Diginets Growing With Old Shows and New Ideas

After years of experimentation and occasional flops, the business of broadcasting specialty networks on digital subchannels is starting to draw viewers and revenue in amounts that really matter.

Nearly two dozen diginets, several with U.S. household coverage of more than 60% (see chart at bottom of story), now vie with cable networks for advertising dollars, particularly the direct response (DR) variety. Some peg the annual spend at more than $200 million. David Brenner is a partner at Marathon Ventures, a rep firm that sells ad time for a wide range of programs and networks, including NBCUniversal's Cozi and the independently owned African-American network Bounce TV. “My best estimate for combined national and local ad sales in this business in 2009 was $10 million,” Brenner says. “By 2014, it should be doing between $250 million and $300 million.” The most widely distributed diginets are Weigel’s Me-TV (84% of TV homes), MGM Television’s This TV (76%), ABC’s Live Well Network (66%), Bounce TV (61%) and Tribune’s Antenna TV (61%), according to a recent estimate by consulting firm Across Platforms.