Paramount formally announces its plans to start the fifth American television network, currently named simply The Paramount Network; at the time of the announcement, only one series – Star Trek: Voyager – is promoted to the press, though the show is still in the earliest stages of development. After an agreement is made to turn the new network into a joint venture with Chris-Craft subsidiary United Television (whose stations will become part of the new network), the network is eventually renamed the United Paramount Network, or UPN. It will be Paramount’s third attempt at launching its own network, after the short-lived late ’40s/early ’50s Paramount Network and an aborted attempt to launch the Paramount Television Service (whose schedule was also to be anchored by a new Star Trek series) in the late ’70s.
