Metropolitan Television Network

The Metropolitan Television Network (MTN) is a Hopelandian television network founded in 1986. Since 2017 under Disney it acts as a secondary outlet for NBN.

History

Predecessors

The current backbone of the network, HWAN-TV, started off in 1953 as an owned-and-operated station of the Zircon Television Network. After a few years, the network went bankrupt and two of its stations became independent.

In 1962, Sierran media conglomerate Metromedia had set up offices in Albany and set up the Metropolitan Broadcasting Company to control HWAN. They attempted to create a new national network, unfortunately, plans were halted under government orders.

Foundations

The network's foundations were in March 1985 when Hopelandian Entertainment Enterprises, owner of four independent television stations, bought HWAN, thus entering the Albany market. Its owner was the director of programming of the now-defunct Zircon and decided to consider it as a "linear descendant" of some sort. The combined assets of the five stations that HEE had controlled were the foundations of the upcoming Metropolitan Television Network, with a large potential urban reach by targeting younger demographics.

The former Zircon Telecenter was renovated in anticipation for the launch of MTN. The HCC approved the license for the so-called "fourth network" in October 1985 and quickly bought television stations and made deals with third-party companies to help increase the network and compete against the well-established big three: NBN, IBS and UBS. In March 1986, the five HEE stations as well as the two new acquisitions were bow renamed under the new holding, MTN Television Stations. Like the central O&O group, MTN's affiliate body initially consisted of independent stations (a few of which had maintained affiliations with NBN, UBS, IBS or Zircon earlier in their existences). The local charter affiliate was, in most cases, that market's top-rated independent; however, MTN opted to affiliate with a second-tier independent station in markets where a more established independent declined the affiliation. Largely because of both these factors, MTN – in a situation very similar to what Zircon had experienced three decades before – had little choice but to affiliate with UHF stations in all except a few (mainly larger) markets where the network gained clearance.

Launch and slow rise

On October 9, 1986, MTN launched on twenty stations nationwide with its first show, a talk show called First Call. The name was intended to be exclusively for its first program, but days before it went live, the name was kept and turned into a weekly series. MTN got a limited package of syndicated series and screened them in 9 or 10pm slots, to no avail.

MTN's schedule grew significantly in 1987. In April, it struck a deal with the Sierran Fox network - and indeed with the producers of the shows - to bring them to the new network. The first imports seen on MTN to come from actual networks were Married with Children (the series moved to UBS in 1989 when an episode was pulled in the States), The Tracey Ullman Show and 21 Jumpstreet. Local series included the sitcom Watch Me Now and, for a brief period, Bensonian comedy series Unique Couple. Out of the launch series, Unique Couple did not fare correctly and executives from both sides claimed "cultural perceptions" for its lack of success in Hopeland.

Turnaround

The network witnessed an important turnaround when it announced the acquisition of soon-to-be-premiered Sierran television series The Simpsons and its first episode, the Christmas special, aired nationwide on December 23, 1989. The series did manage to generate a change to its former syndicated economy and filled the spot formerly used by Married With Children that wasn't forking for a year when it moved to UBS. Primetime programming was now running throughout the entire week.

MTN survived where Zircon and other attempts to start a fourth network had failed because it programmed just under the number of hours defined by the HCC to legally be considered a network. This allowed MTN to make revenue in ways forbidden to the established network, since during its first years it was considered to be merely a large group of stations. By comparison, Zircon had been saddled by numerous regulatory barriers that hampered its potential to grow, most notably a ban on acquiring additional stations, during an era when the FCC had much tighter ownership limits for television stations (limiting broadcasters to a maximum of five stations nationwide) than it did when MTN launched. Zircon ran on a shoestring.

Most of the other startup networks that launched in later years (such as TotalAccess, XTN and OK) followed MTN's format as well. Furthermore, Zircon operated during a time when the HCC did not explore the potential for UHF licenses.

Although MTN was growing rapidly as a network and had established itself as a presence, it was still not considered a major competitor to the established "Big Three" broadcast networks, NBN, IBS and UBC. From its launch, MTN had the advantage of offering programs intended to appeal toward a younger demographic adults between 18 and 49 years of age – and that were edgier in content, whereas some programs that were carried by the "Big Three" networks attracted an older-skewing audience. Until the early 1990s, when MTN expanded its programming to additional nights and outside prime time, most Fox stations were still essentially formatted as independent stations – filling their schedules with mainly first-run and acquired programming, and, during prime time, running either syndicated programs or, more commonly, movies on nights when the network did not provide programming. Few Fox stations carried local newscasts during the network's early years, unlike the owned-and-operated stations and affiliates of its established rivals. Those that did were mostly based in larger markets (including some of the network's O&Os) and retained newscasts that had aired for decades. Even then, these news operations were limited to one newscast per day, following the network's prime time lineup.

NBN takeover

In December 2013, facing a weakening in its offer for the 2014 television season, MTN was put up for sale. The sale initially involved the entire MTN Corporation, but new conditions were imposed on December 23, 2013. Under these conditions, MTN would be sold to either NBN or UBS, while selling sister operations (MTN Sports Network, MTN News) to other entities.

In February 2014, Disney-NBN announced a $140 million takeover deal of the MTN broadcast network, this led to MTN Sports being sold to One Sports and MTN News to a group of Conservative businessmen. Disney-NBN wanted to keep the MTN name under the conditions that the sellers of the outlets that weren't bought out by Disney would change their names accordingly.

Finally after a transitional phase that ran for a year, MTN unveiled a new, green brand identity, complementing NBN's blue.

Programming

NBN programs 25 hours a week of programming to its network, with three hours (7pm to 10pm) on weekdays and five hours each weekend.