WRBU (channel 46) is a television station licensed to East St. Louis, Illinois, United States, broadcasting the Ion Television network to the St. Louis, Missouri area. Owned and operated by the Ion Media subsidiary of the E. W. Scripps Company, the station has offices on Richardson Road in Arnold, Missouri, and its transmitter is located near Missouri Route 21 and East Four Ridge Road in House Springs. History Early history The station first signed on the air on September 11, 1989 as WHSL, originally operating as a full simulcast of the Home Shopping Network (HSN). Unlike most full-time HSN affiliates of the period, it was not founded by the network's broadcasting arm, Silver King Communications; instead, it was originally owned by St. Louis-based Roberts Broadcasting, a family-owned firm owned by African American businessmen Steven, Mike and Mark Roberts. WHSL was the first full-power television station to sign on in the St. Louis market since KNLC (channel 24) debuted in September 1982. What was a placid relationship between HSN and Roberts for the station's first seven years on air soured in 1996, when HSN sued the station for breach of contract; Roberts sought to air more infomercials and fewer hours of home shopping. The move came after HSN reduced the number of local commercial minutes per hour from 5 to 2 and after Roberts considered leasing the station's airtime to River City Broadcasting (owners of KDNL-TV) or Koplar Communications, which owned KPLR-TV. A judge found in favor of HSN in the dispute. With few exceptions, Roberts was thus locked into airing HSN's programs in an arrangement that did not expire until 2003. From HSN to UPN In June 2001, Roberts announced that it had signed an agreement to become an affiliate of UPN, a move that would give the network its first primary affiliate in St. Louis and end the market's status as the largest U.S. city by market size that did not have a full-time affiliate of the network. The deal would begin in 2003, when the HSN contract expired. Despite the fact that St. Louis was large enough to support exclusive affiliations with all six major broadcast networks that were in operation after January 1995, WHSL's commitment to HSN prevented UPN from having a stable exclusive affiliate in the market. When the network launched, it had no affiliate in St. Louis. It finally found one in KDNL-TV, by then