TBS (American TV channel)
TBS is an American basic cable television network operated by Superstation, Inc., a subsidiary of the Global Linear Networks division of Warner Bros. Discovery. It carries a variety of programming, with a focus on comedy, along with some sports events through TNT Sports, including Major League Baseball, Stanley Cup playoffs, and the NCAA men's basketball tournament. As of September 2018, TBS was received by approximately 90.391 million households that subscribe to a pay television service throughout the United States. By June 2023, this number has dropped to 71.3 million households. TBS' sister networks are TNT, TruTV, and Turner Classic Movies, with the first two channels also providing sports coverage through TNT Sports.
TBS was originally established on December 17, 1976, as the national feed of Turner's Atlanta, Georgia, independent television station, WTCG. The decision to begin offering WTCG via satellite transmission to cable and satellite subscribers throughout the United States expanded the small station into the first nationally distributed "superstation". With the assignment of WTBS as the broadcast station's callsign in 1979, the national feed became known as SuperStation WTBS, and later SuperStation TBS, TBS Superstation, or simply TBS. The channel broadcast a variety of programming during this era, including films, syndicated series, and sports.
WTBS maintained a nearly identical program schedule as the national feed, aside from local commercials, FCC-mandated EAS alerts, legal IDs, public affairs and educational programming that only aired on the local signal. By the early 2000s, TBS had begun to focus more intensively on comedic programming, including sitcoms and other series. On October 1, 2007, TBS was converted by Turner into a conventional basic cable network, at which time it began to be carried within the Atlanta market on area cable providers alongside its existing local carriage on satellite providers DirecTV and Dish Network. The former parent station in Atlanta was concurrently relaunched as WPCH-TV and reformatted as a traditional independent station with a separate schedule exclusively catering to the Atlanta market.
History
Programming
As of December 2023, TBS currently airs a mix of game shows and reality shows and reruns of live-action sitcoms that were originally broadcast on the major broadcast networks. The remaining original scripted first-run program currently seen on TBS is American Dad!, which has now stopped airing new episodes, but will continue to air reruns.The channel's daytime schedule is heavily dominated by reruns of current and former network comedies, with these shows also airing in the evening and sporadically during the overnight hours. As of 2023, these programs consist of Family Matters, Friends, The Big Bang Theory, Young Sheldon, and Modern Family. Most reruns shown on TBS are broadcast in a compressed format, with content sped up to accommodate additional time slots for advertising sales.
Turner Time
On June 29, 1981, TBS began to use a specialized program scheduling format known informally as "Turner Time." While program offerings on other broadcast and cable channels generally began at the top and bottom of each hour, TBS decided to begin airing programs—mainly original and off-network series, certain movies that followed blocks of series or maintained end times that did not fall within the half-hour, and sporting events—five minutes later, at :05 and :35 minutes past the hour.This scheduling concept resulted in programs seen on the channel being listed under their own time entry in TV Guide, during the period in which the magazine published its program listings in a time-prioritized "log" format, thus enabling the program listings to catch potential viewers' eyes more readily. along with its unique 17A channel bullet. This scheduling caused issue with local newspaper listing supplements, which mainly blended TBS shows into each half hour logline with an additional or disclaimer. The use of "Turner Time" also encouraged channel surfers who could not find anything interesting to watch at the top of the hour to still be able to watch a program on TBS without missing the first few minutes. Most importantly, since shows ended five minutes later than normal, from a strategic standpoint the off-time scheduling usually encouraged viewers to continue watching TBS rather than turning to another channel to watch a program that would already be airing in progress.
TBS reduced its use of the "Turner Time" scheduling in 1997 and switched entirely to conventional start times at the top and bottom of the hour by 2000; by this point, log listings were being phased out in favor of a grid-based layout, eliminating one of the strategic advantages of the "Turner Time" concept. However, the channel continues to use unconventional start times for its movie presentations—which vary in their running times depending on the film's length with commercials added to pad the timeslot. This often causes major disruptions in the start times of programming, and in some circumstances, conventional "top-and-bottom" start times would not be restored until early the next morning. While this is not exactly related to the "Turner Time" format, it may strategically serve the same purposes due to the off-time scheduling. The "Turner Time" format is similar to the scheduling applied by most premium channels and certain other movie-oriented services ; other broadcast and subscription television channels have utilized similar off-time scheduling formats.
News programming
One type of programming that TBS does not produce presently is news. Nevertheless, TBS—during its existence as a superstation—produced a 20-minute-long satirical newscast, 17 Update Early in the Morning, from 1976 to 1979; hosted by Bill Tush and Tina Seldin, the program was taped at the end of the workday and aired between movies around 3:00 a.m. or 4:00 a.m. Eastern Time. Its format was similar to the Saturday Night Live news satire segment Weekend Update and was, to a certain extent, a forerunner to The Daily Show. The timeslot and the satirical content of the program were a reaction to FCC rules in effect at the time that required stations to carry some news and information content—although TBS had to broadcast news, the Federal Communications Commission could not dictate when it aired or demand that it have a serious tone. 17 Update Early in the Morning was cancelled months before Ted Turner began his serious television news venture, CNN, amid a Congressional investigation concerning whether he was fulfilling FCC public service requirements. Standard, more serious news updates with the 17 Update anchors—at first simply known as WTCG Update, and later under the title NewsWatch—also ran during the day in-between programs. Upon its launch in January 1982, CNN2 assumed production responsibilities for the TBS NewsWatch segments, which began to be presented by that network's anchors and were split into several topic-specific segments.On July 21, 1980, CNN began producing an hour-long weeknight news program for WTBS, the TBS Evening News, which usually ran at 10:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Owing to WTBS's national superstation status, rather than focusing on local news as prime time newscasts that aired on other independent stations had been doing, the program—which was originally anchored weeknights by David Jensen, Kevin Christopher and meteorologist Dallas Raines—focused on national and international news headlines as well as national weather forecasts and sports headlines. The TBS Evening News was discontinued after four years as a result of low ratings due to the frequent programming delays, with the program ending after the June 29, 1984, broadcast; the program was relaunched on CNN as the CNN Evening News on July 2, 1984. In addition, on July 31, 1980, WTBS also carried a 24-hour simulcast of CNN in place of its regular programming schedule; the simulcast was intended to help encourage subscriber demand to force cable and C-band satellite providers to begin carrying the news channel.
When the channel launched on January 1, 1982, WTBS also carried simulcasts of CNN's sister channel CNN2. The channel's launch was simulcast nationwide on WTBS as well as CNN starting at 11:45 p.m. on December 31, 1981, as a preview for cable and C-band providers throughout the U.S. that had not yet reached agreements to carry CNN2. Thereafter, initially to encourage viewers to ask for the network full-time, the station also ran a half-hour simulcast of CNN2/Headline News each morning at 6:00 a.m. in the Atlanta market and at 5:30 a.m. ET in the rest of the country. Abbreviated editions of Headline News newscasts would also occasionally be run as filler between daytime movie presentations and before the start of live sports telecasts. The Headline News simulcasts as well as the TBS NewsWatch segments were eventually phased out locally and nationally in 1996 following the relaxation of the FCC's public affairs programming requirements.
On September 11, 2001, TBS carried CNN's coverage of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and The Pentagon. Until the early 2010s, during sports blackouts in some areas, TBS carried rolling news coverage from HLN in their place.
Movies
s have been a mainstay of TBS since its inception as a superstation, although the number of films featured on the channel's weekly schedule—which prior to that point, encompassed one to two films during the daytime and up to five at night on weekdays, and between eight and twelve features per day each weekend—has substantially declined since its 2007 conversion into a cable-exclusive channel.In the present day, most of the films seen on TBS are of the comedy genre; however, some drama and action films continue to air on the channel periodically; movies on the channel generally air during the overnight hours on a daily basis and during much of the day on weekends ; this is in stark contrast to its existence as a superstation, when movies also filled late morning, early afternoon and prime time slots on weekdays. TBS broadcasts movies from sister companies Warner Bros. Pictures and New Line Cinema, along with films produced by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Lionsgate, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Universal Pictures, and Paramount Pictures.
Between the late 1990s and the early 2010s, TBS had frequently aired its prime time movies interspersed with other content and commentary ; these wraparound segments later moved to weekend afternoon film presentations, before being dropped entirely by 2011. Since December 2004, TBS has broadcast a 24-hour marathon of A Christmas Story from Christmas Eve evening to Christmas Day evening; sister channel TNT has also run annual marathons of the 1983 film since 2014. Since November 2004, TBS has also run special prime time airings of The Wizard Of Oz in multiple showings around Thanksgiving each year. Once each weekend, TBS airs a movie in prime time with limited commercial interruption, branded in promo advertisements under the title "More Movies, Less Commercials".