not allow foreign companies to own more than a 25 percent interest in a television station, MCA spun off the assets of WWOR-TV into a new company called Pinelands, Incorporated on January 1, 1991. Universal would re-enter the New York television market after it merged with NBC to form NBCUniversal in 2004, acquiring the network's flagship station, WNBC, in the process. WWOR partnered with KCOP-TV and MCA TV Entertainment on a two night programming block, Hollywood Premiere Network starting in October 1990, the month before Matsushita's purchase of MCA. Channel 9 also aired select episodes of the Australian soap opera Neighbours from mid-June to mid-September 1991. On March 30, 1992, Disney Studios agreed to sell KCAL-TV (the erstwhile KHJ-TV) to Pinelands, Inc. for a 45 percent ownership stake in Pinelands, so as to have interest in TV stations in the two largest markets, New York and Los Angeles, allowing for increased original programming. Instead, Pinelands agreed to an unsolicited bid in May from Chris-Craft Industries' BHC Communications subsidiary, thus ending the planned business merger with Disney's KCAL, making WWOR a sister station to Chris-Craft/BHC's KCOP in the process. Disney later acquired WABC-TV as part of its larger purchase of Capital Cities/ABC Inc. in 1996. In 1993, BHC aligned its independent stations with the Prime Time Entertainment Network. WWOR carried Spelling Premiere Network at its launch in August 1994. UPN affiliation (1995–2006) In 1994, Chris-Craft and its broadcasting subsidiary, BHC Communications, and Viacom's newly acquired subsidiary Paramount Pictures partnered to form the United Paramount Network (UPN), which debuted on January 16, 1995. In 1996, Viacom bought 50 percent of UPN from Chris-Craft. At the network's launch, WWOR-TV was UPN's "flagship" station. However, UPN did not allow WWOR's superstation feed to carry the network's programs nationally (in contrast, The WB allowed WGN-TV to air network programming on cable feed during that network's first four years on the air). In the 1990s, the station continued with a large amount of younger-skewing talk shows, reality programming, some sitcoms in evenings, and syndicated cartoons during the morning hours. On January 1, 1997, with only a month's advance warning, Advance Entertainment Corporation, which had purchased the satellite distribution rights to WWOR from Eastern Microwave a few months earlier, stopped uplinking the national version. The EMI Service's transponder space was sold to Discovery Communications for the then six-month-old Animal Planet. Amid outcries from satellite dish owners, National