Former American pay television network
Television channel
Esquire Network
|
Country
| United States
|
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Broadcast area
| Nationwide
|
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Headquarters
| Los Angeles, California
|
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|
Language(s)
| English
|
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|
Owner
| |
---|
|
Launched
| October 1, 1998
; 25 years ago
(
1998-10-01
)
|
---|
Closed
| June 28, 2017
; 6 years ago
(
2017-06-28
)
|
---|
Former names
| Style Network (1998?2013)
|
---|
Esquire Network
was an American
pay television
network that was a 50/50
joint venture
between
NBCUniversal
and the
Hearst Corporation
. Launched on October 1, 1998 as
Style Network
, a spin-off of
E!
, the channel initially consisted of fashion, design, and urban lifestyle-themed programming. In 2008, Style shifted its programming towards personality-centric reality shows. The network was relaunched as Esquire Network on September 23, 2013;
[1]
said rebrand was supposed to be on
G4
, but that was given to Style due to G4's low ratings.
[2]
As Esquire Network, the channel focused on travel, cooking, sports and fashion, and also aired reruns of popular sitcoms and dramas.
Due to low ratings and subsequent carriage decline by cable providers, Esquire Network ceased operations as a cable channel on June 28, 2017, to become an online-only brand; no further comments have been made about the online-only model since.
[3]
History
[
edit
]
Style Network
[
edit
]
The channel was originally launched as
Style Network
(although on-air promotions typically referred to it as simply "Style") on October 1, 1998, serving as a spin-off of
E!
. It was intended to leverage E!'s coverage of fashion and to provide an expanded venue for shows such as
Fashion Emergency
. The network focused on
fashion
,
design
,
interior decoration
and urban lifestyle-related programming. Style provided coverage of events like
New York Fashion Week
and showcased various designers. Early programming included:
The Look for Less
,
Shabby Chic with Rachel Ashwell
,
Glow: The Beauty Show
,
Vogue Takes...
,
Stylemaker
,
Model
,
Runway
,
Dining with Style
, and
Homes with Style
. Around 2003, the channel began airing a variety of "makeover" shows. The home makeover show
Clean House
lasted for ten seasons on the network;
How Do I Look?
lasted eight seasons.
Starting around 2008, Style shifted its focus to personality-based reality programing such as
Jerseylicious
,
Tia & Tamera
, and
Big Rich Texas
, along with a female-focused
spin-off
of
The Soup
known as
The Dish
. On June 25, 2012, Style Network was rebranded with a revised logo and a new slogan: "Work it. Love it. Style it."
[4]
[5]
In 2013, the channel launched two
real estate
related shows:
Hot Listings: Miami
and
Built
, which featured male models remodeling houses.
Esquire Network transition
[
edit
]
In December 2012,
NBCUniversal
signed a
brand licensing
deal with the
Hearst Corporation
, owner of
Esquire
magazine, to relaunch
G4
into
Esquire Network
, which would air shows aimed at a
metrosexual
audience about travel, cooking, fashion and other male-targeted programming that is not sports related, including the addition of acquired and archived program content from the NBCUniversal library such as
Party Down
,
Parks and Recreation
and week-delayed episodes of
Late Night with Jimmy Fallon
.
[6]
[7]
[8]
The rebranding was scheduled to take place on April 22, 2013,
[7]
but was moved to an unspecified date in the summer on April 15, 2013, as network general manager Adam Stotsky stated the rebranding was pushed back in order to have a broader slate of original series to launch than would have been available for the April launch. In May 2013, the launch date was pushed to September 23, 2013, with its first program being an 80th anniversary special on
Esquire
which was rebroadcast later in primetime.
[9]
On September 9, 2013, NBCUniversal announced that it would replace Style Network with Esquire Network, leaving G4 "as is for the foreseeable future, though it's highly unlikely the company will invest in more original programming" according to
The Hollywood Reporter
.
[2]
One of the factors was likely Style's distribution on DirecTV, giving Esquire more homes at launch with the Style channel slot than they would have had with G4 (G4 had earlier been dropped by DirecTV in 2010 due to the channel's low viewership and had never been able to come to terms on a new carriage agreement).
This forced last-second changes to Esquire Network's planned schedule outside of primetime. Cable-edited reruns of
Sex and the City
(a series which took heavy criticism from
Esquire
magazine during its original run) remained on its schedule until December 2013 (when the rights were shifted to
E!
), with most of Style's series quietly shelved, or transferred to E!,
Bravo
and
Oxygen
.
[2]
International versions of Style Network continued to exist several years after, as the Esquire brand license was restricted solely to the United States. The original iteration of G4 ceased on December 31, 2014.
The sudden change in networks surprised both viewers and providers, who had already shifted or expected the G4 channel space to a more appropriate place among other men's networks, and now had to deal with shifting Esquire's channel position away from women's networks, along with having to answer customer inquiries about the sudden demise of the Style Network and its programming. More privately, talent which had been brought on for Style programming, including the Mowry twins, reacted angrily to seeing their projects cancelled without notice or be shifted among other networks with different programming priorities, and NBCUniversal would have to deal with the repercussions of ending a network's life with only two weeks' notice.
[
citation needed
]
Style made no mention of the oncoming rebranding until September 18, when a 60-second farewell clip was posted on its
YouTube
channel serving as a retrospective of the network's history and ending with a thanks to the channel's audience for their viewership. Other social media platforms for individual Style programs also began to mention the end of the network on that day.
[10]
The last program to air on Style on September 22, 2013, was an overnight repeat of the
Tia & Tamera
season finale episode "Twerkin' 9 to 5" (which became its de facto series finale as
Tia
and
Tamera Mowry
opted not to continue with the series) at 2 a.m. Eastern Time, with the nightly three-hour
paid programming
block leading into the Esquire Network launch special after a 30-second abbreviated version of the Style farewell clip aired on the channel space. The changeover occurred on September 23, 2013, at 6 a.m.
Eastern Time
.
[1]
2016?2017 carriage decline
[
edit
]
Throughout 2015 and into 2016, the majority of the original programs produced for Esquire Network ended up being low-rated, with only the youth football reality series
Friday Night Tykes
and the network's
Men in Blazers
?produced live broadcasts of
Pamplona
's
running of the bulls
receiving any critical acclaim or notice.
[
citation needed
]
The rest of its lineup was criticized
[
by whom?
]
for depending on derivative and "copycat" formats of better programming, which was often found on other networks or produced for free consumption independently and uploaded to streaming video providers such as
YouTube
and
Vimeo
. After only several months, the network stopped airing repeats of
Late Night with Jimmy Fallon
after its February 2014 end, immediately upon his move to the higher-profile
Tonight Show
, which NBC refused to dilute the value of with cable repeats.
American Ninja Warrior
, which had started on G4, was expected to be a linchpin of Esquire Network's lineup, but with the delay of the network's launch to the fall of 2013, NBCUniversal did not want to wait to launch the season, and the program had success airing on NBC during the summer as repeats in previous seasons. The show's sixth season, which had been taped expecting to air as part of Esquire Network and visually featured its logo in prominent places, then moved to NBC for the 2014 summer season, and airing as a new season on the broadcast network, proved the show's worth with great ratings. NBCUniversal decided to move the series permanently to NBC, leaving Esquire Network with repeats rather than new episodes, and even before its launch, removing one of the network's G4-era critical series from being used to promote its other content.
Though it did receive a spin-off as consolation,
Team Ninja Warrior
, Esquire Network had no other compatible programming to promote it, and it never cracked the top 100 cable shows in any of its first season airings. It was moved to USA Network for its second season and beyond.
Press attention for the network's programming soon was limited to the bookends of their premieres, then to their eventual notice of cancellation, including little to no promotion from
Esquire
magazine itself due to a lack of compatible promotion. The magazine, which under the brand licensing deal was expected to be used to source new series ideas or its writers participating in factual programming such as countdowns, was also severely underutilized, with most of the content developed for the network ending up being from traditional talent pipelines used by NBCUniversal, rather than the magazine itself.
Due to these multiple issues, the network began to carry more repeats of existing library comedy and drama series (many of which were seen over-the-air for free on sister networks
Cozi TV
,
LXTV
, and NBC's streaming apps, along with other NBCU networks), which again brought the network towards the same issues befalling G4,
Chiller
, and
Cloo
, where little original content being produced made it a network viewers and providers claimed provided little value for its monthly carriage fees.
On October 1, 2016,
Dish Network
removed the channel from the lineup. As with their earlier dropping of
Cloo
, the provider stated that most of the network's rerun-centric programming was duplicative of that available on other networks and streaming services. The only notice of the dropping was through the provider's monthly billing statement.
AT&T
then gave notice that Esquire Network would be dropped from
U-verse
and
DirecTV
on December 15, 2016, a move that cut the network's availability by 25% and removed almost all consumer-based satellite service availability outside of niche
C-Band
consumers.
[11]
[12]
Charter Communications
through its
Time Warner Cable
,
Bright House Networks
and
Spectrum
subsidiaries removed the channel from their lineup nationwide on April 25, 2017 (the same day they removed
Chiller
from their lineup, also nationwide), leaving
Verizon FiOS
and
Google Fiber
as a few of the last cable providers to carry Esquire Network until its demise; online access to the network's
TV Everywhere
live feed was maintained by Charter until the network's termination.
End of operations
[
edit
]
On January 18, 2017, it was announced that the network would end all pay television distribution in the summer of 2017 and convert to an online-only model. The network went off the air on June 28 at noon Eastern time. The network programmed a final marathon of
Friday Night Tykes
that day, ending with the season one finale, "Finish What We Started".
[13]
[14]
After the episode ended, a "thank you" slide was shown with the network's web address (which shortly thereafter was turned into a redirect to the main Esquire website), after which the channel space created by the Style Network in 1998 folded and ceased to exist.
[15]
No further comment was made in regards to the supposed online-only version of the network, and Esquire's "TV" section on their website now contains the general features and behind-the-scenes footage prevalent on most magazine sites. The network's final two projects,
Edgehill
(a
true crime
series about the
Murder of Suzanne Jovin
) and
Borderland USA
(a reality series about the
U.S. Border Patrol Tactical Unit
) were promised to air on the new digital version of the network, but have since been abandoned.
[3]
By coincidence,
G4's Canadian network
outlived both its mother American network and the Esquire Network, ending operations on August 31, 2017, two months longer than Esquire.
G4 would relaunch in the United States in a new hybrid cable-digital form on November 16, 2021, after a year of lead-up promotions and announcements, though it ended operations itself on November 18, 2022.
[16]
Hearst has since re-established
Esquire
-branded programming through the stations of
Hearst Television
and its streaming network Very Local beginning in 2021, with
In Transit
, a tourism travelogue series hosted by
Dave Holmes
.
[17]
Programming
[
edit
]
International
[
edit
]
Internationally, Style Network was launched in the
Arab world
in December 2007 on
Showtime Arabia
,
[18]
across
Southern
and
Western Africa
during back in November 2007 on
DStv
,
[19]
in the
United Kingdom
and
Ireland
on June 10, 2008, in
Japan
on World on Demand,
Australia
in November 2009, and Poland in August 2011. The network was also launched in CEE, from February 19, 2011, until May 1, 2014
Style Network continues to air in international markets, though its
British
/
Irish
version ceased operations on December 9, 2013,
[20]
while its
African
version ceased operations on March 31, 2015.
[21]
The brand licensing agreement with Hearst for Esquire Network was exclusive to the United States, and NBCU and Hearst never pursued any international versions for Esquire Network.
In 2014, the
Australian version of the Style Network
made its first local commission,
Fashion Bloggers
, after its American counterpart rebranded.
[22]
Style Australia shut down on 17 December 2019 as part of a restructuring of NBCU's Australian operations and a broad re-map of
Foxtel
's channel lineup.
References
[
edit
]
- ^
a
b
Steigrad, Alexandra (December 30, 2013).
"Ratings In for Esquire Network Launch"
.
WWD
. Retrieved
January 2,
2014
.
- ^
a
b
c
Rose, Lacey (September 9, 2013).
"NBCU Switch-Up: Esquire Network to Take Over Style, Not G4 (Exclusive)"
.
The Hollywood Reporter
.
- ^
a
b
Nellie, Andreeva (January 18, 2017).
"Esquire To Shut Down As Linear Network & Become Digital-Only Brand Following Carriage Losses"
.
Deadline Hollywood
. Retrieved
June 7,
2020
.
- ^
"Style Media Embraces Stylish Living with Glossy, Bold Rebrand"
(Press release). NBCUniversal. June 20, 2012. Archived from
the original
on September 29, 2013
. Retrieved
February 27,
2013
.
- ^
Rose, Lacey (June 20, 2012).
"Style Network Unveils Bold Rebrand, New Logo"
.
The Hollywood Reporter
. Retrieved
February 27,
2013
.
- ^
Rose, Lacey (December 7, 2012).
"NBCUniversal, Hearst Corp. Close Deal to Rebrand G4 as Esquire Channel"
.
The Hollywood Reporter
. Retrieved
December 8,
2012
.
- ^
a
b
G4 Staff (February 11, 2013).
"G4 To Be Rebranded As The Esquire Network On April 22nd"
.
G4TV.com
. Retrieved
February 12,
2013
.
{{
cite web
}}
: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (
link
)
- ^
Andreeva, Nellie (April 15, 2013).
"Esquire Network's Launch Pushed To Summer"
.
Deadline Hollywood
. Retrieved
April 15,
2013
.
- ^
Bibel, Sara (May 29, 2013).
"Esquire Network to Debut September 23; Primetime Kicks Off With Special Celebrating Esquire Magazine's 80th Anniversary"
.
TV by the Numbers
. Archived from
the original
on June 15, 2013
. Retrieved
May 30,
2013
.
- ^
15 Years of Style
on
YouTube
(Uploaded September 18, 2013)
- ^
Holloway, Daniel (December 14, 2016).
"DirecTV Drops Esquire Network"
.
Variety
. Retrieved
December 15,
2016
.
- ^
Littleton, Cynthia (August 18, 2016).
"Demise of Participant's Pivot Reflects Niche Cable's Diminished Fortunes"
.
Variety
. Retrieved
February 7,
2017
.
- ^
Holloway, Daniel (January 18, 2017).
"NBCUniversal to Shut Down Esquire Network Cable Channel, Relaunch Brand as Digital Platform (EXCLUSIVE)"
.
Variety
. Retrieved
January 18,
2017
.
- ^
"Esquire network will transition from cable to online channel"
.
Yahoo News
. January 18, 2017
. Retrieved
January 18,
2017
.
- ^
Esquire Network shutdown RIP! 1998?2017
on
YouTube
- ^
Bankhurst, Adam (October 16, 2022).
"G4 Is Being Shut Down Less Than a Year After It Launched"
.
IGN
. Retrieved
October 17,
2022
.
- ^
Malone, Michael (June 14, 2023).
"Esquire's 'In Transit' Season 3 Starts on Hearst TV's Very Local June 21"
.
Broadcasting & Cable
. Retrieved
June 14,
2023
.
- ^
"The Style Network launches on SHOWTIME"
. Zawya. December 4, 2007
. Retrieved
February 27,
2013
.
- ^
"New on The Style Network in November 2008"
.
TVSA
. November 6, 2008
. Retrieved
February 27,
2013
.
- ^
Middleton, Richard.
"NBCU ditches UK's Style Network"
.
C21 Media
. Retrieved
August 5,
2015
.
- ^
"Style Network no longer available on DStv from February 2015"
.
Screen Africa
. Archived from
the original
on July 15, 2015
. Retrieved
August 5,
2015
.
- ^
"First local commission for The Style Network"
. if.com.au. July 21, 2014. Archived from
the original
on July 28, 2015
. Retrieved
July 28,
2015
.
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Daily newspapers
| | |
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Weekly newspapers
| |
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Magazines
| United States
| |
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International
| |
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|
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Hearst Television
(
Hearst Media
Production Group
)
Stations affiliated
| |
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Radio stations
| |
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Entertainment
& syndication
| |
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Business media
| |
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Real estate
| |
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1
Owned by Montclair Communications and operated by Hearst under an
LMA
.
2
Carries the network in a secondary status.
|
External links
[
edit
]