TV Deprived In The Largest TV Market

To paraphrase a famous TV slogan from long ago, “I want my MeTV!”

I don’t go around reciting this tagline adapted from MTV, but it’s true that MeTV is the one multicast network I watch most often, of those that are available to me on my Time Warner Cable system here in New York City.

And that’s not saying much. A source recently threw out a number of the multicast programming networks — the so-called diginets — that he estimated are out there these days and, more or less off the top of his head, he said it was 57. Meanwhile, here in the nation’s largest city — in Manhattan, no less — I have, at my count, seven of them.

The fault may be Time Warner Cable’s. The website of some of the nation’s most widely distributed diginets reveal that they do have affiliation agreements in the New York DMA.

For example, Katz Broadcasting’s male-skewing network called Grit — reportedly covering 93% of the country — is available in the New York metro on Verizon Fios and RCN via affiliations with WJLP and Univision-owned WXTV. But Time Warner doesn’t carry it.

It’s the same with some of the other better known diginets. Time Warner in New York doesn’t have Katz’s female-focused Escape and comedy network Laff, Tribune’s This TV, or Weigel’s Heroes & Icons and Decades.

What do they have? Three TV “oldies” channels — Weigel’s MeTV, Tribune’s Antenna TV and NBCU’s Cozi TV; Weigel’s Movies!; Fremantle’s Buzzr (vintage game shows); Sony’s Get TV (movies and some classic TV shows); and the Live Well Network, which airs only on subchannels of ABC-owned stations, including WABC here.

All seven are available in a diginet ghetto located way up on the 1200 block of Time Warner’s Manhattan channel lineup — from MeTV at ch. 1239 to Get TV at ch. 1284 (there are blanks spaces between some of them, and some other channels scattered in there too).

The only reason I’m even aware that they are there is because they were once located much farther down in the lineup — somewhere in the 160s, if memory serves — and I liked MeTV so much that I made a point of making the effort to find out what Time Warner had done with it during one of its periodic and mysterious channel restructurings.

Needless to say, segregating the diginets in the proverbial nosebleed seats of the channel lineup might provide an indication of the importance Time Warner places on these channels in New York (and possibly elsewhere).

Generally speaking, Time Warner is doing them a disservice. For one thing, dozens of the leading cable channels actually get two slots (or more) on the TWC channel lineup here in the choicest part of the lineup, channels 1-200. And the diginets, by and large, earn greater consideration, based on their content, than a number of them.

Taken together, the three vintage-TV channels are especially valuable. They add up to a treasure trove of old TV shows stretching all the way back to 1949 on up to at least the 1990s — easily the most comprehensive collection of older TV shows ever to be made available on ad-supported television at any one time. And they have a sprightly way of presenting the shows and making them fun.

For example, MeTV promotes its vintage lawyer shows Perry Mason and Matlock with a promo spot that’s a spoof of contemporary lawyer commercials, in which the two are reimagined as partners in a two-man law firm, Mason & Matlock.

Another promo for both The Twilight Zone and Kojak on MeTV has Telly Savalas talking to himself on the phone in scenes intercut from a black-and-white episode of Twilight Zone, and a scene from Kojak in which he’s seen talking on the phone. The promos are great and so is a great deal of the other interstitial creative seen on MeTV and the others.

Speaking of interstitial treasures, Buzzr includes vintage commercials and sponsored bumpers in some of its old game shows, particularly the ones from the black-and-white era. It’s just fascinating.

Not so fascinating, and also a little bit creepy, is the Live Well Network’s continued reliance on the Canadian talk-and-lifestyle show Steven and Chris hosted by home-design mavens Steven Sabados and Chris Hyndman. The show ended production last summer following Hyndman’s sudden and mysterious death in Toronto and yet, Live Well Network continues to run the show as if he’s still alive. It’s just weird.

I am eager to someday see Laff, Escape, Grit, Decades, Heroes & Icons and any other diginet Time Warner gets around to adding to its cable offerings here. Message to Time Warner (soon to become known as Spectrum following the merger with Charter): These multicast networks are here to stay. Get used to it.

TVNewsCheck contributor Adam Buckman also writes the daily TV blog, “Small Screen, Big Picture,” for MediaPost.com. He can be reached at [email protected].

This is Part 3 of a four-part special report on multicasting. Parts 1 and 2 also appear today. Part 4, running Thursday morning, will focus on the technology of compression and channel sharing. You can read the other stories here.