MyNetworkTV
MyNetworkTV, abbreviated as MNT or MNTV, is an American commercial broadcast television syndication service and former television network owned by Fox Corporation, operated by its Fox Television Stations division, and distributed via the syndication structure of Fox First Run. Under the ownership structure of Fox Corporation, the service is incorporated as a subsidiary company, Master Distribution Service, Inc. The service's weekly ten hours of programming is currently originated from the library of NBCUniversal Syndication Studios, though NBCUniversal does not hold any stake in the service.
MyNetworkTV began its operations on September 4, 2006, with an initial affiliate lineup covering about 96% of the country, most of which consisted of stations that were former affiliates of The WB and UPN that did not join the successor of those two networks, The CW.
On September 28, 2009, following disappointment with the network's results, MyNetworkTV dropped its status as a television network and transitioned into a programming service, similar to The CW Plus, relying mainly on repeats of recent broadcast and cable series.
Fox Corporation retained MyNetworkTV after the acquisition of 21st Century Fox by The Walt Disney Company was completed on March 20, 2019.
History
Origins
MyNetworkTV arose from the January 2006 announcement of the launch of The CW, a television network formed by CBS Corporation and Time Warner which essentially combined programming from The WB and UPN onto the scheduling model of the former of the two predecessors. The CW would go on to become not just the fifth national TV network, behind Fox, but also the fifth major TV network.As a result of several deals earlier in the decade, Fox Television Stations owned several UPN affiliates, including the network's three largest stations: WWOR-TV in Secaucus, New Jersey, KCOP-TV in Los Angeles, and WPWR-TV in Gary, Indiana. Fox had acquired WWOR and KCOP after purchasing most of the television holdings of UPN's founding partner Chris-Craft Industries, while the company purchased WPWR in 2003 from Newsweb Corporation. Despite concerns about UPN's future that arose after Fox purchased the Chris-Craft stations, UPN signed three-year affiliation agreement renewals with its Fox-owned affiliates in 2003. Those agreements' pending expiration in 2006, as well as persistent financial losses for both UPN and The WB, gave CBS Corporation and Time Warner the rare opportunity to merge their respective struggling networks into The CW.
The CW's initial affiliation agreements did not include any of the UPN stations owned by Fox Television Stations. In fact, as part of a 10-year affiliation deal with The WB's part-owner, Tribune Broadcasting, the coveted New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago affiliations all went to Tribune-owned stations. In response to the announcement, Fox promptly removed all network references from logos and promotional materials on its UPN affiliates and ceased on-air promotion of UPN's programs altogether. However, in all three cases, the UPN affiliate was the higher-rated station; CW executives were on record as preferring the "strongest" WB and UPN affiliates.
Media reports speculated that the Fox-owned UPN affiliates would all revert to being independent stations, or else form another network by uniting with other UPN and WB-affiliated stations that were left out of The CW's affiliation deals. Fox chose the latter route and announced the launch of MyNetworkTV on February 22, 2006, less than a month after CBS and Time Warner announced the formation of The CW on January 24. The Guardian reported that Fox would utilize MySpace, the social networking website its parent company, News Corporation, had acquired in 2005, to help promote MyNetworkTV. Fox would also utilize MySpace's content-sharing model when it launched MyNetworkTV's website.
Original format
MyNetworkTV's original telenovelas Desire scored a 1.1 household rating/2 share; Fashion House went up to 1.3/2. Fox had sold about half of its projections of $50 million in advance commercial sales. On March 7, 2007, MyNetworkTV began to be included in Nielsen's daily "Television Index" reports, alongside the other major broadcast networks, although it was still not part of the "fast nationals" that incorporate the other networks.Last-minute changes to MyNetworkTV's 2007-08 Fall schedule included re-titling the reality series Divorce Wars to Decision House, and the addition of Celebrity Exposé and Control Room Presents to the network's Monday lineup as well as a one-hour IFL Battleground, followed by NFL Total Access on Saturdays.
In response to the telenovela lineup's poor ratings performance, highlighted by an average household rating of 0.7%, reports surfaced that Fox executives were planning a major revamp of MyNetworkTV's programming, decreasing its reliance on telenovelas and adding new unscripted programs to the schedule such as reality shows, game shows, movies and sports, and a possible revisit to a deal with the Ultimate Fighting Championship. However, MyNetworkTV instead signed a deal with another mixed martial arts organization, the International Fight League, in conjunction with Fox Sports Net.
On February 1, 2007, Greg Meidel, who was named to the newly created position of network president just ten days earlier, confirmed the rumors and unveiled a dramatically revamped lineup. The intent of the shakeup was to increase viewer awareness of the network, as well as to satisfy local affiliates who were disappointed over the poor ratings performance of the network under its initial format. After March 7, telenovelas were reduced to occupying only two nights of its programming schedule, airing in two-hour movie-style blocks rather than each of the serials airing in a one-hour, five-night-a-week format. The remainder of the schedule included theatrical movies and the new IFL Battleground. In addition, the Saturday night telenovela recaps ended immediately, with movies running on that night until March. The 1986 film Something Wild aired on February 3, becoming the network's first non-telenovela presentation.
Specials and reality programming were also a part of the network's reformatting, with the first two specials airing on March 7. MyNetworkTV also reduced its telenovela programming to a single night each week, with American Heiress and Saints & Sinners airing for one hour each on Wednesdays until their unexpected termination, due to incompatible flow with IFC Battleground from Monday to Tuesday as far as promotions. The new Thursday night movie block featured mostly action/adventure films, with Friday night featuring a mix of contemporary classic films, beginning on June 5.
A side effect of the new programming schedule was the loss of the network's claim that it was the only U.S. broadcast network at the time to have its entire programming schedule available in high definition, due to the IFL, some of the network's movies and additional programs being produced exclusively in 480i standard definition.
Revamping the schedule
In the Fall of 2007, MyNetworkTV dropped telenovelas altogether, and began to air reality series and sports programs. On September 1, 2007, the network aired its first live program, the men's final of the AVP Croc Tour's Cincinnati Open. The network debuted its first sitcom, the Flavor Flav vehicle Under One Roof, on April 16, 2008; because the series used Canadian writers, it was unaffected by the 2007–08 Writers Guild strike.The network's shift from telenovelas to reality shows and movies produced only a small bump in the ratings. It averaged only a.7 household rating during September 2007. MyNetworkTV continues to be the second lowest-rated English-language broadcast network in the United States, ahead of only Ion Television.
On February 26, 2008, the network announced it had picked up the rights to air WWE SmackDown, which left The CW at the end of September 2008. The first SmackDown episode on MyNetworkTV aired on October 3, 2008. The first episode of WWE SmackDown pulled in the largest audience in MyNetworkTV history with 3.2 million viewers, and for the first time, put the network in fifth place for the night – ahead of The CW – and was the top-rated program that night in the male 18-34 and 18-49 demographics. The network went back to sixth place shortly afterward. Of the six broadcast networks, Nielsen Media Research said that only MyNetworkTV had increased viewership, with 1.76 million viewers per night, up 750,000 from the previous season.
On January 5, 2009, MyNetworkTV aired episodes of the 2002 revival of The Twilight Zone. The series helped the network's ratings rise, along with WWE SmackDown, becoming the second highest-rated program on the network. The highest-rated program to have ever aired on MyNetworkTV is a December 10, 2008, broadcast of the 1990 comedy film Home Alone, which brought in 3.70 million viewers, but earned a 1.4 rating among the 18-49 adult demographic.
Current format
On February 9, 2009, Fox Entertainment Group announced that MyNetworkTV would convert from a television network to a programming service, similar to that of The CW Plus, with a focus on repeats of acquired programs originally aired on broadcast and cable networks and in first-run syndication. Litton Entertainment had reportedly expressed interest in leasing MyNetworkTV's Saturday evening time slots, which MyNetworkTV chose to instead turn back over to its affiliates. MyNetworkTV began airing more syndicated programming in the fall, which included game shows and dramas, five nights a week. This required the network's affiliates to re-negotiate a new affiliate agreement with the new corporation within Fox operating MyNetworkTV, Master Distribution Service, Inc., though it also gave a full and unencumbered "out" to stations which chose to end their association with MyNetworkTV under this guise, which Ion Television did with their three affiliates.On April 12, 2010, WWE announced that WWE SmackDown would move to the Syfy cable channel that October; the move left MyNetworkTV with no first-run programming other than that it shared with its syndicators. Despite the lack of first-run programming, MyNetworkTV renewed its affiliation contracts for three more years on February 14, 2011. The programming service has seen significant viewership growth since its 2006 startup as a television network. Although ratings on MyNetworkTV do not match those of the other broadcast networks, Nexstar CEO Perry Sook noted his approval of its business model at the time, saying that Nexstar's MyNetworkTV stations get 'more inventory per hour' than they would be associated with a traditional network such as Fox or ABC. Nexstar has since become the owner of, and the largest affiliate base for, The CW, through several acquisitions and since converted three MyNetworkTV affiliations into CW affiliations including WPHL-TV which was the largest MyNetworkTV affiliate by market size that is not owned and operated by the Fox Television Stations subsidiary of Fox Corporation, which owns the programming service.
In announcing its fall schedule for the 2012–13 schedule, MyNetworkTV executives revealed that the programming service increased ratings over the previous year, and rated as the #6 most-watched network during the 2011–12 season with around 2.5 million viewers.
Though MyNetworkTV would earn some recognition from some as a sixth English-language broadcast television network at launch behind The CW, this tenuous status would eventually be lost as digital multicast networks such as MeTV gained wider distribution and more critical acclaim for its classic television schedule. Ion Television, which had struggled in the mid-2000s due to management struggles and programming issues after itself trying to become the sixth network as PAX TV, would also stabilize and eventually come to ratings parity with MyNetworkTV before passing it by the mid-2010s.