The CW Plus

The CW Plus
Launched	September 18, 2006 (2006-09-18)
Network	The CW
Owned by	The CW Network, LLC[1] (Time Warner (50%)/ CBS Corporation (50%))
Picture format	480i (SDTV) 1080i or 720p (HDTV) (resolution varies depending on the affiliate)
Slogan	TV Now
Country	United States
Language	English
Broadcast area	National (available only in smaller television markets)
Affiliates	(see section)
Headquarters	Los Angeles, California
Replaced	The WB 100+ Station Group (1998–2006)
Website	www.cwtv.com
Availability
Terrestrial
Available on digital subchannels and LPTV stations in some markets	Check local listings for channel
Satellite
OTA affiliates available on DirecTV and Dish Network in some markets	Check local listings for channel
Cable
Available on some cable systems	Consult your local cable provider or program listings source for channel availability of a CW Plus cable-only affiliate

The CW Plus is a national feed of The CW Television Network that is primarily carried on digital subchannels and non-broadcast cable television outlets; the service is intended for areas ranked below the top 99 television markets in the United States. In addition to carrying CW network programming, The CW Plus runs syndicated and brokered programs outside of network programming time periods. As of March 2015, The CW Plus has 100 affiliates across the United States (covering an estimated national audience reach of 59,718,119 U.S. residents, or 19.11% of all households).^[2]

Background

Logo for KDLH-DT2 in Duluth, Minnesota. Similar logos are used by most CW Plus stations as well as some conventional CW affiliates.

One of the predecessors of The CW, The WB Television Network had maintained a similar group of cable-only affiliate stations in small- and medium-sized markets called The WB 100+ Station Group, which began operations on September 21, 1998 and continued to operate until The WB ended operations on September 17, 2006. While there was no guarantee that existing affiliates of The WB 100+ would automatically join The CW Plus, most of them (particularly cable-only affiliates) ultimately did join the new service, and programming transitioned seamlessly from The WB 100+ to The CW Plus.

Since The WB 100+ was created before digital television was easily available in the United States, most WB 100+ stations were only available on cable, with a few main channel affiliations on over-the-air broadcast stations. With its launch, The CW (along with MyNetworkTV) became among the first conventional broadcast networks in the U.S. to fully utilize digital multicasting to gain over-the-air coverage in markets that did not have enough television stations to maintain a traditional main channel affiliation (Fox, The WB and fellow CW predecessor UPN had a few subchannel-only affiliates shortly before The CW launched, however over-the-air distribution in this manner was very limited). In several markets served by a CW Plus station, the current affiliate may not be the same as the prior WB 100+ affiliate, some CW Plus affiliates are carried on a digital subchannel of a local broadcast station, whereas the prior affiliate of The WB 100+ was cable-exclusive; certain cable-only affiliates of The WB 100+ have been replaced completely by either a subchannel or main channel over-the-air affiliation when The CW launched, or joined The CW Plus only for a broadcast station that managed or acquired it to begin carrying it over-the-air at some point after its launch.

CW Plus stations are generally managed and promoted by a local affiliate of a larger over-the-air television station, which may produce some local programming, such as morning and/or primetime newscasts, telecasts of local sports events or syndicated national sports broadcasts from either ESPN Regional Television, the ACC Network or the American Sports Network; some affiliates, however, are operated by a local cable provider.

CW Plus affiliates each have their own local branding, which is usually a combination of the "The CW" name with either the parent station/cable franchise's city of license or a regional descriptor of the area (such as "Northland" for Duluth and northeastern Minnesota, seen to the above left). Unlike its predecessor, The WB 100+ Station Group, The CW Plus does not use call signs used solely for branding and/or supplementary identification purposes, in a widespread fashion; while many cable-only WB 100+-turned-CW Plus affiliates have stopped using fictional call signs (which were not assigned by the Federal Communications Commission, as the agency does not issue licenses to cable channels), a few have continued to use the ones they had used while part of The WB 100+ Station Group, and mainly continue to do so merely for identification purposes for local Nielsen diary-tabulated ratings.

Since the conversion of the CW Plus feeds in 2012 to a high definition schedule, many of The CW Plus's stations have converted to carrying the high definition feed on an over-the-air signal, though it is usually transmitted in 720p rather than the network's 1080i master resolution due to technical considerations for their parent station's main network feed (except in the few markets where a CW Plus broadcast affiliate does not also have an affiliation with a major broadcast network) on their primary channel. Prior to that, the parent stations also carried the main CW signal in HD mixed with the CW Plus schedule to provide high definition programming from the network to local cable and satellite providers.

Programming

Like the predecessor WB 100+ Station Group, The CW Plus utilizes a dual programming model differing from CW-affiliated stations in large and medium-sized markets. Dayparts on CW Plus affiliates with no CW programming are programmed by the network – primarily featuring programs airing in syndication, with syndicated film packages filling select weekend timeslots, and paid programming filling overnight and some early afternoon timeslots; this relieves the local affiliate's operator from the duty of having to acquire syndicated programming to fill timeslots outside of The CW's network schedule. However, some over-the-air CW Plus affiliates may fill paid programming time with content from another subchannel network such as Me-TV, This TV or Antenna TV, particularly if the network whose content is sourced does not have an existing full-time affiliate in the market. The operator of the CW Plus affiliate handles local advertising sales for the station, cable-only outlet or subchannel, which incorporates local commercial inserts during CW network and syndicated programming supplied by the service.

Prior to the debut of the Litton Entertainment-produced One Magnificent Morning block on the network in October 2014, the remaining two hours of programming that fulfill FCC educational programming guidelines which were not covered by The CW's predecessor children's program blocks – Kids' WB, The CW4Kids/Toonzai and Vortexx – was also taken care of by The CW Plus. However even with the debut of One Magnificent Morning, The CW Plus continues to carry syndicated E/I programs on early Saturday afternoons immediately after the conclusion of the block, resulting in a net surplus of seven hours of educational programming each week (five provided by The CW, and two by The CW Plus) that far exceeds the three hours required at minimum by the Children's Television Act.

Syndicated programs broadcast on The CW Plus during non-network programming hours as of September 2014 include Seinfeld, The Steve Wilkos Show, Community, Are We There Yet?, The King of Queens, Rules of Engagement, Cougar Town, The Better Show, Cops Reloaded, Raising Hope, Murdoch Mysteries and King of the Hill. Some syndicated programming provided by The CW Plus is substituted by the local affiliate's parent station or cable franchise operator with alternate shows if the rights to that program are held by another station in their market. Many subchannel affiliates also carry morning and/or primetime newscasts produced by a co-managed station or through a news share agreement with another station in the same market. Though The CW Television Network does not carry any national news programming of its own, The CW Plus did carry The Daily Buzz, a syndicated morning news and talk program that had originally aired on its predecessor The WB 100+ beginning in September 2002 and remained on The CW Plus until September 2014.

The CW Plus operates two separate feeds for the Eastern and Pacific Time Zones, whose master schedules are designed to align the start time of The CW's primetime programming with the network's broadcast affiliate feed; as such, The CW Daytime and One Magnificent Morning blocks (which are designed to be tape-delayed) are aired an hour early – compared to their preferred scheduling – on affiliates in the Central, Mountain and Alaska time zones.

List of The CW Plus affiliates

• ¹ These stations carry The CW Plus on a digital subchannel. In some of these cases, the channel listed is the actual digital channel (e.g. "13", not a virtual channel such as "27.2", for WKYT).
• ² Cable channel already operational, but not yet broadcasting via a digital subchannel. See also note 1.
• ³ Local affiliate formerly operated as a cable-only channel.
• ⁴ KCWE is available over-the-air in the St. Joseph market, as are the other Kansas City locals; KBJO-LD formerly operated as cable-only "WBJO" from its 1998 sign-on as part of The WB 100+ Station Group until News-Press & Gazette Company took over operational and advertising control of the channel and added it to KNPN's third digital subchannel in June 2012; it was then spun off into a separately licensed station owned by News-Press & Gazette in April 2014.

Former affiliates

See also

• The WB 100+ Station Group – predecessor of The CW Plus; most of the remaining cable-only channels and some over-the-air stations that are outlets of The CW Plus formerly served as affiliates of The WB 100+ Station Group
• CW-W – a standard definition-only feed of XETV-TDT/Tijuana for markets without a CW affiliate carried on DirecTV
• CW-E – a standard definition-only feed of WDCW/Washington, D.C. for markets without a CW affiliate carried on DirecTV
• WGN America – a general entertainment cable and satellite network in the United States, which originally served as the national superstation feed of Chicago CW affiliate WGN-TV; it served as a de facto affiliate of CW predecessor The WB for U.S. markets without an over-the-air affiliate from January 1995 to October 1999
• Foxnet – a similar cable-only network for markets without a Fox affiliate, that operated from 1991 to 2006
• CTV Two Alberta – a similar cable-only affiliate of CTV Two in the Canadian province of Alberta; formerly Access
• CTV Two Atlantic – a similar cable-only affiliate of CTV Two in Atlantic Canada; formerly the Atlantic Satellite Network (ASN) and A Atlantic
• City Saskatchewan – a similar cable-only affiliate of City in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan

References

External links

• CWTV.com – Official website for The CW
• CWTVLink.com (requires log-in information)