Decades (TV network)

Decades

Type	Upcoming digital broadcast television network
Country	United States
Availability	Nationwide (available on OTA digital television) (to cover 33% of the U.S. at launch)[1]
Founded	October 21, 2014 (2014-10-21)
Slogan	Relive. Remember. Relate.
Owner	CBS Television Stations (CBS Corporation) Weigel Broadcasting
Key people	Peter Dunn (President, CBS Television Stations) Neal Sabin (Vice Chairman, Weigel Broadcasting)
Launch date	January 16, 2015 (2015-01-16) (soft launch) May 25, 2015 (2015-05-25) (official launch)[2]
Picture format	480i (SDTV; widescreen)
Affiliates	List of affiliates
Official website	www.decades.com

Decades is an upcoming American digital broadcast television network that is owned as a joint venture between the CBS Television Stations subsidiary of CBS Corporation and Weigel Broadcasting.^[2][3] The network, which will be primarily carried on the digital subchannels of television stations, will mainly air classic television sitcoms and drama series from the 1950s through the 1980s, along with historical news and documentary programming. Through its ownership by Weigel, Decades will be a sister network to Me-TV, which also focuses on classic television series from the 1950s to the 1980s and carries programming from Decades corporate cousin CBS Television Distribution. As the network has access to series remastered for high definition and widescreen presentation, the network is carried in 480i widescreen.

History

On October 21, 2014, CBS Corporation and Weigel Broadcasting announced the launch of Decades, with plans to launch the network in 2015; through its part-ownership by CBS Corporation, Decades announced that owned-and-operated stations of the CBS television network would serve as its initial charter affiliates.^[4][5]

The network is the first national multicasting venture by CBS Television Stations; the group did not carry subchannels on any of its television stations prior to 2013 and at the time of the Decades announcement, only three of its stations even maintained subchannels (CBS O&Os WCBS-TV in New York City and KYW-TV in Philadelphia carried rolling news channels under the "CBS Plus" brand on their respective secondary subchannels, while independent station KTXA in Dallas-Fort Worth carried Me-TV on its second subchannel). In addition, CBS Television Distribution had already maintained a content distribution agreement with Weigel Broadcasting's classic television network Me-TV, which sourced much of its programming from that library.

On January 13, 2015, Weigel Broadcasting confirmed that its Milwaukee CBS affiliate WDJT-TV would carry the network on its fourth digital subchannel^[6] (replacing the digital news service TouchVision). Decades is officially scheduled to launch on May 25, 2015.

Programming

Decades will rely primarily on programming from the extensive content library owned by CBS Television Distribution^[4] (which includes most of the Paramount Television library – which CBS had acquired as a result of absorbing Paramount's syndication unit in 2006 through its split from Viacom into a separate company – along with series from Desilu Productions, Bing Crosby Productions, Don Fedderson Productions, QM Productions, Spelling Television and Republic Pictures Television).

In order to stand out from other "retro-TV" multicast services (such as Me-TV and Antenna TV), the programs featured on each day's schedule will be centered around a daily theme, with interstitials filling breaks to highlight the theme. The themes will be topped off with Through the Decades, an hour-long program hosted and narrated by Bill Kurtis (who formerly served as an anchor for Chicago CBS O&O WBBM-TV and CBS News) that explores the events and news from a particular day or period in history, using archival footage that CBS owns via services such as CBS News and CBS Television Distribution's syndicated newsmagazine program Entertainment Tonight.^[3][4][7]

Affiliates

As of January 2015, Decades has pending affiliation agreements with television stations in 17 media markets encompassing 13 states, covering at least 33% of the United States.^[1] Weigel Broadcasting will handle the responsiblity of affiliate distribution to stations outside of the core CBS O&O group.^[3]

Decades is being offered to stations on a barter basis, in which the network and the local affiliate will share the responsibility of selling advertising inventory and split the allocated hourly commercial time; CBS affiliates and their owners hold the right of first refusal to carry the network in their local market, before it is offered to other network-affiliated stations.^[3][8] The network will also be made available on local cable television providers (most likely through their digital tiers, as is the case with most multicast networks) and other pay television services at the discretion of the affiliate's parent station.^[9]

CBS Television Stations initially planned to launch Decades on all 16 CBS owned-and-operated stations (including two that operate as satellite stations of Minneapolis O&O WCCO-TV); not all of the CBS Television Stations outlets will carry Decades, as CW owned-and-operated stations in markets where CBS Corporation does not own a CBS O&O (such as Tampa and Seattle) were excluded from its initial list of affiliates. In the Chicago market, where CBS Television Stations and Weigel Broadcasting each own television stations, the network will be carried on CBS O&O WBBM-TV, instead of one of Weigel's three stations in that market – WCIU-TV, WWME-CA and WMEU-CD (a similar situation exists in that market with Movies!, in which WPWR-TV – owned by Weigel's partner in that network, Fox Television Stations – carries the network in lieu of any of Weigel's outlets); Weigel-owned WDJT will carry the network in the Milwaukee market.^[6] However, Weigel has not yet confirmed whether any of the stations within its triopoly in South Bend, Indiana (WBND-LD, WCWW-LD and WMYS-LD) will carry Decades at launch.

As a result of the planned shutdown of the Live Well Network on January 18, 2015, Weigel/CBS began supplying marathon blocks of programming scheduled to air on Decades to affiliating stations and the core CBS O&O digital subchannels to provide them with a source of programming until the network formally launches (though with a three-hour breakaway on Saturday mornings, in order to carry programming sourced from Telco Productions to fulfill educational programming requirements enforced by the Federal Communications Commission).

On January 9, 2015, Decades reached its first affiliation agreement with a station outside of the core CBS group, through a deal with Media General for its Green Bay, Wisconsin ABC affiliate WBAY-TV (which was previously affiliated with CBS from 1953 to 1992). WBAY planned to carry the marathon blocks on its third subchannel as a replacement for the Live Well Network;^[2] however, on January 13, as a result of Disney–ABC Television Group's decision to temporarily continue Live Well Network's national operations, WBAY announced that its 2.3 subchannel would not switch to Decades until after LWN's new March 2015 shutdown date.^[10]

List of affiliates

See also

• Me-TV – sister network owned by Weigel Broadcasting, specializing in classic television series.
• Heroes & Icons – sister network owned by Weigel Broadcasting, specializing in classic television programming aimed at a male audience.
• Movies! – sister network owned by Weigel Broadcasting and Fox Television Stations, specializing in feature films from the 1920s to the 1980s.
• Retro Television Network – competing digital broadcast network owned by Luken Communications, specializing in classic television series from the 1950s to the 1970s, along with select recent series.
• Antenna TV – competing digital broadcast network owned by Tribune Broadcasting, specializing in classic television series from the 1950s to the 1990s.
• Cozi TV – competing digital broadcast network owned by NBCUniversal specializing in classic television series from the 1950s to the 1980s, along with programming from forerunner network NonStop.

References

External links

• Official website