Paramount Stations Group

Paramount Stations Group

Former type	Division
Industry	Television
Fate	Renamed Viacom Television Stations Group in 2001 Folded into CBS Television Stations in 2006
Predecessor	TVX Broadcast Group
Founded	1991
Defunct	2001
Headquarters	Hollywood, California USA
Owner	National Amusements
Parent	Paramount Pictures/Paramount Communications (1991-1995) Viacom (1995-2006) CBS Corporation (2006-present)

Paramount Stations Group (sometimes abbreviated as PSG) was a company that controlled a group of American broadcast television stations. The company existed from 1991 until 2001.

History

Paramount Communications, the then-parent company of Paramount Pictures, formed the Paramount Stations Group after buying out the remaining stake in TVX Broadcast Group that it did not already own. This gave the company control of six stations: Fox affiliates KRRT of Kerrville, Texas, WLFL-TV of The Triangle Region of North Carolina, and WTXF-TV of Philadelphia, and independent stations KTXA of Fort Worth, Texas, KTXH of Houston, Texas, and WDCA of Washington, D.C.. Shortly thereafter, the group began its expansion with its purchase of then-Detroit Fox affiliate WKBD from Cox Enterprises in 1993.^[1]

Viacom purchased Paramount in 1993, with the deal closing in March 1994, and thus, several Viacom-owned CBS and NBC stations were added to the PSG fold. Shortly afterward Viacom entered into a joint venture with Chris-Craft Industries, which owned several television stations as part of its United Television subsidiary, to launch the United Paramount Network (UPN). Five of PSG's original six stations, along with several acquisitions such as WSBK-TV in Boston, became charter affiliates of the network when UPN launched in January 1995. PSG sold off two of its original six stations as well; KRRT and WTXF were sold to other companies, with the latter becoming a Fox-owned station. To make up for the loss of its Philadelphia-owned station, PSG bought Philadelphia independent station WGBS-TV and renamed it to WPSG-TV, and moved the UPN affiliation there. The company eventually divested itself of the CBS and NBC stations it held and purchased more UPN affiliates as the 1990s continued.

Airing since 1992 in Sweden and other European countries, 4 of the group's independent stations began in late December 1993 testing Video Games Challenge, interactive via the phone game show produced by Invisible Cities of Los Angeles and Big Band Productions of Sweden.^[2]

The end

In 2000, PSG bought out Chris-Craft's stake in UPN. Shortly thereafter, Chris-Craft exited broadcasting and sold most of its stations to Fox.

PSG was folded the next year after Viacom completed its merger with CBS. The remaining PSG stations were merged with the CBS owned-and-operated stations to form the Viacom Television Stations Group. Today, that group is called the CBS Television Stations Group.

Stations

• This list does not include WABD, WTTG, WDTV, KTLA, WBKB and KCTY—all of which were owned at least in part by Paramount Pictures decades before the formation of the Paramount Stations Group.
• ¹ These stations were owned by Viacom prior to its purchase of Paramount Communications (the parent company of Paramount Pictures and the Paramount Stations Group, and was formerly known as Gulf+Western) in 1994.
• ² WTVX and WLWC were owned by Straightline Communications but operated by Viacom through local marketing agreements from 1997 to 2001. Viacom acquired the stations outright in 2001, more than one year after it completed its acquisition of CBS.
• ³ KSCC was the only station founded by Viacom. However, Viacom never held control of the station as it was LMA'd to Clear Channel Communications before it signed on for the first time.

Notes