Antenna TV - Background

Background

Tribune Broadcasting announced the formation of Antenna TV on August 30, 2010, with a planned launch in January 2011; originally the network was intended to launch on January 3, 2011, though the launch date was later moved two days earlier.

Antenna TV was launched on January 1, 2011 at midnight ET (December 31, 2010 in other U.S. time zones), initially debuting on 17 Tribune-owned stations and 13 stations owned by Local TV; The first program to air on Antenna TV was the Three Stooges' first short "Woman Haters" as part of a marathon of Three Stooges short films (which has since become an annual New Year's Day tradition on the network). The network's operations are overseen by Sean Compton, who serves as the president of programming for parent company Tribune Broadcasting.

On October 1, 2011, Antenna TV introduced block scheduling for most of its programs, organized by genre and the decade of original broadcast; it included a weekday afternoon block of sitcoms from the 1950s, a weekend afternoon block of 1960s sitcoms (including the early 1970s sitcom, The Partridge Family), a Saturday night lineup of drama series (a genre of television programs which had previously aired on the network in very limited form on Sunday mornings only), an overnight block of classic television series from the black-and-white era of the 1950s and early 1960s, a Sunday primetime lineup of sitcoms from the 1990s and a weeknight primetime lineup of comedies from the 1970s; with the exception of the black-and-white program block (which was reduced to once a week and moved to Friday nights) and the Saturday night drama block (which was reduced to Saturday evenings only), most of these blocks were dropped on March 26, 2012.