Country Network Adds Four Young Stations

Like any other network, particularly the advertiser-supported kind, The Country Network wants to be in every TV home in the country.

The upstart multicast channel has taken another modest step toward that ultimate goal and to its more immediate target of reaching between 25% and 30% of homes early next year by signing four Young Broadcasting stations as affiliates.

The four: KRON San Francisco; WRIC Richmond, Va.; WATE Knoxville, Tenn.; and WLNS Lansing, Mich. Together, they reach 3.4% of TV homes.

KRON, WRIC and WATE are expected to begin broadcasting the network on a subchannel by the end of the year. WLNS will join in early next year.

TCN formally launched last month with the help of the Sinclair Broadcast Group, which wants to carry the network in 34 or its 35 markets, according to Tony Cassara, a consultant who is helping the network build the affiliate lineup.

The network is live on 22 Sinclair stations and is expected to appear soon on six more. Cassara says Sinclair will add the network in the six additional markets if it can get cable carriage for them there.

Even if the last six never make it, the 28 Sinclair stations give the network a solid foundation of 17% of TV homes and a good shot at meeting the first-quarter 2010 goal of 25%-30%, Cassara says.

TCN is owned by Warren Hansen and Chad Brock, a one-time wrestler and active country singer whose single “Yes!” went to No. 1 on the country music charts in 2000.

According to Cassara, Hansen and Brock decided to move ahead with TCN as a broadcast multicast channel after successfully testing it on the main channel of a former MNT affiliate in Montgomery-Salem, Ala., WIYC. That station is still affiliated with the network.

In addition to Cassara’s Clocktower Partners, CLG Partners (formerly CobbCorp) is advising the network and helping with the affiliate search.

Cassara volunteers that he had an inside track on the Young deal, pointing out that he has a seat on the board of Young, which is trying to reestablish itself as a private company after falling into backruptcy as a public company.

Cassara says he believes there is an opening in TV for a network that focuses on country music, noting that county is still the nation’s No. 1 radio format. “This is a narrowcast network and that’s the way the world is going.”

The two cable networks founded on country music, Viacom’s Country Music Television and Scripps Networks’ Great American Country, have been straying away from music and into more conventional programming — movies and series.

“We just figured we could make a go of it if we could get into this space and be the brand,” he said. “We want to be country music 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”

Based on Music Row in Nashville, Cassara says the TCN will stay focused on the music. Although it hopes eventually to introduced short segments with country music artists, they will be used to set up the music.

TCN takes an unusual approach to the distribution of its programming. Affiliates are equipped with a server packed with some 300 music videos other programming elements and ads and connected via the Web to the network operations center in Atlanta, a facility owned and operated by KIT Digital, a publicly traded company (NASDAQ: KITD) based in Prague.

Each week, only about 10% of the programming and traffic instructions are replaced or upgraded, limiting the amount of bandwidth needed to keep the network operating.

The server plays out the programming and advertising according to instructions received from the NOC.

The system contains a “fail-safe mechanism,” says Cassara. If for whatever reason the local server loses contract with the hub, it is still capable of playing out two or three days of programming on its own, he says. “They can just keep going.”

According to Cassara, TCN is offering prospective affiliates inventory and revenue splits. Affiliates may retain five of the 10 minutes of ad time each hour and sell it locally or they may simply allow TCN to sell all the time on the national level and take a 30% cut.

The all-national option is designed to keep things simple for affiliates. “The station doesn’t have to do anything but say, yes.”

Cassara says that finding room on TV stations for multicast channels is competitive, but notes that there are multiple stations in each market and most stations have two or three multicast slots.

“There is room for all of us.”