A digital multicast television network , also known as a diginet or multichannel , is a type of national television service designed to be broadcast terrestrially as a supplementary service to other stations on their digital subchannels . Made possible by the conversion from analog to digital television broadcasting, which left room for additional services to be broadcast from an individual transmitter, regional and national broadcasters alike have introduced such channels since the 2000s. By March 2022, 54 such services existed in the United States.
50-573: Localish (formerly Live Well Network ) is a digital multicast television network owned by ABC Owned Television Stations , a division of Disney . Localish's 24/7 channel streams on Hulu Live and on linear TV, and its flagship shows including More in Common and Localish Legends air on ABC in major US cities, Localish.com, and Hulu. As of 2020, Localish reached an audience of over 17 million TV households and 21 million social followers across its ABC platforms. Disney launched its Localish media venture
100-574: A cable specialty channel partly owned by Disney through A&E Networks , would take on some of the Live Well Network programs with the network's contraction. Sweet Retreats was picked up starting on October 10, 2014, by FYI. Localish content was originally available via online (ABC.com and stations' website, ABC apps), its over-the-top platforms (Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV), social media (Facebook Watch, Twitter, YouTube Instagram) and syndicated by Oath and Apple News. The network broadcasts in
150-470: A deal to manage KMCI under a local marketing agreement . That August, KMCI then dropped much of its home shopping programming and rebranded as "38 Family Greats", with a family-oriented general entertainment format from 6 a.m. to midnight, with HSN programming being relegated to the overnight hours. The new KMCI lineup included an inventory of programs that KSHB owned but had not had time to air after it switched to NBC in 1994. Exercising an option from
200-467: A given episode would not air more than twice in a day. By July 2011, the network was scheduling 18 hours of original programming with 1 hour set aside for local programming. In September 2011, 3 hours of children's E/I shows were added. In February 2014, WPVI-TV Philadelphia and LWN were seeking participants for a pilot episode of Pop the Question , a reality series featuring wedding proposals. FYI ,
250-540: A lesser budget, national multicast services often rely on archive and imported content and are tailored to allow advertisers to reach specific demographics. Most of their revenue is derived from national advertising. The first multichannel broadcast in Australia was ABC Kids , which broadcast from 2001 to 2003; in the succeeding years, the country's commercial broadcasters also launched secondary services to compete against DVDs and online piracy. However, their ability to do so
300-714: A lower- bandwidth form of 720p HD format in order to preserve bandwidth for the main HD station signal and additional 480i digital subchannels. Cable carriage is also featured in the ABC O&;O markets (e.g., Xfinity in Chicago , Fresno , Houston , Philadelphia and San Francisco ; Spectrum in Los Angeles and the Research Triangle ; Altice USA in New York City ), either as
350-764: A national network by the Federal Telecommunications Institute in December 2017, making it mandatory for satellite TV providers to add it to their lineups. For most of the 2000s, digital multicasting in the United States remained less used. One of the earliest successful uses of subchannels was to broadcast automated weather information. The first such subchannel was the 69 News Weather Channel, launched in February 2001 by WFMZ-TV in Allentown, Pennsylvania , with
400-490: A network of transmitters serving most major U.S. markets, launched kids channel Qubo and health and wellness service Ion Life . Weigel launched MeTV , which had formerly only been a local service in Chicago and Milwaukee, on a national basis in December 2010; four years later, it was the most widely distributed multicast network. It remains the most-watched; in 2021, it had an average prime time audience of 752,000, nearly double
450-531: Is located at the Blue River Greenway in the city's Hillcrest section. Despite Lawrence being KMCI-TV's city of license , the station maintains no physical presence there. The station first signed on the air on February 1, 1988. Founded by Miller Broadcasting, it originally served as an affiliate of the Home Shopping Network (HSN). In March 1996, KSHB owner Scripps Howard Broadcasting reached
500-540: The .2 Network , was announced and signed up affiliates but never launched amid the Great Recession . These subchannels offered stations the ability to expand their advertising inventory and offer lower prices on the secondary services. In addition to services signing up national affiliates, some station groups were beginning to experiment around this time. CBS explored, but never launched, a complementary secondary channel, dubbed "CBS 2". In 2007, Ion Media , which owned
550-597: The COVID-19 pandemic and school closures in 2020, Scripps partnered with Kansas City Public Schools to air a daily program, KCPS Homeroom , produced by the school district for its students on KMCI. Currently, KMCI simulcasts an hour of the Border Patrol morning show on sports radio station WHB (810 AM). Along with KSHB-TV, it is an official station of the Kansas City Chiefs . Shortly after becoming 38 The Spot,
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#1732844731745600-495: The E. W. Scripps Company acquired Katz Broadcasting for $ 302 million. The purchase was notable for adding four diginets: the women-focused Escape (now Ion Mystery ), the men-targeted Grit , Bounce TV to serve the Black market, and the comedy channel Laff . Scripps saw an opportunity to reduce the proportion of advertising on these services that was direct response and toward more expensive general-market advertising. The deal
650-448: The 1996 pact with Miller, Scripps bought KMCI outright for $ 14.6 million in 2000, forming a legal duopoly with KSHB. In 2002, KMCI dropped the "Family Greats" branding and simply branded by its channel number. In July 2003, coinciding with the move of its transmitter site from Lawrence toward Kansas City, the station officially became known as "38 the Spot". KMCI features hosts that promote
700-466: The Comet subchannel. In the late 2010s and early 2020s, diginets such as NBC-owned Cozi TV began making national distribution deals with satellite, paid streaming, and ad-supported streaming providers that previously had not carried them, further increasing their reach. Further, the use of more efficient generations of MPEG-2 encoders by TV stations allowed for the transmission of additional subchannels from
750-506: The Localish brand featuring several programs already featured on the Localish website. Prior to launching Localish, ABC Owned Television Stations (ABCOTS) began development of a potential subchannel network in 2007. To appeal to ABC affiliates not owned and operated by the network, it was decided not to use ABC branding in any way. Live Well Network was launched on April 27, 2009, in high definition on ABC's owned-and-operated stations as part of
800-501: The Spot. The station's ATSC 1.0 channels are carried on the multiplexed signals of other Kansas City television stations: Live Well Network was originally intended to be carried on KSHB digital subchannel 41.3, but was added to KMCI 38.2 on September 1, 2011, instead to even out the bandwidth between both stations. KMCI replaced the Live Well Network with Bounce TV on digital subchannel 38.2 on October 21, 2013. KMCI also added Escape to 38.3 and Grit on 38.4 on April 15, 2015. Escape
850-438: The United States's more than 200 television markets. This market favored new services launched by the station groups. The business was also maturing significantly due to the rise of cord cutting , enabling some services to make a profit off advertising. Nielsen's list of top 100 television channels in 2016 did not contain any diginets; in 2018, eight made the list. This led to increased mergers and acquisitions activity. In 2017,
900-418: The assistance of AccuWeather . In 2004, NBC and its affiliates launched NBC Weather Plus , which was available in its peak from more than 80 stations nationally. Another early subchannel user was The Tube Music Network , which broadcast music videos from 2005 to 2007 before closing for financial reasons. 2008 was a critical year in the shift toward programmed digital multicast services. NBC Weather Plus
950-537: The audience: in 2018, 7mate led the group with an audience share of 4.1 percent among metropolitan audiences. However, after the Australian Communications and Media Authority permitted the commercial broadcasters to move required children's programming and national drama commitments to their multichannels, ratings and visibility fell precipitously; by 2013, the ABC had more viewers for its children's channels than
1000-507: The bandwidth for ATSC M/H mobile DTV , better known by the brand name Dyle (the subchannel was later re-launched to allow the launch of a replacement MyNetworkTV affiliate for the St. Louis area). The Phoenix DMA is the largest TV market that did not have a Live Well Network affiliate, since Scripps-owned KNXV-TV (an ABC affiliate) switched to Antenna TV in January 2014, citing viewer demand for
1050-441: The classic TV network as the reason for dropping Live Well. On June 9, 2014, network vice president Peggy Allen and ABC Owned Television Stations president Rebecca Campbell jointly announced to Live Well Network's staff that they planned to shut down the network in January 2015. Campbell and Allen stated that despite the success of the network, the division wanted to prioritize "local content" and its "core local news brands". Some of
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#17328447317451100-558: The commercial broadcasters combined. The commercial broadcasters also became more reliant on news, sport, and reality competitions on their main channels. Each of the five major broadcasters offers its own suite of multichannels: In 2017, TV Azteca launched a+ (now A Más ), initially conceived as a hybrid regional-national service to be carried on its existing Azteca 7 transmitters in most of Mexico. The new channel—as well as news channel adn40 , aired on Azteca Uno transmitters, achieved sufficient national coverage to be classified
1150-528: The end of the network and announcements of replacement programming to come, or carrying alternate station programming. On October 31, 2015, the network lost its final affiliate station outside of the ABC O&O stations, Sinclair Broadcast Group 's WJLA-DT3 in Washington, DC , replacing it with the company's newest subchannel network Comet , effectively making it only available on the ABC-owned stations. Many of
1200-506: The former Young stations now owned by Media General continued to run the network, with no mention of any new alternate programming for those subchannels. On May 29, 2015, Comcast was informed that Media General was dropping Live Well from their stations beginning May 30, 2015. Subsequently, the signal was pulled off the Media General stations at the close of business on May 29, with those stations either carrying still text cards apologizing for
1250-501: The full HD feed or a 480i standard definition version. As of December 2017, WLS-TV only carries a standard definition version of the network due to a channel sharing agreement with UniMas station WXFT-DT which requires a high definition broadcast of that station. Affiliates were given 1 hour of programming time by July 2011, more than 5 minutes of advertising time per hour and responsibility for gaining cable carriage. Digital multicast television network Typically run on
1300-523: The host station, as Scripps does with the Ion transmitters, allows for the reduction of costs by eliminating such payments in some markets. In some cases, switching stations can also lead to the service gaining carriage on cable in its broadcast area. For instance, in 2022, Sinclair Broadcast Group moved Comet , one of its three diginets, from WSBK-TV to WFXT in the Boston area, which also led to cable carriage for
1350-496: The in-house newscast in that timeslot on WDAF-TV. The program was canceled in 2003, one week after KMCI's rebranding as "38 The Spot"; by this point, the newscast was called 38 News Now and had completely differentiated itself from KSHB's newscasts, using different presentation and a smaller set. On August 1, 2011, KMCI began airing a rebroadcast of KSHB's 11 a.m. newscast at noon on weekdays. In addition to airing rebroadcasts of local news programming from KSHB-TV, KMCI will take on
1400-573: The launch of Create by American Public Television in January 2006. In 2016, PBS began providing a 24-hour PBS Kids service to member stations. KMCI-TV KMCI-TV (channel 38) is an independent television station licensed to Lawrence, Kansas , United States, serving the Kansas City metropolitan area . It is owned by the E. W. Scripps Company alongside NBC affiliate KSHB-TV (channel 41). The two stations share studios on Oak Street in Kansas City, Missouri ; KMCI-TV's transmitter
1450-665: The network to drop the "HD" from its branding to become simply "Live Well Network". Two LWN owned and operated stations, WJRT and WTVG , were sold to Lilly Broadcasting closing on April 1, 2011. On May 26, 2011, it was announced that a deal has been reached to air the network on nine Scripps -owned stations (several, but not all of them, are ABC affiliates). In August 2011, the network picked up CBC Television 's Steven and Chris for broadcast starting that fall. On January 9, 2012, Citadel Communications announced that it would be adding Live Well to all five of its major network-affiliated stations (four of them ABC affiliates), bringing
1500-702: The network would be extended for two further months from their previous close date of January 16, 2015 with a revised program schedule to allow their remaining affiliates additional time to find subchannel programming. Two days later, ABCOTS and the E. W. Scripps Company announced a pickup of Katz Broadcasting's new subchannel Laff , including the DT3 subchannels of the ABC O&O stations, as of April 15, 2015; within that announcement, ABCOTS stated that Live Well Network would continue on their eight stations on their DT2 subchannels in HD, but no longer be distributed outside of ABC O&O stations. As of April 15, 2015, WBAY and all of
1550-456: The network's reach to around 55% U.S. television households. Young Broadcasting announced the addition of most of their stations to the network as of the end of January 2012; carriage agreements were maintained when Young was purchased by Media General in November 2013. In 2012, many ABC affiliates switching to the Live Well Network dropped Retro Television Network . A 1-hour two-week LWN block
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1600-446: The network's shows might move over to the fyi cable network, a network ABC holds a half-interest in with Hearst Corporation via the A&;E Networks joint venture . Many of the shows from ABC's stations are expected to end production. On January 13, 2015, via an announcement by Green Bay affiliate WBAY-TV (and later confirmed by Chicago media writer Robert Feder ), ABC announced that
1650-426: The network's shows were produced by the local ABC Owned Television Stations . Initially, the network only had three hours of original programming that looped throughout the day, all sourced from ABC stations. The network expanded to six hours of original programming on January 11, 2011, when six more half-hour shows were added. This allowed the programming block to loop three times daily; with rotating episodes to ensure
1700-495: The next-highest diginet and greater than cable channels such as Bravo , Lifetime , and A&E . As digital multicast services began to proliferate and gain viewers in the 2010s, they also became more specialized in an attempt to stand out and reach potential viewers. However, those that were not owned by large station groups and thus could not count on a backbone of significant national coverage struggled to negotiate distribution, having to do so with individual stations in each of
1750-717: The official date on which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal moved from its pre-transition UHF channel 36 to channel 41 (the former analog-era assignment and current virtual channel of sister station KSHB-TV) for post-transition operations. As part of the FCC's repack, KMCI-TV moved to channel 25 on February 11, 2019. On August 24, 2021, at 10 a.m., KMCI-TV turned off its ATSC 1.0 signal and activated its ATSC 3.0 transmitter on UHF 25. The station's ATSC 1.0 subchannels were moved to other broadcasters for simulcasting, while KMCI became
1800-408: The responsibility of preempting regular programming and running NBC network shows in the event of extended breaking news or severe weather coverage on KSHB. On April 6, 2015, KMCI began airing a 3rd hour of KSHB 41 News Today from 7 to 8 a.m., after KSHB begins airing NBC's Today show. On July 5, 2022, KMCI began airing an original local newscast at noon, branded as KSHB 41 News at Noon on 38
1850-420: The same transmitter; a representative for Harmonic, a seller of encoders, noted that stations were seeing a return on their investment within less than a year from the additional revenue stream opened up by adding another diginet. Public television stations in the United States were also comparatively early adopters of multicasting, and public TV content distributors joined the game in the mid-2000s, such as with
1900-581: The season (some of which will air on KSHB-TV) and pre-game and post-game shows beginning with the 2014 season . The deal ran through 2016; beginning in 2017, all Sporting KC matches moved to Fox Sports Kansas City . For the 2022 season, Sporting KC returned to KMCI. In 2018, KMCI and the University of Kansas struck a deal where KMCI would broadcast one early-season football game and several early-season Kansas Jayhawks men's basketball games, women's basketball home games, and other select sporting events from
1950-525: The start of 2014, but it has since been replaced by a standard-definition simulcast of a sister station in the market). KMCI-TV in Kansas City, Missouri , removed the network in favor of Bounce TV in October 2013, while Salt Lake City, Utah 's KSL-TV would add Cozi TV at LWN's expense in January 2014. On February 17, 2014, KMOV in St. Louis dropped the network, as new owner Meredith Corporation plans on using
2000-473: The station launched a sports talk show, 38 Sports Spot , which ran from 2003 to 2008. For much of that time period, the station also had rights to a package of Kansas City Royals baseball games. On November 6, 2013, KSHB-TV/KMCI-TV announced a deal with Sporting Kansas City to broadcast up to 26 regular season games from the Major League Soccer club on KMCI, as well as several specials throughout
2050-643: The station's programming, as well as local events during commercial breaks. Taunia Hottman was the first spokesperson for KMCI as "38 the Spot". Meredith Hoenes (who became a traffic reporter for KSHB-TV around this time) replaced Hottman after she left in 2004 to join KUSA in Denver . Holly Starr took over after Hoenes left in February 2008 to become a weekday anchor/reporter for WDAF-TV; Starr remained with KMCI as its program host until 2011, replaced by Crystle Lampitt in 2012. Lauren Scott took over as host starting in 2020. During
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2100-518: The stations' subchannels. Initially, the network only had three hours of original programming that are looped throughout the day which was all sourced from ABC stations. In September 2010, Belo became the first non-ABC group to sign on with the network, adding it to their stations on November 8, 2010. Not all of the Belo-owned stations originally aired the network in widescreen (unlike the ABC group), which led
2150-413: The university. The move was part of expanded distribution of the university's Tier 3 athletic events. The Kansas City Chiefs announced in 2019 that KMCI and KSHB would replace KCTV as the team's official broadcast partners, allowing access to team programming, including preseason contests, plus marketing opportunities. In 2000, KSHB-TV began producing a half-hour 9 p.m. newscast on KMCI to compete with
2200-465: The week of September 20, 2018. Localish's lineup of TV and digital shows highlight a range of small businesses, local restaurants, and unique neighborhoods across America. With over 70% of its audience under the age of 45, the Localish network reaches millennials via locally sourced video stories released on ABC's digital, social and TV platforms. The first series, More in Common , had already appeared via Facebook Watch on July 21, 2018. The station group
2250-664: Was broadcast on Soapnet weeknights from 11 PM to 12 AM (ET/PT) starting on July 30, 2012, through Friday, August 10, 2012. The network lost affiliates in Memphis and Jackson, Tennessee in March 2013 as a result of the sale of Newport Television 's stations to Nexstar Broadcasting (Nexstar generally does not carry subchannel networks in any form; WHBF-TV in Rock Island, Illinois , acquired by Nexstar in September 2013, eventually dropped LWN at
2300-485: Was considering the possibility of an OTT channel for the brand. A More in Common compilation special was broadcast on all ABC station's primary channels on November 4, 2018 with WPVI-TV, Philadelphia also on November 3 then on their LiveWell Network subchannel (.2) from November 4 through 11, 2018. On January 21, 2020, ABC Owned Television Stations announced that the network would be rebranded as Localish on February 17, 2020. The rebranded network serves as an expansion of
2350-669: Was hampered at first by a ban on adding channels, with a focus on such services as datacasting and high-definition. It was not until 2009 that commercial broadcasters were allowed to add multichannels; in that year, the three major networks all did so, bringing the number of channels they offered from three to eleven. The original commercial multichannels were generalist in nature, which made it difficult for advertisers to target specific demographics and therefore made them less lucrative. The shift to specifically targeted services and their reliance on existing programming has allowed these channels to survive despite drawing comparatively low shares of
2400-528: Was rebranded as Ion Mystery on digital subchannel 38.3 on September 30, 2019. Grit was replaced with Court TV on digital subchannel 38.4 by the end of January 2020, only for that to be replaced by HSN in March 2021. Court TV returned to KMCI-DT3 in July 2023, with Ion Mystery moving to KPXE-DT2. In addition, WDAF-DT3 also aired Court TV until October 2023 when it was replaced with Rewind TV . KMCI-TV shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 38, on June 12, 2009,
2450-663: Was seen as a validation of the diginet business. Scripps then acquired most of the Ion Media transmitter network and affiliated with the remainder in 2021, using the transmitters to broadcast a growing array of targeted, thematic diginets. Tegna , like Scripps an owner of full-service broadcast stations, acquired the Justice Network (now True Crime Network ) and Quest for $ 91 million in 2019. Multicast services typically pay local stations to affiliate, with higher payments going to stations with lower major channel numbers; owning
2500-515: Was shut down at the end of 2008 in a decision taken by the network's affiliates. Several new channels offering classic TV programming were launching or growing at the time. These included the Retro Television Network (RTN), started in 2005 by Equity Media Holdings as the first such service, and This TV , a movie service run as a joint venture between Weigel Broadcasting and film studio MGM . Another planned subchannel of this type,
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