With the home/lifestyle subchannel Live Well TV shutting down this month, there’s been no word what Scripps ABC affiliate WEWS/5 in Cleveland would replace it with on 5.2…until now.
The folks behind male-targeted GRIT (WUAB 43.3) and female-targeted ESCAPE (WQHS 61.4) are going after funny bones of both genders with the new “LAFF” network.
Here’s how the new subchannel network’s press release describes it:
The country’s first-ever, over-the-air broadcast television network devoted to comedy around-the-clock will launch this spring when Katz Broadcasting debuts LAFF on April 15, 2015, it was announced today.
LAFF will feature a mix of contemporary off-network sitcoms and popular theatrical motion pictures, with a target audience of adults 18-49.
Scripps will run LAFF on WEWS and 12 of its other stations, including stations in Detroit, Phoenix, Tampa, Denver, Indianapolis, Baltimore, San Diego, Kansas City, Cincinnati, West Palm Beach, Buffalo and Tulsa OK.
ABC will slot LAFF on its owned-and-operated stations in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Houston, Raleigh NC and Fresno CA.
Live Well, which was supposed to end this past Friday, will soldier on in reruns between now and the April 15th premiere of LAFF on the Scripps stations.
But Deadline: Hollywood says Live Well won’t die on the stations owned by network owner ABC:
The ABC Owned TV Station Group sent out a quick release saying that LAFF will run on its D3 subchannel and that the Live Well Network, though ending its syndication availability, will continue to run on the ABC stations’ D2 subchannel.
“LAFF will be an excellent addition to our subchannel lineup,” said Rebecca Campbell, president of the wwned station group. “We are also committed to keeping Live Well Network up and running in our own markets, so that we can continue to provide unique local programming and pursue corporate synergy opportunities.”
ABC tipped when it announced Live Well’s future demise that it would use subchannel space in its owned markets for local programming…it appears that the lifestyle/home network will wrap around such efforts.
But here in Cleveland and the other Scripps markets. “LAFF” will be alone (as far as we know, pending any other announcements) on the .2 side, displacing the Live Well Rerun TV Network on April 15th.
Now, let’s quote Katz Broadcasting from the LAFF press release again:
LAFF will feature a mix of contemporary off-network sitcoms and popular theatrical motion pictures, with a target audience of adults 18-49.
At this point, we can’t define “contemporary off-network sitcoms” that could find a home on LAFF…which apparently won’t fight for carriage rights for “classic” sitcoms from the likes of Me-TV and Antenna TV.
What’s out there?
The most popular “contemporary off-network sitcoms” fill the non-network schedules of the main broadcast channels.
We’ll have to see what the folks at LAFF can get…
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