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MyNetworkTV (sometimes written My Network TV, and unofficially abbreviated "MyNet," "MyTV," "MNT," or "MNTV") is a television network in the United States, owned by News Corporation, which began operations on September 5, 2006. Its initial affiliate lineup covers about 96 percent of the country;* most are former WB and UPN affiliates. Its primetime schedule consists of English-language "telenovelas", translated from Spanish and abridged for U.S. audiences. The debut schedule consists of two serials, Desire and Fashion House. Coming in December are Watch Over Me and Art of Betrayal, followed by A Dangerous Love and Rules of Deception in March. New episodes air from Monday to Friday, with clip shows airing on weekends that recap the shows' storylines. The network's initial ratings have been modest. National advertising spots sell for a bargain rate: between $20,000 and $35,000 for a 30-second spot.* Each episode is said to cost an average of $200,000.*, about one-tenth the cost of traditional prime-time shows.* MyNetworkTV is a sister network to the Fox network, but operates seperately. Roger Ailes oversees the network as chairman of the Fox Television Stations Group (FTSG). Fox executives Jack Abernethy, Dennis Swanson, and Bob Cook supervise its day-to-day operations.
Origins See also: 2006 United States broadcast TV realignment MyNetworkTV arose from the announcement of new The CW Television Network, which essentially merges The WB and UPN networks. Fox Television Stations Group owned several UPN affiliates, including WWOR in Secaucus, New Jersey (serving much of metropolitan New York City); KCOP in Los Angeles, California; and WPWR-TV in Chicago, Illinois, the three biggest stations in the network. Fox had bought most of them after acquiring most of the television holdings of Chris-Craft Industries, which founded UPN with Paramount Pictures (which was acquired by Viacom around the time of UPN's founding). Despite concerns about UPN's future at the time Fox purchased these three stations, UPN renewed its affiliation deals with the stations in 2003 for three seasons. That agreement's, and some others', pending expiration in 2006 gave UPN parent CBS Corporation and The WB parent Warner Bros. the rare opportunity to merge their respective struggling networks. The CW includes no Fox-owned stations; the New York, Los Angeles, Washington, DC, and Chicago affiliations all went to stations owned by The WB's co-owner, Tribune Broadcasting. In response to the announcement, Fox promptly scrubbed all UPN references from its UPN affiliates' logos and promotions and stopped promoting UPN programs. Media reports speculated that the Fox-owned UPN affiliates would all revert to being independent stations, or else form another network by uniting with the other left-out UPN and The WB affiliates. Fox parent News Corp chose the latter course, and announced MyNetworkTV on February 22, less than a month after CBS and Warner Bros. announced The CW on January 24. News Corp may have chosen the name MyNetworkTV for synergistic means, as it also owns the popular networking website MySpace.com. Programming MyNetworkTV began operations on September 5, 2006 with premieres of its two initial series. Some affiliates unofficially began branding their stations on September 4, 2006 with supplied preview specials. Programming airs from 8:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. (Eastern/Pacific time) Monday through Saturday. Unlike the other major broadcast networks, MyNetworkTV plans to air primarily original programming throughout the year, including the summer. Given that MyNetworkTV airs two programs six days a week produced by 20th Television (Fox's syndication unit), it is more akin to a syndication model, such as the Prime Time Entertainment Network, Operation Primetime, or The Disney Afternoon, than major broadcast networks' programming. Indeed, Fox had intended to release Desire as a stand-alone syndicated program prior to coming up with the MyNetworkTV concept. Jack Abernethy, chief executive of Fox Television Stations, said before launch that MyNetworkTV's six-day-per-week format is the wave of the future because a traditional schedule costs too much.* Two west-coast stations change the programs' start time. KQCA in Sacramento, California airs the MNTV schedule from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. This is is due to Oprah airing in the 9 p.m. slot as their lead-in to their 10 p.m. newscast. KQCA is the second TV station in this time zone, and indeed in this market (after local CBS affiliate KOVR) to start airing network primetime shows an hour early. Meanwhile, KRON in San Francisco airs MNTV programming from 9 to 11 p.m., after Dr. Phil. Telenovelas Initial series will focus on the 18-to-49-year-old, English-speaking Hispanic population with programing consisting exclusively of the telenovelas Desire and Fashion House, each airing Monday to Friday with one-hour recaps on Saturdays. These series will air in continuous cycles of thirteen-week seasons; when one series ends, another unrelated series will begin the following week. Both shows are broadcast in high definition by affiliates with HD simulcasts and in letterbox format on standard definition broadcasts. Each carries a SAP signal carrying a Spanish audio track. The shows are shot at Stu Segall Studios in San Diego.* As a cost-saving measure, producers tend to hire performers with limited acting experience.* Also, since scripts are finished before taping starts, scenes on the same set can be shot out of episode order.* The network had originally planned to use the umbrella titles Desire and Secret Obsessions for its telenovelas. Each storyline will now be titled separately. * The remaining (tentative) titles for 2006-07 are Art of Betrayal, Rules of Deception, and Friends & Enemies in the 8 p.m. ET time-slot; the 9 p.m. ET time-slot will host Watch Over Me, A Dangerous Love, and To Love & Die. Fox has also purchased the rights to: Other programming The announcement of the new network also stated that additional unscripted (i.e., "reality") and current-affairs programming were in development. These were: MyNetworkTV later stated that it had abandoned its reality-show development, focusing solely on telenovelas, even if the format is not initially successful. The manager of the MyNetworkTV affiliate in Roanoke, Virginia has stated that the network will eventually launch a national morning show similar to Fox News’ Fox & Friends. * Nonetheless, the network has not officially indicated any plans for any programming outside of prime time, such as network children's programming. Recent announcements by Fox regarding additional programming to air on MyNetworkTV O&Os -- such as Desperate Housewives repeats, the first-run sitcom House of Payne, and a daytime viewer-participation game show, My Games Fever * -- do not apply to the network as a whole. Performance MyNetworkTV's debut was not a huge success. "Desire" scored a 1.1 household rating/2 share; "Fashion House" went up to 1.3/2.* Fox had sold about half of its projections of $50 million in advance commercial sales* The network averaged a 0.5 rating and a 2 share in the key 18-49 demographic. It averaged just over one million total viewers. The numbers dropped each night, according to Nielsen Media Research.* These numbers were significantly lower than the programming that aired a year before, mostly UPN and WB programming.* The telenovelas showed more hopeful ratings in markets like Miami, with large Hispanic populations.* (Nielsen currently compiles MyNetworkTV ratings as a weekly average per program, not by each individual episode.*) Bob Cook, president of Twentieth Television, said his division would be unable to project the shows' success until December or January.* Paul Buccieri, president of 20th Century Fox Television. said that English-speaking audiences need time to understand the genre. “We're sticking with it -- we believe in this product,” he said.* Roger Ailes brought up MyNetworkTV in a Financial Times interview. "When I read the WSJ article* talking about tv stations and MyNetworkTV not doing well and all this crap, you should have seen us at Fox News Channel one year into it," he said. "I’ve had this job for a year and it takes a little time to get these things off the runway."* Affiliation
Branding At first, many Fox owned-and-operated stations branded local programming with the My moniker. An example is My 9 and My 9 News for WWOR-TV. However, by the third week in October, the branding changed slightly. Stations went to a two-column brand, with the network name in the left column and the channel number on the right. Oral identification became, as in this example, "MyNetworkTV, channel 9." The network has no logo bug in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen, allowing their local stations to use their own logo instead. In the months before the network's launch, several stations changed their on-air identities to accommodate for the then-upcoming network, including all of the Fox Television Stations Group-owned stations. Affiliates also began to show promotions for the network featuring the theme of "Entertainment you can call your own." At the time plans for MyNetworkTV were announced, there was at least one station that was using a similar moniker. WZMY Derry, New Hampshire filed a trademark for the "MyTV" name in the summer of 2005, and for a short time there was speculation the station might sue Fox for the use of 'MyTV.' * However, on July 21, 2006, an e-mail was sent to WZMY's MyTV e-mail subscribers that the station would become a MyNetworkTV affiliate. The official announcement came the following week. * Notes See also | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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