Albert Lea cable customers will see a channel switch as two Twin Cities stations swap network affiliations.

Carol Rueppel, general manager and vice president of KMSP and WFTC-TV, said the changes will take affect Sunday, Sept. 8. KMSP, now a UPN affiliate, which is carried as Channel 9 on Charter Communications’ Albert Lea lineup, and WFTC, now a Fox affiliate in the Twin Cities, will swap network affiliations that day.

So, rather than getting KMSP, Charter customers will start getting the new UPN affiliate, WFTC.

Page Cain, the marketing manager for Charter, said there’s no need for KMSP once it becomes a Fox station because Albert Lea viewers get a Fox affiliate out of Rochester.

&uot;We carry the local Fox affiliate in Rochester. We will continue to carry UPN programming. When UPN and Fox do the switch, we will … carry the UPN affiliate (WFTC),&uot; Cain said.

The changes may affect some news programming in the Twin Cities area, Cain said. However, the channels will remain the same.

&uot;If you’re used to watching a KMSP program, you’ll have to switch to a WFTC, or something else. It will look different, but it will be in the same spot,&uot; she said. &uot;It shouldn’t be too much of a problem. Some of the programming is going to change, but that was all planned.