Pat Cook said:
This network is gone by next spring (2008) at the latest. If I were an affilliate, I would pull out ASAP.
Why? Besides, what network (Other than maybe Retro Television or America One) could any of these stations pick up in its place?
How about... NONE? Gasp shock horror! Oh my god, these stations so desperately need a network to program TWO HOURS A DAY SIX DAYS A WEEK for them!
My Network TV may have looked destined for failure from the start, but that wasn't why it was so criticized and reviled on here and elsewhere throughout 2006 and beyond. That was for at least two reasons: several stations, blinded by $$$, flipped to it that should have known better, which forced the CW onto a digital package (or in some markets, nothing at all, at least on initial launch - I'm speaking specifically about Cincinatti and Hawaii here), but - at least with me - another reason was because it dashed all our hopes of a post-merger independent station renaissance.
I've spoken at length about this before. My Network TV fitted two needs and two needs only: the need for branding (and branding from a network was SO critical to a station's success when they branded by call letters before Fox conceived the current system in the 80's) and the need for programming from 8-10 (local news or other local interest programming would probably fit the time better, and get more eyeballs than Not My Network TV).
Besides, there aren't that many markets outside the top 60 that even have six general-interest commercial (so not PBS, ION, or religious) full power stations. Past that point, in most markets either the CW or MyNet (or both) station is a digital subchannel of a bigger, Big Four station (if they're not imported from another, larger market or sharing time on the bigger station). (Incidentally, I would expect these "stations" to be the first to bail on MyNet as they realize there are dozens of other, better uses of that digital space. This is especially the case with stations that already have other subchannels, such as NBC stations with Weather Plus or stations that carry FOX or the CW on a digital signal. In those cases the MyNet feed is weakening the signal, and in the case of the latter set of stations, stretching thin the programming that has to be crammed onto two or three stations, for the sake of carrying a two-hour incredibly-low-rated block of programming.) There are a good number of these markets where CA or LP signals are used to carry CW and MyNet, but the CW probably gets most of its coverage in under-90 markets from digital signals. In most markets where the CW is lucky enough to land its own station, MyNet settles for a digital signal.
Add to that the significant number of markets with only five options in markets 40-60 and we're talking about, oh, 65 stations in the entire country that would benefit, considering only full-power stations. Oh, and I'm including stations that are already independent, but are in a market where CW or MyNet has to run through these hoops I just mentioned, and they're rejecting the CW or MyNet affiliation for whatever reason. (Most aren't markets where they had a network affiliation before, and Las Vegas, Dallas-Fort Worth, Boston, and San Francisco are the only markets I know of where a formerly independent station adopted the CW or MyNet, and there's probably only two or three more. In Seattle, Belo's independent KONG is probably more popular and powerful than old WB station KTWB, due to its relationship to powerhouse KING and Tribune's failure to leverage any synergy with Fox affiliate KCPQ, but it was the latter station, now KMYQ, that picked up MyNet. Hmm, could it be that independent stations have realized they don't need no steenking network?)
