Foxnet
Foxnet was a national cable programming service of the Fox Broadcasting Company that was owned by the Fox Entertainment Group division of News Corporation. The service, which operated from June 6, 1991 to September 12, 2006, was intended for American television markets ranked #100 and above by Nielsen Media Research estimates that lacked availability for a locally based Fox broadcast affiliate.
Foxnet acted as a nationalized programming feed offering Fox prime time, sports and children's programming, and a master schedule of syndicated entertainment and brokered programs that were broadcast outside of time periods designated for Fox programming. Fox handled programming, advertising and promotional services for the service at its Fox Network Center corporate headquarters at the Fox Studio Lot in the Century City district of Los Angeles.
Since 2017, Fox has at times provided a generic national feed of the network to selected cable and virtual multichannel video programming distributors without access to a local or nearby Fox station, or in the event that a local affiliate is off the air temporarily due to transmitter damage caused by severe weather.
History
Background
At the time of the service's launch in 1991, Fox's programming reached only 91% of all U.S. households with at least one television set, giving it the lowest nationwide coverage among the four largest American broadcast networks of the time. This was because, around the time of the network's launch in October 1986, most large and mid-sized markets were served by at least four commercial over-the-air television stations: three that were each affiliated with one of the established broadcast networks, ABC, NBC and CBS; and one that usually operated as an independent station, usually offering a mix of syndicated programs, movies and in many cases, sports. Independents, most of which had no prior history as a major network affiliate, made up the vast majority of Fox's charter affiliates.Many smaller markets, however, were served by three or fewer commercial stations, most of which were already affiliated with at least one of the existing major broadcast networks. This issue left Fox's only options to reach these areas being to either settle for a secondary affiliation with one of the major network stations, going with a station owned by a religious broadcaster which could block portions of their schedule based on moral concerns, or affiliate with a spare low-power station, which often maintained low-quality schedules prevalent with home shopping or paid programming outside of prime time and were usually associated with smaller networks such as Channel America; the network rarely utilized these options in order to not associate their programming with low-effort stations and networks, leaving it with gaps in national clearance in several smaller markets, while it only carried secondary affiliations on Big Three stations only starting in 1994 to distribute their NFL coverage in some scattered markets until a stand-alone station could launch.
To expand its distribution to these areas, original network president Jamie Kellner developed the concept of a national cable feed of Fox that would provide the network's programming to smaller television markets throughout the United States where the network could not maintain an exclusive over-the-air affiliation – known as "white areas" – due to the limited number of commercial television stations available or where a local cable provider did not import the signal of an out-of-market Fox station to act as a default affiliate of the network.
Development and launch
On September 6, 1990, Fox reached an agreement with Tele-Communications Inc. – at the time, the nation's largest cable operator – in which TCI systems in certain markets would become charter affiliates of a cable-only version of the network, breaking the traditional method of broadcast networks offering their programming to over-the-air television stations that distribute content to local cable systems. John C. Malone, then the chief executive officer of TCI, referred to the agreement as "precedent setting" since it allowed TCI systems to obtain "network affiliate status" in places where Fox programming was not available. When it launched, Fox charged smaller cable providers that agreed to carry Foxnet a flat annual carriage fee of $100, instead of the monthly fees traditionally charged by other broadcast and cable channels; in turn, TCI agreed to pay Fox a subscriber fee of 6¢ per month, a precursor to the reverse compensation revenue model that Fox and other broadcast networks would adopt for their conventional stations by the early 2000s.Foxnet launched on June 6, 1991, originally maintaining an 18-hour daily schedule. The service maintained a master schedule of programs intended for broadcast syndication from various distributors and brokered programming to pad out its broadcast day outside of Fox programming hours, utilizing a general entertainment format similar to that of the parent network's broadcast stations during that timeframe. FoxNet's inaugural schedule consisted mostly of theatrical and made-for-TV movies, and reruns of classic and obscure television series from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s ; separate national advertising airing within syndicated programs and local ad slots during Fox network shows mainly consisted per inquiry ads and public service announcements in its early years.
During its existence, the service never officially identified itself specifically as "Foxnet" on-air; its network identifications consisted solely of the Fox logo in use at the time, with a voiceover reading "you're watching Fox." Timeslot cards and verbal continuity announcements promoting the service's syndicated programs identified show airtimes by Eastern Time Zone scheduling. By 1992, Foxnet reached 1.3 million subscribers throughout the United States, and served nearly two million viewers at its peak.
As Fox expanded its presence to most television markets through primary affiliations with full-power or low-power broadcast television stations, and by the mid-2000s, carriage on digital subchannels of stations affiliated with other broadcast networks, Foxnet's coverage had in turn shrunk to the point where very few areas had a need for the service. In addition, most cable providers in markets that remained unserved by a local Fox station until it acquired a standalone primary or subchannel-only affiliation began importing out-of-market affiliates to relay the network's programming, or in rare cases, partnered with an already-existing major network affiliate to create a dedicated Fox cable channel. Foxnet was also carried in portions of some larger media markets where a reliable signal from an over-the-air affiliate or a translator was not receivable; one such example included Eastern Iowa.
Viewers in Foxnet markets that had a subscription to a direct broadcast satellite service also had the ability to watch an out-of-market Fox station via a given provider after receiving permission from the network: DirecTV and Dish Network subscribers could receive network-owned KTTV from Los Angeles or WNYW from New York City; until that provider's 1999 merger with DirecTV, subscribers of Primestar could receive either Oakland/San Francisco affiliate KTVU or Philadelphia affiliate-turned-O&O WTXF-TV. However, in some cases, satellite subscribers could receive the Fox station with rights to the network's programming within the market. As a result, some areas that were not served by a Fox affiliate at the time of the network's launch never offered Foxnet; examples included Palm Springs, California, South Bend, Indiana and the western portion of the Plattsburgh/Burlington market.
From October 2001 to April 2003, most Fox programming in the state of Maine was only available via Foxnet, as WPXT disaffiliated from the network to join The WB after affiliation renewal negotiations between then-owner Pegasus Broadcasting and Fox broke down; that station had been carried by cable providers in Bangor since the network's launch. When WPFO and WFVX-LD affiliated with Fox in the respective markets, Foxnet was relegated to the Presque Isle area, which was one of the last remaining markets without a local Fox affiliate. A similar situation happened in southwestern Mississippi when WDBD initially disaffiliated from the network at that time also to join The WB; WDBD would eventually reaffiliate with Fox in 2006, taking the affiliation from WUFX.
Discontinuation
As time went on, more local or adjacent-market Fox affiliates became available over-the-air or on cable in smaller markets. Eventually, Foxnet's national coverage was reduced to the level where it was only carried on a few small cable systems, none of which had more than 1,000 subscribers. As such, it no longer made economic sense for the service to remain on the air. It was for this reason that Fox's then-owner News Corporation made the decision to discontinue Foxnet. The service officially shut down on September 12, 2006; it was originally slated to cease operations two weeks earlier on September 1, but the shutdown was delayed in order to allow ABC affiliate WABG-TV in Greenwood, Mississippi and CBS affiliate WAGM-TV in Presque Isle time to quickly launch Fox affiliates on their second digital subchannels.Because of Foxnet's shutdown, 13,000 cable subscribers nationwide were estimated to have lost access to Fox network programming. By this time, the network's market share had increased to 98.97% of all U.S. television households. Indeed, network executives had been looking forward to the point that its national penetration had increased to the level that Foxnet would no longer be needed.
The concept and programming strategy behind Foxnet served as the basis for The WB 100+ Station Group, a service owned by Time Warner and Tribune that operated from September 1998 to September 2006 – which was succeeded by The CW Plus, once The WB and UPN were shut down and replaced by The CW in September 2006 – for markets that did not have a WB-affiliated station. Though unlike Foxnet, The WB 100+, which was also co-founded by Kellner, was stylized similarly to an over-the-air broadcast station and local operators were allowed to tailor the service to their individual market with their own branding, with some of the outlets even carrying local news or sports programming. Foxnet, however, was formatted in the manner of a traditional cable channel with no local programming content provided by its carriers.