RetroTV (RTV) schedule for 1st quarter 2016

[localclassictvfan]

yup that was one of the first national subchannels...back when the programming was good


Retro was good when it first started...late 05. ....STORY TIME!!!
It was when Equity Broadcasting cut their ties with PAX (now Ion) on a few stations. They needed something to fill it with so at night they had 3 hours of shows and called it "RTN" (Retro TV Network). In 06 when WB & UPN died and CW & My were created that left a lot of stations in Equity's profile (as they had a lot of WB stations and didnt get CW when it launched). They had a lot of good programming. I've posted schedules in the past.

When Luken got a hold of it (Equity sold it to Henry Luken...who was previously their CEO) they started doing the subchannel gig. But both Equity and Luken were in money trouble. Equity went belly up before the transition. Luken chugged along but lost the rights to most of his shows to MeTV/AntennaTV/Cozi.

Is Equity the one that sued Luken or some some company from Arkansas...

 

[Mr Tony]

Equity was based in Arkansas and ran pretty much all their stations out of Little Rock (that is why most of them were on free to air. The signals were so weak that the only way cable companies got the signal was from the satellite)
Luken is in Chattanooga
They both probably sued each other. When Equity and Luken couldnt reach an agreement on RTN Equity pulled RTN and put up a slate for a day (known as the red screen of death) before Equity did the "wheel of affiliates" where they had some public domain movies that were shown before they switched to TuffTV or ThisTV (this was early 09 and they ended up going bankrupt before the DTV transition that year. They sold off most of the stations)

Ironically, Soul of the South bought the equipment that Equity had in Little Rock to run their stations.

 

[Mr Tony]

The red screen of death

 

[Mr Tony]

one note
At the time Luken OWNED RTN but Equity was RUNNING it (equity needed the money). So when they got in their pissing match Equity pulled RTN off ALL the stations that had it.
Luken had no way of uplinking RTN at the time and they had to scramble to get a temporary feed up. If I remember it took about a day for Luken to get everything back up and running for the affiliates to have RTN.

It was the first I ever seen a retrans dispute happen OTA (usually its cable vs the station or satellite vs the station)

 

[Mr Tony]

just a reminder new schedule starts tomorrow