Belo closed on WUPL, and later acquired its low-power repeater, WBXN-CA (channel 18; previously a separate station, K10NG, affiliated with The Box and later MTV2) on April 20, 2007. Before then, WUPL was one of two television stations in New Orleans at the time that whose ownership held interest in a major network (the other was former WB affiliate WNOL-TV, owned by that network's part-owner, the Tribune Company), and the only one to be a network owned-and-operated station.
In mid-April 2007, Belo moved WUPL's operations into WWL-TV's facility on Rampart Street. On June 13, 2013, the Gannett Company announced that it would acquire Belo for $1.5 billion. The sale was completed on December 23. Gannett Completes Its Acquisition of Belo, TVNewsCheck, December 23, 2013.
On June 29, 2015, the Gannett Company split in two, with one side specializing in print media and the other side specializing in broadcast and digital media. WWL and WUPL were retained by the latter company, named Tegna. In April 2018, WUPL dropped the "My 54" branding and rebranded under its call letters as "WUPL 54", adopting a logo based on that of its parent station.
On April 4, 2005, WUPL began carrying CBS' morning program The Early Show in lieu of WWL-TV, which preempted the program in the late 1980s (as CBS This Morning) in favor of running an extended weekday morning newscast (which as of 2014, runs for hours); WUPL also carried the syndicated morning news and talk program The Daily Buzz until 2012, pairing that program and CBS' morning news programs under the umbrella brand "My Morning News". WUPL subsequently picked up CBS This Morning when that program replaced The Early Show in January 2012 (WWL-TV, however, carried that program's Saturday edition as the station did not air local newscasts on weekend mornings at the time). However, this changed on December 5, 2016, as WWL picked up CBS This Morning for the entire two hours (likely due to a corporate mandate from Tegna in order to satisfy their CBS affiliation agreements), while WUPL now carries the 7–9 a.m. block of Eyewitness Morning News (it also now simulcasts all hours of the newscast). WWL-TV, WUPL-TV team up to give viewers more choices in the morning , WWL-TV, November 18, 2016, Retrieved November 24, 2016.
The WWL-produced 9 p.m. newscast ended its run on WUPL after the April 26, 2013, edition, having been canceled due to consistently low ratings; three days later on April 29, the program was replaced by The 504, a pre-recorded interview show originally hosted by WWL-TV weekday morning co-anchor Melanie Hebert; it was hosted by Sheba Turk, who was a WWL morning anchor until relocating to KCBS-TV/KCAL-TV in 2023. Newscasts returned to WUPL on September 9, 2014, with the debut of a half-hour weeknight 6:30 p.m. newscast produced by WWL.
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WUPL added MundoMax to its second digital subchannel in 2014 and Heroes & Icons to its third subchannel in 2015. When MundoMax went dark on November 30, 2016, WUPL duplicated its main feed on its second subchannel until the addition of the newly-launched Quest network in late January 2018.
The station carries high definition programming in the 1080i resolution format rather than in 720p, MyNetworkTV's default HD resolution format, as WWL-TV (and the majority of the former Belo stations, regardless of network affiliation) carries its HD programming in the 1080i format.
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