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Will Viewers Want Their My Network TV?
Less TV? Never.
One month after it was announced the WB and UPN would be downsized into the all-new CW, Fox has decided to build a new sixth network of its own.
My Network TV, the broadcast venture and not a personalized Web browser feature, will launch Sept. 5 on 10 Fox-owned stations in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Baltimore, Orlando and Washington, D.C., it was announced Wednesday.
As billed, the star attractions of the network will be a pair of hourlong dramas inspired by telenovelas. Like those Spanish-language TV staples, the new shows, Desire and Secrets, will air Monday-Friday, and commit to wrapping up their soapy story lines in 13 weeks.
Desire is about two brothers on the run from the mob; Secrets is set in the fashion world. Both shows sport no-name (for now) casts.
Other shows in development for My Network TV include: Catwalk, "the ultimate search for the next 'It' supermodel"; Celebrity Love Island, a sort of Shagging with the Stars reality show in which "six gorgeous celebrity and six non-celebrity singletons" are turned loose among the coconuts; and, America's Brainiest, a quiz show apparently designed to counterweight Celebrity Love Island.
My Network TV aims to air 12 hours' worth of shows each week, from 8-10 p.m., Monday-Saturday. That's one more night than the UPN currently offers.
Of the 10 Fox-owned stations designated for My Network TV, all but the Dallas outlet are currently UPN affiliates. The introduction of the new Fox network will keep those stations from scrambling for shows when the UPN goes dark in September. Stations currently aligned with the WB are in less of a bind because many of them are due to switch over to the CW, which is due to bow in the fall.
As it stands now, My Network TV would reach about 25 percent of the TV nation via the Fox family stations. By comparison, the CW is said to be a lock for 48 percent of the country, and shooting for 95 percent.
Fox is also shooting for more TV homes for My Network TV. "We are going to secure affiliate stations in markets where we don't own a station," Les Eisner, spokesman for Fox-owned Twentieth Television, said in an email.
Mediaweek editor Michael Burgi said he doesn't doubt the Fox machine will get rolling in lining up My Network TV affiliates. Whether the new network, technically a netlet, will be much of a player early on is another matter.
"It's a low-impact network at this point," Burgi said Thursday. "The content right now is not going to bowl anybody over."
The timing of the announcement on My Network TV--Eisner said it was too soon to comment on whether it would be rebranded as the briefer "MNT"--is notable in that Warner Bros. and CBS, the parent companies of the WB and UPN, decided to combine forces on the theory that five total broadcast networks were better than six.
That Fox would decide that six networks is better than five is a "typical Rupert Murdoch move," Burgi said of the network overlord.
"Where he sees others not being able to succeed," Burgi said, slipping into the accented tongue of Murdoch's native Australia, "he says, 'Well, I can do that. Let's get my people on it.' "
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