CBS Testing Its Subchannel "Decades" in NYC

The latest Classic TV channel, Decades, is now on WCBS-TV 2.2 in New York, where their now-cancelled local low-budget all-news channel had previously been seen. CBS intends to have Decades on all its O&O channels, as a subchannel, in the next few months.

http://audienceservices.cbs.com/feedback/decades.htm

One day, every time I tuned in, they were airing "Family Affair" with Brian Keith and Sebastian Cabot. Saturday morning, Decades simulcast the CBS Morning News, and now I'm seeing F Troop with Forrest Tucker and Larry Storch. This seems to be the angle they are going after, to separate Decades from other Classic TV channels, such as Me-TV, Antenna and NBC's subchannel Cozi. They won't have a regular schedule where Program A airs from 7 to 7:30 and Program B airs from 7:30 to 8. I guess it will be assorted blocks of TV shows and movies, from the CBS archives, that will change day by day.

The press release also says they'll be programming a daily one-hour program called "Decades Retrospectical." It will be look into past events, news and pop culture. I wonder, how much can they invest in a daily one-hour program aimed at a subchannel audience, which will likely be above the 18-49 demo most advertisers seek? Sure, they'll have CBS News archives to draw from, but someone will have to do that work and they'll need someone to anchor it. Do any of us, when we catch an episode of a favorite show growing up, be it "Three's Company" or "Donna Reed" or "Burns & Allen" really want to see original programming on that Classic TV subchannel?

So far, all the commercials are for products you can buy through a 1-800 number. That probably means the advertiser only pays CBS when they get a buyer using that number.

The press release says Decades will be drawing from past CBS shows, such as I Love Lucy and Star Trek. But aren't Lucy and Star Trek already airing on other Classic TV networks, as well as cable networks such as Hallmark and SyFy?

Apparently, CBS is not ready for a real roll out, since I can't find the Decades program line up anywhere. It's not on the WCBS-TV website, or on a Decades website. And since it's not on my cable system, I can't find it on the cable program guide. (The press release says they intend to have cable systems carrying the subchannel.) I do have a program guide on my over-the-air TV but again, CBS isn't feeding that service anything other than the word Decades.

Star Trek wasn't a CBS show. The syndication rights must have shifted over the decades.

CTListener said:

Star Trek wasn't a CBS show. The syndication rights must have shifted over the decades.

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Desilu, which was bought by Paramount, which is a CBS company. Paramount produced all the Star Trek movies.

The former Desilu studio (originally the RKO Pictures studio) is now part of the Paramount lot on Melrose Avenue.

The launch for Decades is also on WDJT-DT4 in Milwaukee (schedule; look at 58.4); they're doing a 'binge' of their entire library with all of their shows airing their entire runs consecutively, except for the usual three hours of Alex Paen low-effort E/I stuff on Saturday mornings. They soft-launched on the 16th intending to grab abandoned Live Well Network affiliates when that was supposed to die on the 16th, and they did have WBAY in Green Bay's DT3 channel as part of the launch. But then LWN extended two more months to wind down to O&O distribution and fill the time before Laff's launch, so WBAY tagged out until then because of the usual 'this is the end of the world' feedback from those who don't want Live Well to go away (it's pretty much the SoapNet redux all over again there).

The official launch is on Memorial Day; the retrospective show has a host in former WBBM'er Bill Kurtis. And indeed, CBS got all the rights to Desilu and Paramount shows when the Viacom/CBS split occurred (I still think CBS came out wayyy better than Viacom did in that deal despite the billboard and radio yokes they also have). CBS can pretty much air what they want, even if other networks are carrying the shows, since they do own them.

Does Nielsen break out subchannel viewing in its ratings or is it all counted as viewing of the station? I assume knowledge of this data, if it exists, is restricted to the station/corporate people who paid for it, but maybe someone in the biz who might be here could tell us, in general terms. whether appreciable numbers of people are watching the subchannels. My 90+ dad always seems to have This TV or Me TV on, so I'm thinking 75-to-grave might be a demo that likes subchannels. Grit sounds like it would be his cup of tea, too, but it's not available where he lives. We'll have to see about Decades. So, who's watching, how many, and is there any money to be made?

And most importantly, which programming is scheduled to run? The other day, I saw an episode of "Webster" on Hulu, and it had a "CBS" bug on the lower left of the screen. The show is distributed by Paramount, which is related to CBS, but "Webster" actually ran on ABC. I wonder if that will be one of the shows that ends up on Decades.

CTListener said:

Does Nielsen break out subchannel viewing in its ratings or is it all counted as viewing of the station? I assume knowledge of this data, if it exists, is restricted to the station/corporate people who paid for it, but maybe someone in the biz who might be here could tell us, in general terms. whether appreciable numbers of people are watching the subchannels.

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Nielsen does monitor viewing of subchannels. Many local stations won't buy their own subchannel ratings, and relatively few of the subchannel networks buy the ratings.

Limited data is published, but the basic answer is that viewership is very low.
A press release from Me-TV a year ago crowed about record viewership levels a certain week in late 2013. Prime time: 300,000 viewers, 70,000 of which were adults 18-49.
Bounce recently declared that they had 341,000 viewers for an original program in October, including 121,000 adults 18-49.

These numbers are a little more than half of what could be considered niche cable networks, like OWN and HGTV and a tiny fraction of major players like TBS and FOX News.

I think this goes into the category of investing in technology that might be a factor some day. You have to start somewhere. This is one of those things. As cable bills go up (mine just went up another 10%), this may become more of a factor. Content companies are looking to reach audiences. Once the audiences discover these channels, there will be a base for advertising.