XTN

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XTN was a Hopelandian television network that claimed to be the legal descendant of the now-defunct Zircon Television Network.

History[edit | edit source]

1953-1990[edit | edit source]

The Zircon Corporation had played a pivotal role in the development of Hopelandian network television. It was the owner of the Zircon Television Network, and the Zircon Theaters chain, which was spun off from the corporate parent, merged with NBN in a deal that helped cement that network's status as a major network. The Zircon Television Network was launched in 1953, but dissolved in 1955.

In 1969, Zircon went bankrupt and most of its assets went to Hopelandian telecommunications and computing company Comtam. Comtam had two plans for a television network: Plan A was to use existing independent television stations in larger cities and create the so-called "fourth network", Plan B was to create independent stations from scratch. Either plan failed and Comtam tried to resume business in the television industry by creating an ad-hoc syndication network called Comtam Entertainment Network, sold to independent stations in Albany, Palmerston and New Cardiff in 1977. In the 80s, talks were made at Comtam if the network would actually commence transmission using the stations that they used to sell the CEN programming, but failed. Nonetheless, Comtam played an important role in the creation of cable television in 1984, but their attempts at a major network were still behind expectations.

1990-1995[edit | edit source]

In 1990, the HCC gave Comtam a license for UHF channel 18 in Albany, a frequency formerly occupied by a neighboring affiliate of NBN that moved to another market. However, Comtam's intentions were to acquire HWAL-TV, a Spanish de facto independent on channel 11, that would soon become the central O&O of Antena Latina. Eventially the plan failed. In the building stages was an O&O for the west coast: HXTN-TV, on channel 21 in Palmerston. This station would eventually give XTN its name, as the call sign was "too networky". The initial plan was to call it just X, later Channel X, but such names would eventually give the impression that the network was pornographical. The name XTN was settled in November 1993. The Albany offices, at this point still under control of the independent station, were taken by the new network, and by mid-1994 the HXTN offices were operational.

XTN signed a deal with UPN and its associated companies to provide Sierran programming during primetime hours.

1995-2002[edit | edit source]

XTN's west coast O&O, HXTN, started broadcasting on January 11, 1995, beating the entire network by five days, during the first few days on air, HXTN broadcast eight hours a day showing syndicated series and Palmerston's Guide to XTN, shown daily at sign-on and sign-off, telling viewers about the upcoming new network. XTN started nationwide broadcasts on January 16, 1995, competing against the newly created TotalAccess network. It had two nightly hours of primetime programming like MTN and TotalAccess.

While launch night figures were high, regular programming had left XTN in jeopardy. In order to save XTN, the network decided to begon a short-lived dependency on syndicated programming.

2002-2006[edit | edit source]

The network rebranded in 2002. The network was now much livelier in tone than in its previous stages.

Shutdown[edit | edit source]

On January 24, 2006, IBS announced that it would merge TotalAccess and XTN to create the OK Network, using soon-to-be former TotalAccess affiliates as the base of the network. In response, MTN bought five of the XTN O&Os and used other XTN affiliates to fill in the void by creating the So Network.

Comtam thought that its treatment of the remaining XTN assets was unfair

Programming[edit | edit source]