Equity's RTN Sold to Luken Communications; Me-Too in Chicago Airing Classic Movies Now, Too, More TV Shows Added

Equity Media Holdings Corporation announced it has closed an asset sales transaction with Luken Communications, LLC, a group led by Equity Media's largest shareholder Henry Luken III (the "Investors"). The Investors purchased Equity Media's Retro Television Network (RTN) subsidiary for $18.50 million. Equity Media has the option to repurchase RTN at any time during the next six months. Concurrently with the closing of the RTN sale, the Investors purchased for $1.50 million warrants to purchase up to 8,050,000 shares of Equity Media for $1.10 per share. Equity Media also has entered into asset purchase agreements with the Investors for the sale by Equity Media of certain television stations. Equity Media has received a $5 million prepayment on the stations sale from the Investors. The stations sale will be consummated, and Equity Media will receive the remaining payment of $12.5 million, upon receipt of FCC and certain other approvals. Following consummation of the station sales, Equity Media will continue to own and operate 100 stations in 35 markets representing 24.8% of U.S. television households based on Equity Media's current stations roster.
View the full press release for more details. So what does this mean? It is hard to tell. I have asked RTN to see what is up, so I'll let you all know what they say. I think it won't affect current RTN affiliates. It doesn't mean the network is on its way out or that it won't add more stations since it was sold to another group, but I don't know if this is good or bad. We'll have to see in the coming weeks.

Beginning Monday June 30 at 7:00pm, Me-Too (WMEU-TV) in Chicago rolls out the red carpet for "Me-Too Movie Classics," a showcase for a wide variety of Hollywood's greatest movies, stars and directors. From the classic to kitsch to cult, "Me-Too's Movie Classics" brings back classic films to free, over the air television with minimal content editing and only five minutes of internal commercial break time.
Theme weeks include a look at significant movies of the 1970s featuring Easy Rider, Bob, Carol, Ted & Alice and Butterflies Are Free. A week of screwball/classic comedies includes The Twentieth Century, Born Yesterday and the original Brewster's Millions. A week of Joan Crawford classics include the truly classic as well as campy Crawford performances from the 1950s and 1960s.
Adding classic movies to the schedule of Me-Too serves to further distinguish Me-Too as the snappy sibling of Me-TV, Chicago's beloved home of Classic TV, and provide a unique and uncluttered environment for advertisers seeking an engaged, loyal and receptive audience.
The movies will air weeknights at 7:00pm and Saturdays at 1:00pm with many other stars like Jack Lemmon, Jack Nicholson, Jackie Gleason, Jane Fonda, Carl Reiner, Peter Falk, Dick Van Dyke, Burt Reynolds and John Ritter. The movies for the summer are available in a list form on our message boards. You may also discuss the movie list and stars there, which also has a lot of classic TV stars in feature films.

Adding movies is not the only thing happening on June 30. Me-Too will change their classic TV line-up a bit too. Me-Too launched back in March with this launch schedule, that has continued until today, but now some changes are coming. Gilligan's Island, Ozzie and Harriet, Rawhide, are among the new series coming to Me-Too. View the new Me-Too schedule.

Launch Schedules for Me-TV Milwaukee and Me-Too Chicago; WWE SmackDown Moves to MyNetworkTV

As we mentioned previously, Me-TV, a local channel airing classic TV in Chicago, will now launch in Milwaukee starting March 1! And today we have the full launch line-up for, and you'll see it here first! Among the programs airing weekdays are Green Acres, Happy Days, Cheers, Bewitched, Gilligan's Island, My Favorite Martian, Leave it to Beaver, The Honeymooners, Roseanne, I Love Lucy and Hawaii Five-0. Airing on weekends are programs like Petticoat Junction, Knight Rider, Mork & Mindy, Laverne & Shirley, Superman, Batman, Star Trek, and many more! The schedule is a bit similar in style to Me-TV in Chicago's schedule.
Remember Milwaukee digital television viewers will be able to receive Me-TV over the air on digital channel 58.3. Time Warner Cable and Charter Communications will also carry Me-TV on the digital tier of their cable systems serving Southeastern Wisconsin. So without further adieu, here is the FULL launch schedule for Me-TV Milwaukee! Certainly a classic TV paradise!
Moving on to Me-Too in Chicago. As we mentioned previously, Me-Too will be a spin-off station of Me-TV Chicago. Like Me-TV Chicago, Me-Too will air the original network versions of the timeless classics whenever possible. This means longer program segments and fewer commercial breaks. Many of the shows have not aired in these formats since the original network runs. Like Me-TV Chicago, Me-Too will showcase many dramas that have not been seen in decades including a "Noir at Night" Sunday night block, "Super Sonic Sunday" afternoon block, and "Saturday Night Pajama Party" block.
Beginning March 1, 2008, Chicago viewers will now have two choices for classic television programming: Me-TV on WWME-TV, Broadcast Channel 23 and Me-Too on the newly renamed WMEU-TV, Broadcast Channel 48.
Among the programs Me-Too will carry on weekdays are Webster, The Monkees, Partridge Family, The Facts of Life, I Love Lucy, Who's the Boss?, The Jeffersons, All in the Family, Star Trek, The A-Team and more! And on weekends we will see even more programs such as What's Happening!!, That's My Mama, Gimme a Break!, The Munsters, Square Pegs, One Day at a Time, The Brady Bunch, Gidget, Flying Nun, Knight Rider, Batman and many more!
Chicago just got even better with yet another classic TV channel. Nearly every other city in the nation has none and they have two! So here is the launch schedule for Me-Too Chicago!

MyNetworkTV and World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) have announced a new broadcast television home for WWE SmackDown, scheduled to debut in Fall 2008.
The two-hour television program will be presented weekly on MyNetworkTV. WWE SmackDown will feature a star-studded cast of WWE Superstars, including Edge(R), Rey Mysterio(R), Batista(R), MVP, Kane(R) and Undertaker(R), as well as present all the action, excitement, drama and great athleticism that have made it for nine years one of the most popular programs among males on broadcast television, and one of the top ten English language prime time programs among Hispanic households.
The program currently airs on The CW on Friday nights and does close to 5 million each week.

Oh and Happy Birthday to Todd (owner and founder of SitcomsOnline). Hope you have a good one! If we have more news, we will return...so try to check in later tonight.

Strike Update; ME-TV Coming to Milwaukee, Chicago to Launch ME-Too; RTN Coming to Illinois

Well we all know the strike is just about over. Yesterday I mentioned that they had a press conference. So what happened in it? They announced a vote will be held on Tuesday. A yes vote means they are voting to end the strike immediately; a no vote means they are voting to continue the strike during the ratification process.
So the strike has unofficially ended, but it won't be official until after this vote. It is widely expected that the WGA members will indeed vote yes on the new deal and the writers would return to work Wednesday.
So today is technically still day 99 of the strike. And tomorrow is day 100, the last day technically of the strike. How cool is it that this will all end officially on day 100. We will have more on the vote and more details this week.

You all know about ME-TV in Chicago. The local Chicago station (WWME-23) that airs classic TV, well now the same people will bring ME-TV in Milwaukee! ME-TV will launch in Milwaukee March 1 with a lineup that will include programs such as I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners, The Dick Van Dyke Show and Lost in Space.
ME-TV in Milwaukee will be on a new digital subchannel on Channel 58.3 (WDJT). In addition to being available over the air at 58.3, it will have a spot on the Time Warner and Charter digital lineups. For the record, Channel 58's less-than-full power sister channel, WMLW-TV - Channel 41 over the air and Channel 7 on Time Warner Cable - airs at 58.2.
Stay tuned right here on the News Blog for the launch schedule for this new ME-TV station in Milwaukee! We will be the first to post it, I'm sure.

Sticking with ME-TV, ME-TV in Chicago is still going strong. It just launched its new Chill with Me winter line-up and added shows such as Gilligan's Island and My Favorite Martian. Now, WWME (ME-TV Chicago) has announced it intends to add classic reruns to WFBT-Ch. 48 and rename it WMEU-TV beginning March 1. WWME-23 has called itself ME-TV. WFBT-48 will call itself ME-Too.
Besides being broadcast and carried by some area cable providers, the channels also will be available on digital sub-channels belonging to sister station WCIU-Ch. 26, WCIU-DT 26.2 and 26.3 respectively.
Between ME-TV and ME-Too, more than 100 different series will be aired! Having ME-Too will allow development of targeted blocks of programming for different demographics. It also will create a classic program stream when sports preempts regularly scheduled shows.
Among the shows we will see will be a Saturday night "pajama party" lineup will feature sitcoms Square Pegs, Silver Spoons, Facts of Life, The Monkees, The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family. Also we can expect a Sunday "Noir at Night" block of Route 66, Naked City, 77 Sunset Strip and Boris Karloff's Thriller.
Let's hope ME-TV and ME-Too expand to more cities. It would be nice to have at least a ME-TV in most markets...Chicago and Milwaukee are very lucky! I hope we get one in New York!
As we said about ME-TV Milwaukee's launch schedule, stay tuned right here on the News Blog for the launch schedule for Chicago's ME-Too! We will be the first to post it, I'm sure.

Meanwhile, something similar to ME-TV is of course Retro Television Network. RTN is now well over in 50 different markets and growing each day! Retro Television Network announced that it will partner with GOCOM Media of Illinois to bring RTN programming to Champaign/Springfield/Decatur, IL. The network will launch early next year on one of the digital streams of WRSP/WBUI.