 | |
| Country | United States |
|---|---|
| Broadcast area | Nationwide |
| Headquarters | Los Angeles, California |
| Programming | |
| Language | English |
| Ownership | |
| Owner | |
| History | |
| Launched | October 1, 1998; 27 years ago (1998-10-01) |
| Closed | June 28, 2017; 8 years ago (2017-06-28) |
| Former names | Style Network (1998–2013) |
Esquire Network was an Americanpay television network that was a 50/50joint venture betweenNBCUniversal and theHearst Corporation. Launched on October 1, 1998 asStyle Network, a spin-off ofE!, 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] the rebrand was supposed to take place onG4, but was instead moved 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 sitcoms and dramas.
Due to low ratings and subsequent carriage decline by cable providers, Esquire Network closed as a cable channel on June 28, 2017, and was stated to become an online-only brand; although no further comments have been made about the proposed online-only model since.[3]
The channel was originally launched asStyle Network (although on-air promotions typically referred to it as simply "Style") on October 1, 1998, serving as a spin-off ofE!. It was intended to leverage E!'s coverage of fashion and to provide an expanded venue for shows such asFashion Emergency. The network focused onfashion,design,interior decoration and urban lifestyle-related programming. Style provided coverage of events likeNew 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, andHomes with Style. Around 2003, the channel began airing a variety of "makeover" shows, including the home makeover showClean House, which lasted for ten seasons on the network, and a face makeover showHow Do I Look?, which lasted for eight seasons.
Starting in 2008, Style shifted its focus to personality-based reality programing such asJerseylicious,Tia & Tamera, andBig Rich Texas, along with a female-focusedspin-off ofThe Soup known asThe 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 tworeal estate related shows:Hot Listings: Miami andBuilt, which featured male models remodeling houses.
In December 2012,NBCUniversal signed abrand licensing deal with theHearst Corporation, owner ofEsquire magazine, to relaunchG4 intoEsquire Network, which would air shows aimed at ametrosexual audience with non-sports related male-targeted programming about travel, cooking, and fashion, alongside acquired and archived programming from the NBCUniversal library includingParty Down,Parks and Recreation and week-delayed episodes ofLate 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 onEsquire 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 toThe Hollywood Reporter.[2] One of the factors was likely Style's distribution on certain pay TV providers, including DirecTV, giving Esquire more homes at launch with the Style channel slot than they would have had with G4 (G4 had earlier been removed 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 ofSex and the City (a series which took heavy criticism fromEsquire magazine during its original run) remained on its schedule until December 2013 (when the rights were shifted toE!), with most of Style's series being canceled or transferred to E!,Bravo andOxygen.[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 closed 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 moving Esquire's channel position from the women's networks in their lineups, along with having to answer customer inquiries about Style Network suddenly being replaced and its programming. Personalities that were featured on Style's programming, includingTia andTamera Mowry, 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 the rebrand 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 itsYouTube 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 network's closure on that day.[10] The last program to air on Style on September 22, 2013, was an overnight repeat of theTia & Tamera season finale episode "Twerkin' 9 to 5" (which became itsde facto series finale as Tia and Tamera Mowry opted to cancel the series after the relaunch) at 2 a.m. Eastern Time, with the nightly three-hourpaid 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 rebranding occurred on September 23, 2013, at 6 a.m.Eastern Time.[1]
Throughout 2015 and 2016, the majority of the original programs produced for Esquire Network were canceled due to low ratings, with only the youth football reality seriesFriday Night Tykes and the network'sMen in Blazers–produced live broadcasts ofPamplona'sRunning 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 asYouTube andVimeo. After only several months, the network discontinued airing repeats ofLate Night after then-host Jimmy Fallon moved toThe Tonight Show in February 2014, which NBC refused to air repeats of on cable television.
American Ninja Warrior, which first premiered on G4, was expected to be on Esquire Network's original lineup, with its fifth season scheduled to premiere in summer 2013 on the network, but with the delay of the network's launch to September 2013, NBCUniversal opted not to wait until then for the season premiere, 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, which had high ratings and subsequent popularity. NBCUniversal decided to move the series permanently to NBC, leaving Esquire Network with repeats rather than to air 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.
Although it did receive a spin-off as consolation,Team Ninja Warrior, Esquire Network had no other compatible programming to promote it, and it never broke into 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 network promotions of their premieres, then to their eventual notice of cancellation, including little to no promotion fromEsquire 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 networksCozi TV,LXTV, and NBC's streaming apps, along with other NBCU networks), which again brought the network towards the same issues as other defunct NBCU channels including G4,Chiller, andCloo, 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, alongside the removal ofCloo several months earlier, 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 removal was through the provider's monthly billing statement.AT&T then gave notice that Esquire Network would be removed fromU-verse andDirecTV 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 nicheC-Band consumers.[11][12]Charter Communications through itsTime Warner Cable,Bright House Networks andSpectrum subsidiaries removed the channel from their lineup nationwide on April 25, 2017 (the same day they removedChiller from their lineup, also nationwide), leavingVerizon FiOS andGoogle Fiber as some of the last cable providers to carry Esquire Network until its closure; online access to the network'sTV Everywhere live feed was maintained by Charter until the network's shutdown.
On January 18, 2017, it was announced that the network would close on all pay television distributions in mid-2017 and convert to an online-only model. The network shut down on June 28 at noon Eastern time. The network aired a marathon ofFriday Night Tykes on the day of its closure, with the season one finale, "Finish What We Started", being its final program.[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).[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 (atrue crime series about theMurder of Suzanne Jovin) andBorderland USA (a reality series about theU.S. Border Patrol Tactical Unit) were promised to air on the new digital version of the network, but have since been abandoned.[3]
G4'sCanadian network closed on August 31, 2017, two months after than Esquire shut down. 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 closed on November 18, 2022.[16]
Hearst has since re-establishedEsquire-branded programming through the stations ofHearst Television and its streaming network Very Local beginning in 2021, withIn Transit, a tourism travelogue series hosted byDave Holmes.[17]
Internationally, Style Network was launched in theArab world in December 2007 onShowtime Arabia,[18] acrossSouthern andWestern Africa during back in November 2007 onDStv,[19] in theUnited Kingdom andIreland on June 10, 2008, inJapan 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 itsBritish/Irish version closed on December 9, 2013,[20] while itsAfrican version closed 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, theAustralian 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 ofFoxtel's channel lineup.
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