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CBS TV Stations and Weigel Broadcasting to Launch the ‘Ultimate TV Time Capsule’

Oct 21, 2014  •  Post A Comment

The CBS-owned television stations and Weigel Broadcasting announced a new initiative that will see the launch of a channel CBS is calling “the ultimate TV time capsule,” B&C reports. The project is Decades, which is set to roll out on the digital channels of the 16 CBS O&O’s in the second quarter of next year.

Weigel will be seeking affiliation agreements with additional stations nationwide, the piece notes.

“Decades will draw from over 100 classic series, including ‘I Love Lucy,’ ‘Star Trek,’ ‘Happy Days’ and ‘Cheers,’ as well as movies and footage of historical news events from CBS News and ‘Entertainment Tonight,'” the story reports.

Said Peter Dunn, president, CBS Television Stations: “Decades is the most ambitious and creative subchannel programming service that has ever been created. We are thrilled to partner with Weigel Broadcasting, the leaders in this space, to make smart use of our stations’ spectrums and our companies’ considerable programming assets. This service will be a tremendous new business for CBS and all of the other stations across the country that participate, regardless of their primary network affiliation.”

Weigel has been active in the subchannel space with digi-nets including Me-TV and This TV, the report notes.

“The channel will feature the daily one-hour Decades Retrospectical, which will be produced around the news events and cultural touchstones of a specific day, week or other time frame or theme,” the report adds. “The series and movies airing each day will reflect that day’s theme or event.”

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5 Comments

  1. So, does this mean Me-TV will be going off the air and, if so, will Decades be offered in its place to cable, dish and over the air stations?

  2. I am a regular viewer of Me-TV and I like it very much. They have tv series’ that I can’t watch anywhere else on television and in the way they are presented. i would prefer not to watch them online and buying them on DVD is expensive at this time. I also enjoy Svengoolie which comes from Chicago by Rich Koz. If Me-TV should happen to go, I will miss it very much.

  3. I like MeTV and LOVE Svengoolie

  4. Hello, Weigel is partnering with CBS on a new venture. METV stays put. With the interest and proliferation of these METV knockoffs (Antenna TV and Cozi) it makes great sense for CBS to do something to utilize their vast archive of shows that are sitting on a shelf and merely collecting dust. Good stuff!

  5. COZI may be a “ME-TV knockoff” but Antenna and Nostalgia both predate METV with similar formats.

    I’m getting kind of tired of all these throwback nets, personally. Time for someone to step in and do something different, like a Discovery channel format (the fact PBS hasn’t already done this just staggers me) or a fantasy/SF/horror format. I’d really like to see something like the FREEVIEW digital OTA service they have in the UK but the cable conglomerates will kill anything like that before it ever got a chance.

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