Me TV+ changed to "The Story"

[JoeLouis]

I was just starting to enjoy Me TV+ on Comcast 1043 and they changed it to some boring channel called "The Story" who's brainstorm was that, very repetitive bland programming. Me TV is still there in HD thankfully, and is the only HD sub channel (Antenna, Decades, FETV are all SD only)

 

[Daryl Lynn L.A.]

Hi Joe. You were asking whose brainstorm it was, so I found some information on the channel. It's from the company of MeTV, who apparently wants to branch out into history shows. For some reason, a live link will not work, but here's a URL that can be copied and pasted:

https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/story-television-network-weigel-broadcasting-1235180930/

I think that MeTV is fun, because it is interesting to compare the programming, themes, and production techniques of shows that in some cases, are 50 to 60 years old. Some of those shows have stood up to the test of time, but others have not. - D.

From Daily Variety Feb. 2022 by Michael Schneider: Me TV Owner Weigel Broadcasting to Launch Story Television, Its First Unscripted National Network

Weigel Broadcasting Co., the company behind the classic television outlet MeTV, is launching its first unscripted network. The company will launch Story Television Network, an over-the-air national broadcast channel devoted to history-based fare, on March 28, 2022

Story TV’s programming will include off-net series that originally aired on networks like A&E and History Channel, including “Biography,” “The Men Who Built America,” “World War II in HD,” “Modern Marvels,” “Mankind: The Story of All of Us” and more. Each day will center programming around a unique theme or genre, such as military, technology and innovation, world events, American history, modern achievement, unexplained phenomena, and biographical tributes.

"As we looked at the landscape, we looked at what genre works really well for advertisers and viewership that isn’t currently in the air right now,” said Neal Sabin, vice chairman of Weigel Broadcasting. “It’s history-oriented programming. But many of the networks that were in the traditional history business have broadened their appeal and the kind of program they run. We thought that this provided a niche for us to be more of a traditional history network.”

Donna D’Alessandro, exec VP of network content for Weigel Broadcasting, will program and run the channel. The name “Story” came directly out of the word “history,” and Weigel will play that up in the show’s taglines.

“There’s a lot of research as to how well advertisers and viewers respond to true history programming,” Sabin said. “And we plan on doing that with content that we’ve acquired from various distributors, including the A+E networks. Most of the programming that will be on the network has never been seen on broadcast television.”

Story will launch in nearly 50% of the country, via stations run by Weigel and with affiliate partners including Hearst Television, Marquee Broadcasting, Maranatha Broadcasting, and others.

“We wouldn’t have done this network unless we had a good launch group,” Sabin said.

Story reps the sixth network from Weigel, which has become a leader in creating “diginets” — the programming services that broadcast TV stations carry on their digital subchannels. Besides MeTV, which is the top-rated multicast network, Weigel operates the Movies! Network in cooperation with the Fox Television Stations, the Decades Network, the H&I – Heroes & Icons Network and the Start TV Network in association with the CBS Television Stations.

 

[DJKraze]

The topic had me a little shocked for a second, as I watch WHCT-LD with an antenna and I've had both Story TV and MeTV+. I had to double check that it was still therem and it is. WHCT-LD, being owned by Weigel actually placed Story TV on 35.7 pre-launch. I don't know what cable and satellite carry these days as I cut tthe cord years ago and as of this morning, I have 66 channels from here in Northern Middlesex County including some Springfield stations from a Leaf style antenna in my second floor back window that I picked up at Costco years ago (I was feeling risky as I really didn't think this thing would do much, yet, I doubted somehing like this would do much, but this model is a good one, I wish I knew the brand). If I can't find something to watch, I have computers, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, and Apple TV (it's amazing how cheap it is to get these stream boxes at a thrift store)

If you are near enough to rattlesnake mountain and are using your HDMI input or some input aside from your cable input on a typical flat screen TV, adding an antenna might bring in WHCT-LD, which is actually 8 channels consisting of the following:

35.1 MeTV
35.2 H&I
35.3 Start TV
35.4 Movies!
35.5 Decades
35.6 MeTV+
35.7 Story TV
35.12 EMLW (the only channel not worth having in the bunch as it's 24/7 infomercials, but this seems to be a trend lately)

I wonder how many of these are actually carried by TV providers, I appreciate that with the antenna, I can just do a band scan on a regular basis and get new channels that TV providers don't have yet or will bother with. I just did a band scan this morning and found 3 new channels, which I think I will put a post about if somone else hasn't done so yet.

 

[JoeLouis]

I tried getting the WHCT channels off the air, bought what I thought was a good antenna, and all I got was WTNH-8 and WCCT-20.4, as far as Comcast where I am, we get WHCT MeTV, H&I, Start TV, (no 35.4 movies) Decades, and Story TV, oh well I guess no ME TV+ for me.