USAB dates back on in 1995 when Diller purchased Silver King Broadcasting from Lowell W. "Bud" Paxson and Roy Speer.

However, the Home Shopping Network split from Silver King Broadcasting in 1992 and not return until after Diller gained ownership of the company.

Under an agreement which was made in August 1996, both Silver King Broadcasting and the Home Shopping Network would merge their stations.

This format was dubbed "CityVision", and took heavy influence from the format used by CITY-TV in Toronto (and more prominently, that station's sister broadcast television properties that became charter stations of Citytv, when CHUM Limited expanded the format to other Canadian markets as a television system in 2002, and similar to USA's sale of its stations to Univision, suffered a similar fate when CHUM agreed to merge with CTVglobemedia (now Bell Media), owner of the CTV Television Network).

By 2000, four stations were transformed into Diller's new model: WAMI-TV (WAMI "Whammy" 69) in Miami, WHOT ("Hotlanta 34") in Atlanta, WHUB ("Hub" 66) in Boston, and KSTR ("K-Star" 49) in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

Emmis eventually departed from television ownership and resold the stations to other parties, including LIN TV Corporation and in WVUE's case, a group led by the owner of the New Orleans Saints, Tom Benson in 2008.