Charge! will have access to more than 2,300 hours of MGM TV content and more than 2,000 movie titles. It is slotted to launch later in the first quarter.
NATPE 2017
MGM, Sinclair Unwrap New Action Diginet
Action shows and movies from MGM’s vast library will form the basis for a new multicast network called Charge! from MGM and Sinclair Broadcast Group, the two companies announced Tuesday, the second day of NATPE in Miami Beach.
Charge! will launch later in the first quarter of 2017. By the end of the second quarter of this year, the two companies said they expect Charge! to reach more than 50% of the country “by way of distribution deals outside of Sinclair’s footprint.”
The new 24-hour diginet will draw on more than 2,300 hours of MGM TV content and more than 2,000 movie titles. MGM and Sinclair are already partners in the sci-fi Diginet Comet.
Action shows on Charge! will include titles such as In the Heat of the Night and The Magnificent Seven, and movies such as Dances with Wolves, Platoon, Rocky and the James Bond franchise, the companies said.
“MGM owns one of the deepest libraries of premium action-themed content in the world,” said Chris Ripley, president-CEO of Sinclair. “This is another example of the synergies and audience value that can be created when you seamlessly combine content and distribution, and we are excited to broaden our relationship with MGM to another vertical.”
“Action is a genre that viewers never seems to tire of watching, and we intend on bringing our best titles to Charge!,” said John Bryan, MGM president, domestic television distribution. “Sinclair’s been an ideal partner, and the distribution we expect to have at launch is phenomenal.”
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Comments (4)
Andrea Rader says:
January 17, 2017 at 5:30 pm
Sinclair had better hope that ATSC 3.0 is approved as soon as possible; stations are running out of real estate to carry the flood of new diginets that have launched or are about to launch.
Wagner Pereira says:
January 17, 2017 at 11:22 pm
Not an issue.
Veronica Serrano Padilla says:
January 17, 2017 at 6:58 pm
Really enjoyed watching Movies! network a while back. Charge! sounds good too. Only negative was the annoying Direct Inquiry (DI) ads they play! Nothing more annoying than ambulance-chasing lawyers and “mesothelioma” ads…
Kristina Veltri says:
January 17, 2017 at 10:12 pm
The digital age; where you now have 27 venues to view “In the Heat of the Night”. I don’t think I’ve seen a show in syndication stretched so thin as that one.
Also, this is pretty much most obviously Sinclair unofficially announcing the walking papers for Katz’s Grit network once those contracts end; hopefully this has a much more diverse selection than that network’s.