Due to the costs related to rebranding the student network, and under the advice of its then-volunteer legal counsel, Cary Tepper, the non-profit association countered with a request of $100,000, which Salhany refused.

[7] Both sides reached an agreement on the division of affiliates, but Chris-Craft expressed extreme skepticism and declined to proceed with the merger.

UPN launched on January 16, 1995, initially carrying programming only on Monday and Tuesday nights from 8:00 to 10:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific Time.

The first comedy series to premiere on UPN were Platypus Man, starring Richard Jeni, and Pig Sty, with both shows airing Monday nights in the 9:00 p.m. hour; both received mixed reviews.

[13] UPN completed its prime time expansion in the 1998–99 season, with Thursdays and Fridays as the last nights of programming to be added to the network's evening slate.

That season saw the debut of The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer, a sitcom set during the Civil War that centered on a black English nobleman who becomes the valet to Abraham Lincoln; even before its premiere, the series was riddled by controversy and protests from several African American activist groups (including the Los Angeles chapter of the NAACP, who picketed outside Paramount Studios one week before the originally scheduled pilot episode) and some advertisers for its perceived lighthearted take on American slavery in the 19th century.

Three days later on February 8, Chris-Craft subsequently filed a lawsuit against Viacom in the New York Supreme Court to block Viacom's merger with CBS, claiming that a pact signed between the two partners in 1997 had prevented either from owning "any interest, financial or otherwise" in "any competing network," including CBS, for a four-year period through January 2001.

On March 17, New York Supreme Court judge Herman Cahn ruled against Chris-Craft's move for a permanent injunction to curtail the Viacom-CBS merger and the enforcement of Viacom's ultimatum.

[22][23][24] This gave UPN the rare distinction of being one of the only broadcast networks to not have had owned-and-operated stations (O&O) in the three largest media markets, New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago (with The WB – the only network that never have had an O&O – being the only other, as minority owner Tribune Broadcasting owned most of its charter affiliates including those in all three markets, while majority owner Time Warner only owned WTBS-TV, an independent station that originated then-superstation TBS).

Viacom's purchase of CBS was said to be the "death knell" for the Federal Communications Commission's longtime ban on television station duopolies.

Further transactions added San Francisco (KPIX-TV and KBHK-TV, the latter of which was traded to Viacom/CBS by Fox Television Stations) and Sacramento (KOVR and KMAX-TV, the former of which was sold to Viacom/CBS by the Sinclair Broadcast Group) to the mix.

[28] Fox later bought the third-largest UPN affiliate, Chicago's WPWR-TV, through a separate deal with Newsweb Corporation for $450 million in June 2002.

[31] In 2001, UPN entered into a public bidding war to acquire two series from The WB – Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Roswell – from producing studio 20th Century Fox Television.

On January 24, 2006, UPN parent CBS Corporation and Time Warner, the majority owner of The WB, announced that they would shut down the two respective networks and launch a new broadcast network that would be operated as a joint venture between both companies, The CW, which incorporated UPN and The WB's higher-rated programs with newer series produced exclusively for The CW.

One month later on February 22, Fox announced the formation of MyNetworkTV, a new network that would also launch in September 2006 that would use the company's soon-to-be former UPN affiliates as the nucleus.

In Summer 2005, UPN aired R U the Girl, in which R&B group TLC (not with Left Eye) searched for a woman to join them on a new song.

Much of UPN's comedy programming between 1996 and 2006 (particularly those that aired as part of the network's Monday evening lineup) was largely aimed at African American audiences, with minor exceptions in shows such as Clueless, Realitycheck and Head Over Heels.

In its later years, as part of the network's desire to maintain its own identity with its own unique shows, UPN instituted a policy of "not picking up other networks' scraps", which was a strong argument when fan pressure was generated in 2004 for them to pick up Angel, the spin-off of Buffy the Vampire Slayer which had been dropped from The WB.

[38] Like Fox and The WB, UPN never aired national morning or evening newscasts; however, several of its affiliates and owned-and-operated stations did produce their own local news programs.

In several markets, the local UPN affiliate either outsourced news programming to an NBC, ABC or CBS station in the market (either due to insufficient funds or studio space for production of their own newscasts, or in later years after the FCC permitted duopolies in markets with at least eight unique station owners in 2000, the station being operated through a legal duopoly or management agreement with a major network affiliate); other affiliates opted to carry syndicated programming in the hour following UPN's primetime programming lineup.

Harrisburg affiliate WLYH-TV briefly continued its newscasts after switching to UPN from CBS in 1995, until WHP-TV began operating the station under a local marketing agreement that fall.

[41] With the exception of KPTV and KMSP, both of which are now Fox stations, none of the former UPN affiliates that produced newscasts during their affiliation with the network continue to maintain an independent news department – despite license requirements imposed by the station's 1983 transfer of its license to Secaucus, New Jersey from New York City to cover New Jersey issues, WWOR-TV, which continued to produce news programming after coming under common ownership with Fox O&O WNYW, shut down its news department in July 2013 and replaced its lone 10:00 p.m. newscast with an outside produced program called Chasing New Jersey, a move that resulted in calls by state politicians for the FCC to revoke Fox's license to operate the station.

WKBD shut down its news department (which was later shared with WWJ-TV) in December 2002, with its 10:00 p.m. newscast continuing to be produced by ABC affiliate WXYZ-TV until its eventual cancellation in 2005.

Unlike other networks, UPN gave its affiliates the option of running its weekend children's program block on either Saturdays or Sundays.

In January 1998, the network entered into a deal with Saban Entertainment to program the Sunday morning block (with shows such as The Incredible Hulk, X-Men and Spider-Man joining the lineup).

[48][49] There were rumors that UPN then entered into discussions with then-corporate sister Nickelodeon (both networks were owned by Viacom) to produce a new block.

The addition of Disney's One Too expanded UPN's children's program block back to two hours, running on Sunday mornings and weekday afternoons.

Despite the fact that UPN would not be able to have extensive small-market coverage at launch due to a lack of commercial television stations in those areas, Paramount Television denied Advance Entertainment Corporation permission from distributing the network's programming over the WWOR EMI Service, the superstation feed of New York City affiliate WWOR-TV, preventing the network from reaching markets without an exclusive or secondary UPN affiliate.

This would be a continuation of the trend of networks using such naming schemes, which originated at Fox (and even earlier by the Canadian CBC), and was also predominately used at CBS (which has most of its owned-and-operated stations, with a few exceptions, brand using a combination of the network's name and over-the-air channel number) and The WB (with the exception of its Tribune Broadcasting-owned affiliates in Los Angeles and Chicago, and certain other stations); NBC and ABC also use similar branding schemes, but not to the same broad level outside their O&Os.

Due to the station's circumstances of holding full cable carriage across the state of Minnesota and into The Dakotas as a superstation, local management preferred to retain their pre-UPN "Minnesota 9" branding in some manner, as most of the UPN schedule was of low appeal to the station's rural viewers, and it was building a successful and competitive news department that did not depend on the success or failure of UPN.