Ричмонд және Эшлендтегі CW телеарнасы

CW affiliate in Ashland–Richmond, Virginia

WUPV (channel 65) is a television station licensed to Ashland, Virginia, United States, serving the Richmond area as an affiliate of The CW. It is owned by Gray Television alongside Richmond licensed NBC affiliate WWBT (channel 12) and WRID LD (channel 48). The stations share studios on Midlothian Turnpike (US 60) in Richmond, while WUPV's transmitter is located northeast of Richmond in King William County, 1.6 mile (3 km) west of Enfield. WRID repeats its main channel from the WWBT transmitter behind the studios in the inner ring of Richmond on its third subchannel, mapped to WUPV DT6. Established as a religious TV station in 1990, WZXK joined The WB in 1995 (as WAWB) and switched to UPN in 1997, adopting its present call sign. The result of the switch was to leave The WB without a full time outlet in Richmond; the network's attempts to build an additional local station were unsuccessful for legal and technical reasons. The station joined The CW on its 2006 launch and today serves as one of two ATSC 3.0 (Next Gen TV) transmitters in central Virginia. The station airs one local newscast from the WWBT newsroom.

Christel Inc., run by James E. Campana, had broadcast leased access religious programming on cable systems in Henrico County since 1978. In 1986, he was granted a construction permit for channel 65 in Ashland after settling with a competing applicant and began a years long construction process that would involve more than $2 million in funds. The call letters WZXK were chosen at the suggestion of an attorney who knew they'd be available and after 10 suggestions were turned down by the FCC. Meanwhile, a tower was built in King William County in 1989 after Hanover County refused to concede a zoning variance to build the mast. Construction was almost halted on the rest of the project due to a sudden cash crunch; the transmitter was left sitting in a warehouse in Kentucky for a time because Christel needed to pay another $118,000. Channel 65 finally appeared on March 9, 1990. It aired primarily religious programming with some secular shows. However, it also dealt with financial and technical struggles which sometimes converged. In 1992, the station's transmitter failed, but it took time to raise the funds to replace it. That fall, the amount of family secular programming increased. In February 1994, locally based Bell Broadcasting purchased WZXK, with Christel continuing to program religious fare on the station. That fall, WZXK reached an affiliation deal with the soon to launch WB network and became WAWB "WB 65". In 1997, Bell Broadcasting sold the station to Lockwood Broadcasting of Hampton, Virginia, which negotiated to take the primary UPN affiliation. With this move, WAWB took the current call sign of WUPV; it branded first as "UPN 65" and then "UPN Richmond" during its tenure with the network. After the affiliation swap, there was no over the air carrier of WB programming in Richmond until selected shows turned up on NBC affiliate WWBT in 1999; some programs aired first in the afternoon and then in overnight hours through August 31, 2006. This arrangement led to Richmond being one of the worst markets for WB network ratings. One problem was that WWBT could not carry the entire WB prime time lineup; due to time limitations involved in timeshifting network programs and removing show promotions, the station opted not to carry the network's Friday night schedule. Kids' WB programming was cleared on WRLH. While an attempt was made to launch a new station which would have been run by ACME Communications, the proposal died in a technical morass related to the removal of channels 60–69 and 52–59 from television use. The original application, which had been made by Television Capital Corporation of Richmond, specified channel 63 (last used in 1988 when WVRN TV folded), had to be amended twice to change its channel (first to 52 and then to 39), and was contested on procedural grounds by Lockwood. In 2006, The WB and UPN merged to form The CW. With The CW effectively forced by default to affiliate with WUPV for full market distribution, Lockwood entered into a long term affiliation agreement for three of its stations in April 2006. Just days before the new network's launch that September, Lockwood sold WUPV to Southeastern Media Holdings, a subsidiary of Community Newspaper Holdings. That company's stations were all operated under local marketing agreements, covering all station functions but ad sales, by Raycom Media, then owner of Richmond CBS affiliate WTVR TV. In 2008, Raycom acquired Lincoln Financial Media and WWBT; WTVR was sold to Local TV LLC in 2009. In 2011, Community Newspaper Holdings sold Southeastern Media Holdings and its four stations (including WUPV) to Thomas Henson (which later transferred in the same year its shares to American Spirit Media, which he owned) for $24 million and the assumption of $50 million in debt.

On June 25, 2018, Atlanta based Gray Television announced it had reached an agreement with Raycom to merge their respective broadcasting assets (consisting of Raycom's 63 existing owned and/or operated television stations, and Gray's 93 television stations) under the former's corporate umbrella in a cash and stock merger transaction valued at $3.6 billion. In advance of the merger, Raycom exercised its options to purchase WUPV and KYOU in Ottumwa, Iowa, outright from American Spirit Media. and was completed on January 2, 2019.

WUPV provides five subchannels, which are carried in ATSC 1.0 format on the multiplexes of the other stations participating in the ATSC 3.0 arrangement. + Subchannels provided by WUPV (ATSC 1.0) Channel Res. Aspect Short name Programming ATSC 1.0 host 65.1 1080i 16:9 WUPV DT Main WUPV programming / The CW WWBT 65.2 480i Bounce Bounce TV WTVR TV 65.3 Grit Grit WRLH TV 65.4 The365 The365 WRIC TV 65.5 StartTV Start TV

In the immediate Richmond area, WRID LD provides second transmissions of the main program streams of WWBT (12.6) and WUPV (65.6) on the UHF band.

On April 11, 2022, WUPV and WCVW launched ATSC 3.0 (Next Gen TV) signals in the Richmond area. The WUPV multiplex transmits all five of Richmond's commercial stations in the format. + Subchannels of WUPV (ATSC 3.0) Channel Res. Short name Programming 6.1 1080p WTVR CBS (WTVR TV) 8.1 720p WRIC TV ABC (WRIC TV) 12.1 1080p WWBT HD NBC (WWBT) 35.1 720p WRLH Fox (WRLH TV) 65.1 1080p WUPV HD The CW

WUPV shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 65, on June 12, 2009, the official date on which full power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal remained on its pre transition UHF channel 47. American Spirit Media was paid to move WUPV to the VHF band in the 2016 United States wireless spectrum auction.