The WB 100+ Station Group (originally called The WeB from its developmental stages until March 1999) was a national programming service of

The WB The WB Television Network (shortened to The WB, stylized as "THE WB", and nicknamed the "Frog Network" and/or "The Frog" for its former mascot Michigan J. Frog) was an American television network that ran from 1995 to 2006. It launched on ter ...

—owned by the

Warner Bros. Entertainment Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (WBEI), commonly known as Warner Bros. (WB), is an American filmed entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California and the main namesake subsidiary of Warner Bro ...

division of

Time Warner Warner Media, LLC ( doing business as WarnerMedia) was an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate owned by AT&T. It was headquartered at the 30 Hudson Yards complex in New York City. It was established as Time Warne ...

, the

Tribune Company Tribune Media Company, also known as Tribune Company, was an American multimedia conglomerate headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Through Tribune Broadcasting, Tribune Media was one of the largest television broadcasting companies, owning 39 ...

, and group founder and longtime WB network president Jamie Kellner—intended primarily for

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, p ...

television markets ranked #100 and above by

Nielsen Media Research Nielsen Media Research (NMR) is an American firm that measures media audiences, including television, radio, theatre, films (via the AMC Theatres MAP program), and newspapers. Headquartered in New York City, it is best known for the Nielsen rat ...

estimates. Operating from September 21, 1998 to September 17, 2006, The WB 100+ comprised an

affiliate Affiliation or affiliate may refer to: * Affiliate (commerce), a legal form of entity relationship used in Business Law * Affiliation (family law), a legal form of family relationship * Affiliate marketing * Affiliate network or affiliation platfo ...

group that was initially made exclusively of individually branded

cable television Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with bro ...

channels serving areas that lacked availability for a locally based WB broadcast affiliate and supplied a nationalized subfeed consisting of WB network and syndicated programs; in the network's waning years, the WB 100+ group began maintaining primary affiliations on full-power and low-power stations in certain markets serviced by the feed. The WB 100+ Station Group was also essentially structured as a de facto national feed of The WB, and maintained a master schedule of syndicated and brokered programs for broadcast on all affiliates of the feed outside of time periods designated for The WB's prime time, daytime and Saturday morning programming. Programming and promotional services for The WB 100+ were housed at The WB's corporate headquarters in

Burbank Burbank may refer to: Places Australia * Burbank, Queensland, a suburb in Brisbane United States * Burbank, California, a city in Los Angeles County * Burbank, Santa Clara County, California, a census-designated place * Burbank, Illinois, ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

; engineering and

master control Master control is the technical hub of a broadcast operation common among most over-the-air television stations and television networks. It is distinct from a production control room (PCR) in television studios where the activities such as swit ...

operations were based at the California Video Center in

Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

History

Pre-launch

The history of The WB 100+ can be traced back to a charter affiliation agreement reached on December 3, 1993, between The WB and

Tribune Broadcasting Tribune Broadcasting Company, LLC was an American media company which operated as a subsidiary of Tribune Media, a media conglomerate based in Chicago, Illinois. The group owned and operated television station, television and radio stations thro ...

(whose corporate parent, the Tribune Company (later

Tribune Media Tribune Media Company, also known as Tribune Company, was an American multimedia conglomerate headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Through Tribune Broadcasting, Tribune Media was one of the largest television broadcasting companies, owning 39 ...

), held minority ownership in the network), which resulted in Tribune's

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

television flagship

WGN-TV WGN-TV (channel 9) is a television station in Chicago, Illinois, United States, serving as the local outlet for The CW. It is owned and operated by the network's majority owner, Nexstar Media Group, and is sister station, sister to the company ...

carrying The WB's prime time programming (the

Kids' WB Kids' WB (stylized as Kids' WB!) was an American children's programming block that originally aired on The WB from September 9, 1995, to September 16, 2006, and later on The CW from September 23, 2006, to May 17, 2008. Initially launched as a co ...

block – which debuted in September 1995, eight months after The WB's launch – would air instead on

independent station An independent station is a broadcast station, usually a television station, not affiliated with a larger broadcast television network, network. As such, it only broadcasts broadcast syndication, syndicated programs it has purchased; brokered pr ...

WCIU-TV WCIU-TV (channel 26) is an independent television station in Chicago, Illinois, United States. It is the flagship television property of locally based Weigel Broadcasting, which has owned the station since its inception, and is sister to two ...

before moving to WGN-TV in September 2004). Through that deal, WGN's national

superstation ''Superstation'' (alternatively rendered as "super station" or informally as "SuperStation") is a term in North American broadcasting that has several meanings. Commonly, a "superstation" is a form of distant signal, a broadcast television sign ...

feed (later separately branded as

WGN America WGN America was an American subscription television network that operated from November 9, 1978 to February 28, 2021. The service was originally uplinked to satellite by United Video Inc. as a national feed of Chicago independent station WGN-T ...

and operating as a conventional basic cable channel) would act as a default WB affiliate for select markets where the network would have difficulty securing an affiliation with a

broadcast Broadcasting is the data distribution, distribution of sound, audio audiovisual content to dispersed audiences via a electronic medium (communication), mass communications medium, typically one using the electromagnetic spectrum (radio waves), ...

television station A television station is a set of equipment managed by a business, organisation or other entity such as an amateur television (ATV) operator, that transmits video content and audio content via radio waves directly from a transmitter on the earth's s ...

at The WB's launch on January 11, 1995 (either due to the lack of available over-the-air stations or the absence of a secondary affiliation with an existing station within the market). This arrangement was conceived to give the network enough time to find affiliates in those "white areas" (a term referring to areas in which a national broadcaster does not have market clearance), allowing the WGN superstation feed to nationally distribute The WB's programming to a broader audience than would be possible without such an agreement in the interim. Some cable providers also carried either

affiliate

KTLA KTLA (channel 5) is a television station in Los Angeles, California, United States, serving as the West Coast flagship station of The CW. It is the largest directly owned property of the network's majority owner, Nexstar Media Group, and is ...

(for areas in the

Pacific Time Zone The Pacific Time Zone (PT) is a time zone encompassing parts of western Canada, the western United States, and western Mexico. Places in this zone observe standard time by subtracting eight hours from Coordinated Universal Time ( UTC−08:00 ...

) or

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

affiliate

WPIX WPIX (channel 11) is a television station in New York City, serving as the ''de facto'' flagship of The CW Television Network. Owned by Mission Broadcasting, the station is operated by CW majority owner Nexstar Media Group under a local market ...

(for areas in the

Eastern Time Zone The Eastern Time Zone (ET) is a time zone encompassing part or all of 23 U.S. states, states in the eastern part of the United States, parts of eastern Canada, and the state of Quintana Roo in Mexico. * Eastern Standard Time (EST) is five ...

) depending on the location in addition to or in lieu of WGN's national feed.

Development and launch

Jamie Kellner – co-founder, and original president of The WB – conceived the concept of a cable-originated programming service that would serve smaller markets, originally titled The WeB, in June 1996; the network formally presented its concept for the service, which would function similarly to the reasoning behind the agreement with the WGN superstation feed, to cable providers on September 24 of that year. Kellner had previous experience in developing such a service; during his tenure as

Fox Foxes are small-to-medium-sized omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull; upright, triangular ears; a pointed, slightly upturned snout; and a long, bushy tail ("brush"). Twelve species ...

's original network president from 1986 to 1993, Kellner developed a similar (but less localized) service,

Foxnet Foxnet was a national cable programming service of the Fox Broadcasting Company (known simply as Fox) that was owned by the Fox Entertainment Group division of News Corporation. The service, which operated (in its original form) from June 6, 1991 ...

, a cable channel owned by

News Corporation The original incarnation of News Corporation (abbreviated News Corp. and also variously known as News Corporation Limited) was an American Multinational corporation, multinational mass media corporation founded and controlled by media mogul Ru ...

(the corporate parent of Fox at the time) that operated from June 1991 to September 2006, and was the first cable channel that designed to distribute a broadcast network's programming directly to cable providers in smaller markets where the network could not maintain an exclusive affiliation due to the limited number of available commercial television stations. After Russell Myerson (who would serve as the group's

executive vice president A vice president or vice-president, also director in British English, is an officer in government or business who is below the president (chief executive officer) in rank. It can also refer to executive vice presidents, signifying that the vi ...

and

general manager A general manager (GM) is an executive who has overall responsibility for managing both the revenue and cost elements of a company's income statement, known as profit & loss (P&L) responsibility. A general manager usually oversees most or all of ...

) joined The WB in 1997, Kellner came to Myerson with his idea for a national cable feed of the network that would distribute WB programming to these "white area" markets with five or fewer commercial stations (including some markets where

UPN The United Paramount Network (UPN) was an American broadcast television network that operated from 1995 to 2006. It was originally a joint venture between Chris-Craft Industries (later sold to News Corporation)'s subsidiary, United Television, ...

, which debuted five days after The WB launched, managed to obtain an affiliation). Time Warner, the network's majority owner, commissioned

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

(for hardware and infrastructure) and Enterprise Systems Group (later known as Encoda and then

Harris Corporation Harris Corporation was an American technology company, defense contractor, and information technology service (economics), services provider that produced wireless equipment, tactical radios, electronic systems, night vision device, night visi ...

; contracted for software systems at the national and local level) to develop a national data server network that would digitally transmit local and national advertisements, promos,

station identification Station identification (ident, network ID, channel ID or bumper (broadcasting), bumper) is the practice of radio and television stations and broadcast network, networks identifying themselves on-air, typically by means of a call sign or brand na ...

s and customized logo bugs for each individual affiliate to headends operating the local WB 100+ affiliate in their home market. The network would be relayed to a "station in a box" (SIB), a wireless PC-based system that was programmed to download (through a data feed distributed via

satellite A satellite or an artificial satellite is an object, typically a spacecraft, placed into orbit around a celestial body. They have a variety of uses, including communication relay, weather forecasting, navigation ( GPS), broadcasting, scient ...

), store and

insert An SQL INSERT statement adds one or more records to any single table in a relational database. Basic form Insert statements have the following form: The number of columns and values must be the same. If a column is not specified, the default va ...

advertising appropriate to the individual affiliate's home market in pre-determined time periods set through a

playlist A playlist is a list of video or audio files that can be played back on a media player, either sequentially or in a shuffled order. In its most general form, an audio playlist is simply a list of songs that can be played once or in a loop. ...

over the satellite-delivered national feed as well as to transfer the programming feeds, via a disseminated address header based on the affiliate's designated call letters. The SIB units – which cost $9,000 per unit – were sold to each prospective affiliate operator with costs fully shouldered by The WB; the SIBs held 90 minutes of programming material at a time, in addition to transmitting advertisements and program promotions, and

logging Logging is the process of cutting, processing, and moving trees to a location for transport. It may include skidder, skidding, on-site processing, and loading of trees or trunk (botany), logs onto logging truck, truckstrafficked local advertising via logfiles sent over the Internet to a Novar management system located at The WB's corporate offices, that handled trafficking, programming feed dissemination and local insertion to individual affiliates. All programming provided by the service was distributed to WB 100+ affiliates via a

centralcasting In terrestrial radio and television broadcasting, centralcasting refers to the use of systems automation by which customised signals for broadcast by multiple individual stations may be created at one central facility. Definition Centralcasting ...

hub based at the California Video Center in southwestern

(near

Los Angeles International Airport Los Angeles International Airport is the primary international airport serving Los Angeles and its Greater Los Angeles, surrounding metropolitan area, in the U.S. state of California. LAX is located in the Westchester, Los Angeles, Westcheste ...

). Originally slated for a September 8 launch, The WeB was launched at 7:00 p.m.

Eastern Time The Eastern Time Zone (ET) is a time zone encompassing part or all of 23 states in the eastern part of the United States, parts of eastern Canada, and the state of Quintana Roo in Mexico. * Eastern Standard Time (EST) is five hours behi ...

on September 21, 1998 on 80 cable-only affiliates, reaching 2.8 million cable television subscribers in the United States – the largest simultaneous launch of a station group in the history of American television. The service (which was renamed The WB 100+ Station Group in March 1999) was created to serve a similar capacity that Superstation WGN held as a national distributor of The WB – the difference being that stations within The WB 100+ group were structured in the manner of a local broadcast station: local WB 100+ affiliates were managed by either a local cable provider or an affiliate of a larger over-the-air television station (usually those affiliated with networks that were established long before The WB debuted in January 1995), which may have produced some local programming – such as a prime time newscast – or televised local sporting events. WB 100+ stations also aired local

commercial Commercial may refer to: * (adjective for) commerce, a system of voluntary exchange of products and services ** (adjective for) trade, the trading of something of economic value such as goods, services, information or money * a dose of advertising ...

inserts and promotions, although promotions for syndicated programs aired on the service omitted affiliate references (either in the form of verbal identification or use of the affiliate's logo) in favor of network branding and were not customized to reference the program's local airtime (all airtimes listed in syndicated program promos were based on their scheduling in the Eastern and

Central Time Zone The North American Central Time Zone (CT) is a time zone in parts of Canada, the United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It ...

s), with the announcer being used to read the promo's airtime card only identifying that the program airs " oday/tonight/tomorrow/day of weekon The WB". Each affiliate had their own individual branding (usually in the form of a fictional

call sign In broadcasting and radio communications, a call sign (also known as a call name or call letters—and historically as a call signal—or abbreviated as a call) is a unique identifier for a transmitter station. A call sign can be formally as ...

, the combination of "The WB" name with either the parent station's

city of license In U.S., Canadian, and Mexican broadcasting, a city of license or community of license is the community that a radio station or television station is officially licensed to serve by that country's broadcast regulator. In North American broadcast ...

/cable franchise's service area or a regional descriptor of the area, or both). As part of the initial six-year affiliation agreements signed in late 1997 and throughout 1998, cable providers that operated local WB 100+ affiliates received the service's programming free of charge, instead of being required to pay a carriage fee directly to the network (as providers were required to do when they agreed to carry Foxnet at its launch); in addition, affiliates and their advertising sales partners shared a percentage of the revenue earned through the sale of local ads. The WB 100+ was designed to comply with Nielsen regulations defining what constitutes a local station; this allowed viewership totals from the cable-only affiliates to be counted alongside the network's conventional broadcast affiliates to accurately count toward the national ratings for WB network programming. As time went on, The WB 100+ expanded, increasing its body of cable-only affiliates, while also adding affiliations with conventional broadcast television stations in a few markets. By September 2001, The WB 100+'s national availability had increased to 7.4 million households. The service's programming reached 109 out of 111 television markets within those eligible to affiliate with The WB 100+, totaling nine million households by January 2005. By the time The WB ceased operations in September 2006, the only eligible market never to have been served by a WB 100+ affiliate was

Lafayette, Indiana Lafayette ( ) is a city in and is the county seat of Tippecanoe County, Indiana, United States, located northwest of Indianapolis and southeast of Chicago. According to the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population of Lafayette ...

, which received WB programming via WTTK (a satellite station of

WTTV WTTV (channel 4) and WTTK (channel 29) are television stations licensed respectively to Bloomington and Kokomo, Indiana, United States, serving as the CBS affiliates for the Indianapolis area. They are owned by Nexstar Media Group alongside ...

, which later became a CW affiliate and is now a

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS (an abbreviation of its original name, Columbia Broadcasting System), is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainme ...

affiliate) in the adjacent

Indianapolis Indianapolis ( ), colloquially known as Indy, is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Indiana, most populous city of the U.S. state of Indiana and the county seat of Marion County, Indiana, Marion ...

market. In some markets where a local cable provider carried Superstation WGN upon the initial rollout of the service, a WB 100+ affiliate supplanted WGN as the local WB affiliate; though for a year following the launch of The WB 100+, programming duplication between the local WB 100+ affiliate and WGN persisted in some areas where a cable provider did not black out WB programming airing over the WGN superstation feed. As additional WB 100+ affiliates signed on, network management deemed that The WB's affiliate footprint was large enough to request that WGN drop its programming from the station's national feed in October 1999; the local WGN-TV Chicago signal remained a WB affiliate until the network's September 2006 shutdown (the WGN local feed – which later became a CW affiliate, and is now an independent station – would become available to U.S. viewers outside of the Chicago market in the spring of 2015, when it was added as part of the initial offerings of

Channel Master Channel Master is a manufacturer of TV antennas and accessories that once employed 1,600 people. History The original company, now defunct, was founded in Ellenville, New York, in 1949 by 23 year-old former Merchant Marine radio operator a ...

's LinearTV service).

Transition to The CW Plus

On January 24, 2006, Time Warner and

CBS Corporation CBS Corporation was an American multinational media company with interests primarily in commercial broadcasting, publishing and television production. It was split from Viacom on December 31, 2005, alongside an entirely new Viacom; both ...

announced that The WB and UPN would each be shut down; in turn, the two companies would partner to launch

The CW Television Network The CW Network, LLC (commonly referred to as The CW or simply CW) is an American commercial broadcast television network which is controlled by Nexstar Media Group through a 75% ownership interest. The network's name is derived from the first ...

, a new network that would feature some programs from The WB and UPN initially forming the nuclei of its schedule in September of that year. To coincide with the change, The CW announced on February 24, that it would start a service called

The CW Plus The CW Plus is a secondary national broadcast television broadcast syndication, syndication service feed of The CW, whose controlling stake of 75% is owned by Nexstar Media Group, with Paramount Global and Warner Bros. Discovery holding their ow ...

, a group of primarily

digital subchannel In broadcasting, digital subchannels are a method of transmitting more than one independent program stream simultaneously from the same digital radio or television station on the same radio frequency channel. This is done by using data compress ...

analog Analog or analogue may refer to: Computing and electronics * Analog signal, in which information is encoded in a continuous variable ** Analog device, an apparatus that operates on analog signals *** Analog electronics, circuits which use analog ...

and non-broadcast cable television outlets affiliated with the network, serving areas of the United States ranked below the top 99 television markets; this service is nearly identical in structure to The WB 100+, albeit with a more diversified body of affiliates. There was no guarantee that existing affiliates of The WB 100+ would automatically join The CW Plus, although the vast majority ultimately did, and programming transitioned seamlessly from The WB 100+ to the successor CW Plus service (for example, ''The Daily Buzz'' remained on The CW Plus until September 2014). Since

digital television Digital television (DTV) is the transmission of television signals using Digital signal, digital encoding, in contrast to the earlier analog television technology which used analog signals. At the time of its development it was considered an ...

allows multiple "subchannels" to be carried on a single over-the-air signal, most of the CW Plus' affiliates air on the multicast feeds of those stations that manage the affiliates. Thus, they are no longer technically "cable-only" and must now use the parent station's licensed callsigns instead of a fictional one (although some of the service's over-the-air affiliates use altered versions of the parent station's call letters – with an "E" often replacing the leader "W" or "K" – merely for identification purposes, both on-air and in Nielsen diary-tabulated ratings reports). However, some stations (such as WBVC in

Northern Michigan Northern Michigan (also known as Northern Lower Michigan and colloquially within Michigan as "Up North") is a region of the U.S. state of Michigan. The region, which is distinct from the more northerly Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Upper Peninsul ...

; WBWO in

Wheeling, West Virginia Wheeling is a city in Ohio County, West Virginia, Ohio and Marshall County, West Virginia, Marshall counties in the U.S. state of West Virginia. The county seat of Ohio County, it lies along the Ohio River in the foothills of the Appalachian Mo ...

; CW Glendive in

Glendive, Montana Glendive is a city in and the county seat of Dawson County, Montana, United States, and home to Dawson Community College. Glendive was established by the Northern Pacific Railway during the building of the railroad line. The town of Glendive is ...

; KWMK in

Bismarck, North Dakota Bismarck (; from 1872 to 1873: Edwinton) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of North Dakota and the county seat, seat of Burleigh County, North Dakota, Burleigh County. It is the state's List of cities i ...

; WBAE in

Alpena, Michigan Alpena ( ') is the only city and the county seat of Alpena County, Michigan, United States. The population was 10,197 at the 2020 census, making it the third most populated city in the Northern Michigan region, after Traverse City and Cadillac ...

and KSXF in

Joplin, Missouri Joplin is a city in Jasper County, Missouri, Jasper and Newton County, Missouri, Newton counties in the southwestern corner of the U.S. state of Missouri. The bulk of the city is in Jasper County, while the southern portion is in Newton County. J ...

) remain cable-exclusive outlets.

Programming

The WB 100+ utilized a dual programming model which differed from the traditional network affiliate model used by WB-affiliated stations in large and medium-sized markets, in which the affiliate handled complete responsibility of providing syndicated and local programming to fill non-network timeslots. Instead, dayparts on WB 100+ affiliates without WB programming were programmed by the network, primarily with programs that were being carried at the time in national syndication – along with syndicated

film A film, also known as a movie or motion picture, is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, emotions, or atmosphere through the use of moving images that are generally, sinc ...

packages that filled select weekend timeslots, and

brokered programming Brokered programming (also known as time-buy and blocktime) is a form of broadcast content in which the show's producer pays a radio or television station for air time, rather than exchanging programming for pay or the opportunity to play spot com ...

(such as

infomercial An infomercial is a form of television commercial that resembles regular TV programming yet is intended to promote or sell a product, service or idea. It generally includes a toll-free telephone number or website. Most often used as a form of di ...

s and religious programs) that was time-leased by The WB to fill most overnight and some early afternoon timeslots on the service; this relieved the WB 100+ affiliate's local owner of the duty of acquiring syndicated programming to fill timeslots not occupied by network content from The WB. This was similar to the programming strategy of Foxnet, though unlike The WB 100+, Foxnet was distributed as a conventional cable channel and local operators were not allowed to tailor the service to their local market with their own branding, or carry local news or sports programming. In addition to the hour of programming provided by the

Saturday morning block that featured content complying with the regulations, the remaining two hours of programming that fulfilled educational programming guidelines defined by the

Children's Television Act The broadcast of educational Children's television series, children's programming by terrestrial television stations in the United States is mandated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), under regulations colloquially referred to as ...

was taken care of by The WB 100+, which carried syndicated E/I programs for broadcast on early Saturday afternoons immediately after the conclusion of the block for much of The WB 100+'s existence. The parent station or cable franchise operator of the local WB 100+ affiliate maintained responsibility of selling local advertising for the station or cable-only outlet, with the service allocating time to affiliates to incorporate local commercial inserts during WB network and WB 100+-acquired syndicated programming. The WB offered a multi-tiered advertising sales plan to prospective affiliates allowing for the sale and transmission of commercials for local, regional and national businesses on the customized feed; it also handled responsibility for marketing campaigns customized for each affiliate that were developed through an in-house marketing department operated by The WB for the station group. The affiliate operator also held responsibility of acquiring alternative syndicated programming to substitute those provided by The WB 100+, if the rights to that program are held by another station in their market. Though The WB itself never carried any national news programming of its own throughout its 11-year existence, in September 2002, The WB acquired the syndication rights to ''

The Daily Buzz ''The Daily Buzz'' (occasionally abbreviated ''"theDBZ"'') is a nationally syndicated news and infotainment program. The show premiered as a 3-hour weekday morning television show on September 16, 2002, initially airing on 10 stations owned and ...

'' – a morning news and lifestyle program that, at the time, was produced by

ACME Communications ACME Communications Inc. was a U.S.-based broadcasting company that was involved in operations of television stations and programming from the late 1990s to 2013. History ACME Communications was co-founded by chairman and original CEO Jamie Ke ...

(a now-defunct media company founded by The WB's original CEO Jamie Kellner, which had all except one of its television stations affiliated with The WB, and was named after the

Acme Corporation The Acme Corporation is a fictional company, fictional corporation that features prominently in the ''Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, Road Runner/Wile E. Coyote'' animated shorts as a running gag. The company manufactures outlandish product ...

running gag seen in Warner Bros.'

Looney Tunes ''Looney Tunes'' is an American media franchise produced and distributed by Warner Bros. The franchise began as a series of animated short films that originally ran from 1930 to 1969, alongside its spin-off series ''Merrie Melodies'', during t ...

animated shorts) – for broadcast on The WB 100+; the program was also syndicated to stations in markets that were not covered by either The WB 100+ or where ACME did not own a station. The WB 100+ feed was originally designed for the Eastern and Pacific Time Zones, whose master schedules were formatted to align the start time of The WB's prime time programming with the network's broadcast affiliate feed; a Central Time Zone feed was added by the early 2000s, followed by an

Alaska Time Zone The Alaska Time Zone observes standard time by subtracting nine hours from Coordinated Universal Time ( UTC−09:00). During daylight saving time its time offset is eight hours ( UTC−08:00). The clock time in this zone is based on mean sola ...

feed that launched in 2005. As such, the Kids' WB and (from January to September 2006, following the conclusion of the weekday afternoon Kids' WB lineup) Daytime WB blocks, which were designed to be tape-delayed, were aired an hour earlier on affiliates – compared to their preferred scheduling – on affiliates in the Central,

Mountain A mountain is an elevated portion of the Earth's crust, generally with steep sides that show significant exposed bedrock. Although definitions vary, a mountain may differ from a plateau in having a limited summit area, and is usually higher t ...

and Alaska time zones.

List of WB 100+ affiliates

This is a list of WB 100+ stations, ranked by designated market area (DMA), as of September 2006, when The WB ceased operations as a broadcast network. Note that most "

call letters In broadcasting and radio communications, a call sign (also known as a call name or call letters—and historically as a call signal—or abbreviated as a call) is a Identifier, unique identifier for a transmitter station. A call sign can be fo ...

" below are informal, as these stations did not broadcast over-the-air and as such, were not licensed by the

Federal Communications Commission The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, internet, wi-fi, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains j ...

(FCC); the meanings of each affiliate's "call sign" are also included. There were a few exceptions – actual FCC-licensed broadcast stations are indicated in ''italics''. Some of the "fake" calls used by the cable-only WB affiliates (which are identified with

quotation mark Quotation marks are punctuation marks used in pairs in various writing systems to identify direct speech, a quotation, or a phrase. The pair consists of an opening quotation mark and a closing quotation mark, which may or may not be the sam ...

s) may be the same as calls used by actual over-the-air stations, and may create confusion for some; such stations are identified in this list for disambiguation. After each station's name is the status of the CW affiliation, . If no status is part of the station's listing, The CW does not have a confirmed affiliate in the market that the WB 100+ station served. The rankings for each market are as of the 2005–06 television season. * ¹ The cable-only "KMWB" is not to be confused with the former callsign used by

Minneapolis Minneapolis is a city in Hennepin County, Minnesota, United States, and its county seat. With a population of 429,954 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the state's List of cities in Minnesota, most populous city. Locat ...

–

St. Paul, Minnesota Saint Paul (often abbreviated St. Paul) is the capital city of the U.S. state of Minnesota and the county seat of Ramsey County. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 311,527, making it Minnesota's second-most populous city a ...

CW affiliate

WUCW WUCW (channel 23) is a television station licensed to Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, serving the Twin Cities area as an affiliate of The CW. Owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, the station maintains studios in the Pence Building on 8th S ...

as a WB affiliate. * ² The cable-only "KWYP" is not to be confused with

Laramie, Wyoming Laramie () is a List of municipalities in Wyoming, city in and the county seat of Albany County, Wyoming, United States, known for its high elevation at , for its railroad history, and as the home of the University of Wyoming. The population wa ...

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...

member station KWYP-DT. * ³ The cable-only "KIWB" is not to be confused with

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low-power station KIWB-LD. * ⁴ The cable-only "WBWP" is not to be confused with

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Mega TV affiliate

WBWP-LD WBWP-LD (channel 19) is a low-power television station in West Palm Beach, Florida, United States. The station is owned by SagamoreHill Broadcasting. WBWP-LD's transmitter is located on Old Dixie Highway in Lake Park, Florida. History The s ...

. * ⁵ The cable-only "KCWB" is not to be confused with the former callsign used by

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Tvida Vision affiliate KVBC-LP, or by

Kansas City, Missouri Kansas City, Missouri, abbreviated KC or KCMO, is the largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri by List of cities in Missouri, population and area. The city lies within Jackson County, Missouri, Jackson, Clay County, Missouri, Clay, and Pl ...

CW affiliate

KCWE KCWE (channel 29) is a television station in Kansas City, Missouri, United States, affiliated with The CW. It is owned by Hearst Television alongside ABC affiliate KMBC-TV (channel 9). The two stations share studios on Winchester Avenue in the ...

as a WB affiliate. * ⁶ The cable-only "WBXI" is not to be confused with

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affiliate WBXI-CA. * ⁷ The cable-only "KWBM" is not to be confused with the

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Daystar affiliate of the same callsign. * ⁸ The cable-only "WBMM" is not to be confused with

Montgomery, Alabama Montgomery is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Alabama. Named for Continental Army major general Richard Montgomery, it stands beside the Alabama River on the Gulf Coastal Plain. The population was 2 ...

CW affiliate of the same callsign. * ⁹ The cable-only "KWBT" is not to be confused with the former callsign used by

Tulsa, Oklahoma Tulsa ( ) is the List of municipalities in Oklahoma, second-most-populous city in the U.S. state, state of Oklahoma, after Oklahoma City, and the List of United States cities by population, 48th-most-populous city in the United States. The po ...

CW affiliate

KQCW-DT KQCW-DT (channel 19) is a television station licensed to Muskogee, Oklahoma, United States, serving the Tulsa area as an affiliate of The CW. It is owned by Griffin Media alongside CBS affiliate KOTV-DT (channel 6) and radio stations KOTV (1 ...

as a WB affiliate.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wb 100plus Station Group The WB Nexstar Media Group Television channels and stations established in 1998 Television channels and stations disestablished in 2006

History

Pre-launch

Development and launch

Transition to The CW Plus

Programming

List of WB 100+ affiliates

See also

References