Social Feed

"This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end"
..Jim Morrison, The Doors

I figured now that the end of Equity Broadcasting is pretty much near, I want to say a very hearty "Thank You" to Equity Broadcasting from this Free-to-Air member for 5+ years of interesting programming. When I first got into free to air back late 03, I hadn't really heard about them. Then I found a satellite that had a bunch of "local" channels on them. Who knows that 5+ years later they would give some of us a lot of great programming, some not so great programming, and a lot to talk about here at Satelliteguys.
When I stumbled upon the 3 transponders I really didn't care much for them. Most of the stations were either Pax (now Ion), Univision or independent stations that Equity had purchased and had infomercials on most of the day. Not much variety. But Equity started changing network affiliations around. They changed some to UPN and had some WB channels. Then they had a lawsuit against Pax to drop the affiliation on a few channels. Pax at the time planned to be a bigger network with more programming and they were still showing infomercials 20 hours a day. So Equity was able to drop the affiliation. Then the fun began….seemed like every week Equity was changing affiliations on some of the stations. We never knew what we were going to see on those. I wonder what the cable folks were wondering?
Equity seemed to be pretty stable programming wise until UPN & WB decided to become the CW. I thought Equity would get CW since they had WB already but they passed. I guess they had something better in the pipeline. That "better" was RTN the Retro TV Network and some thought this was going to be big. Equity took a chance and it seemed to work. Too bad the money ran out and they had a fallout with the "new" owner of RTN. That signaled the end of Equity. They had lost the RTN affiliate on a bunch of stations and had to scramble to find something to fill it. They never did recover after that.

Some memories of Equity channels that I wont forget

-stumbling upon the channels and being hooked
-putting up a dedicated dish up for them
-"Lick TV"..their 1st incarnation of their own network. I loved it as they had wrestling and boxing on 7 nights a week. Allowed me to see wrestling like 3PW wrestling, Womens Extreme Wrestling (god that show was corny but ruled) and NWA Wildside (my local affiliate had pulled NWA off the air so this is how I could see it)
-another show from Lick TV's archive. "Outdoor Adventures with the Rajin Sexy Cajuns". Cute women hunting and fishing….oh and rolling around in a pigpen mud wrestling. Made Saturday nights kinda fun
-Those corny Lick TV ID's…"throw your remote away" or "turn the channel and I'll cut off your pinky" (those were their slogans at the time)
-The baseball games on there. At one time they had the OTA games of the Royals, the Cardinals, the Rangers, the Astros, the Mets, the Yankees and at the Indians. So on a typical Sunday you may be able to see 4 games…sometimes (if the schedule was right), 6 of them. If the Mets were on the west coast and the Indians were at home, you could see both games on WNGS, The Cards on KWWF or KFDF, the Rangers or Astros on KYPX (KKYK) and the Royals on KWBM or KWBS.
-Other sports. Big East football & Basketball and Big 12 Basketball & Football on a variety of stations. Being in a Big 10 market it was nice to see Big 12 football on other stations. Also KWWF sometimes would pick up the bigger football games that would be pre-empted on the Iowa City ABC affiliate.
-NFL & MLB on Fox. Originally there was 2 Fox affiliates (WMQF in Michigan and KPBI in Arkansas) which gave us a few extra NFL games (well…I guess you could call the Lions NFL ) and MLB games.
-Equity putting Fox Montana on KU Band..that gave us a Fox affiliate that was time shifted and a lot of extra NFL & MLB Games
-The Tube. I LOVED that channel. While it wasn't an Equity owned item, they had it on one of the transponder. That got folks talking about those channels. For the uninformed, The Tube was what MTV was when it started. Just music videos. No other stuff
-RetroJams. When The Tube went national it got pulled off Equity channels. Equity created "Retro Jams" which was in 3 different incarnations. Sure some of the videos looked like they were pulled off you tube…oh wait…some were and sure you could only watch for about an hour at a time because hearing "the humpty dance" 3 times in 5 hours on a 4th of July proved their play list wasn't the most elaborate.
-The "wheel of affiliates"…there was a time that it seemed like weekly a channel was changing affiliations. Those were fun to see what they were going to be next. I felt bad for the cable folks
-The famous (or infamous) change of a couple of those. Daystar to Lick TV back to Daystar back to Lick TV. Boy there is a culture clash. Religious going to something called "Lick TV"
-The rumor back in 04/05 when we thought Equity was going exclusively to C-Band. That made the FTA section at Satelliteguys interesting to say the least
-Scrambling of one Fox affiliate…then we thought it would ALL be scrambled
-Retro TV Network. What started as a nighttime only thing (primetime) grew into a huge thing on Equity. Some folks loved it, some hated it. I was in the middle. I liked the A-Team. This seemed to be the longest lasting affiliation at the end.
-The stability of the stations network wise for a long time
-Unreliable Sources. God that show was a hoot.
-Equity dropping NWA Anarchy from the lineup
-Waking up to the "red screen of death" when RTN was pulled from Equity
-Those public access movies on the former RTN stations for about a month
-Finding out about Equity's troubles and every time the signal would go out due to thunderstorms at the uplink seeing posts of "Did Equity pull the plug?"
-Adding AMGTV & ThisTV to the former RTN affiliates
-Equity selling off almost everything and sadly (like seeing a family member die slowly) channels being pulled.
-Losing channels on 6/12 due to the digital conversion
-gaining TuffTV. Best 2 weeks of programming for me personally seeing the old Mid South wrestling
-Sadly seeing more channels go to slates knowing they've been pulled from Equity and to the new owners
-8/15/09...the death blow. Seeing almost all the channels with a slate screen

Good Bye Equity. It's been a helluva ride the last 5+ years. You may be gone but in the mind of myself and alot of members here you wont be forgotten.