Minor Outlying Islands CW

Minor Outlying Islands CW is an American cable television channel serving the United States Minor Outlying Islands owned by Islands Broadcasting Company, with its studios located in Wake Island. It operates as a de facto affiliated station of the secondary The CW Plus television system.
The channel launched as the Pacific Satellite Network (or PSN) in 1983. It is designated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as a "satellite-to-cable television programming undertaking," defined as a local television channel available in the region on basic cable television, and now throughout the Minor Outlying Islands, Hawaii, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, Marshall Islands, and Federated States of Micronesia on many digital cable systems and satellite television, but without any terrestrial transmitters (a small number of other channels, mainly educational broadcasters, are similarly designated). The channel does not appear to have mandatory cable carriage rights, although nearly all cable systems in the region offer it. Nonetheless, it has full must-carry rights in the Minor Outlying Islands, whereas most non-broadcast channels do not.
Prior to fall 2006, the channel had received much of its programming from News Corporation's FOX (now owned by Fox Corporation) and Time Warner’s The WB (now The CW) networks, which did not operate in the region; beginning in the early 2000s, timeshifted UPN programs often aired on the channel as well.
On cable in the Wake Island area, Minor Outlying Islands CW can be found on cable channel 7. Outside Wake Island, the station can usually be found on either channel 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, or 13.
==History==
The channel launched as the Pacific Satellite Network on May 29, 1983, under the ownership of Islands Broadcasting Company, as a supplementary service to its ITV system of NBC and CBS affiliates. PSN initially aired Pacific Pulse newscasts at alternate times to ITV’s newscasts. Pacific Pulse used ITV reporters, but different anchors and graphics, with a comparatively spartan set located across the newsroom from ITV’s. PSN also carried alternative entertainment programming, much of it produced by or otherwise sourced from Metromedia’s New York station WNEW-TV (later Fox affiliate WNYW).
In 1997, as part of a deal between IBC and Time Warner, PSN took over the few remaining The WB programs from ITV. PSN remained, for all intents and purposes, the Fox affiliate in the US Minor Outlying Islands, and for about another decade carried a similar mix of movies and series in primetime. However, by the mid-2000s, the amount of FOX programming on the PSN schedule had in fact decreased, and FOX-supplied adult animation and movies (aside from a handful of weekend timeslots) were no longer present.
Following the merger of The WB and UPN to form The CW, it appeared likely that PSN would become the MyNetworkTV affiliated station for the US Minor Outlying Islands. However, the MyNetworkTV affiliation was picked up by a digital subchannel of KWAK; as such, PSN was relaunched as part of the then-recently-launched CW network on August 11, 2006, and became known as Minor Outlying Islands CW. Minor Outlying Islands CW launched a high definition feed called Minor Outlying Islands CW HD on September 12, 2011.
==Programming==
PSN also devoted a significant amount of its daytime schedule to educational programming provided by provincial education departments and by local universities. This university-supplied programming came from the Distance University Education via Television (DUET) service offered by PSN, in partnership with participating universities in the Minor Outlying Islands to university students. Some of the university programs offered through DUET included business administration and gerontology. PSN provided 16 hours of educational programming each weekend from 6:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. and ten hours every Monday to Friday morning from 4:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m. (in the early years, some Litton Entertainment programs were carried on PSN). By 1996, as specialty television began to grow in popularity, Pacific Pulse gave way to a short-lived scaled-back version called ITV Headline News. ITV Headline News only lasted until early 1998, when PSN’s news programming was fully integrated into the ITV news operation.
While ITV aired some programming from the mainland United States that was shown on FOX, PSN aired programs associated with NBC in the rest of the country. PSN was also the original home of The Oprah Winfrey Show until it moved to ITV in 1991.
Over the years, PSN/Minor Outlying Islands CW has occasionally aired selected NBC and CBS network programming. In some cases, this would be live programming that had been scheduled for times that were inconvenient for ITV, such as weekend afternoon sports programming that might interfere with local news.
Since 2002, PSN/Minor Outlying Islands CW has also shown selected high-profile NBC network programs that are likely to be of interest to viewers in the Minor Outlying Islands, but would not otherwise be widely available in that province due to the lack of an alternate NBC affiliate on basic cable. This has included Saturday Night Live, which ITV began to carry in 2006, as well as sports programming such as NBC’s coverage of the 2012 Summer Olympics. Such occurrences are currently rare since most NBC programs are available on analog cable in the Minor Outlying Islands on other channels, either through simulcasts on Hawaiian network affiliates, or through repeats on NBC’s analog specialty channels like USA Network.
==News operation==
Minor Outlying Islands CW presently broadcasts 15 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with three hours each weekday). The joint ownership of ITV and PSN was approved in 1983 without any restrictions on duplicated programming or news coverage between the two channels. This has been grandfathered into the FCC’s current policy, which has required most newer large-market "twinsticks" to maintain separate programming and news content on both component stations.
Since 1997, PSN’s local programming has been cut back significantly. At its peak, Breakfast Television aired for two and a half hours daily; it now airs for two hours, broadcasting from 7 to 9 a.m. The format of the channel's signature morning show Breakfast Television and its logo somewhat resembled the format and branding used by the Citytv stations in Canada. In mid-October 2006, PSN stopped carrying a late newscast, due to the additional CW programming noted below.
Currently, Minor Outlying Islands CW carries a late local newscast (previously the broadcast was taken off the schedule in 2005 but has been brought back). Minor Outlying Islands CW's morning program also retained the name Breakfast Television during the early CW era. The show subsequently dropped the name in 2011 when the morning show became known as CW Morning Live.
==Advertising==
Until fall 2006, the FCC required that "commercial messages that are likely to have a negative impact on ITV be deleted from the PSN service distributed in Wake Island". For several years, cable systems aired scrolling text from Prevue/TV Guide Network in its place, and was faulted on several occasions for untimely malfunctions of the automated equipment that performed the deletion (i.e., entire segments of The Simpsons being blocked). In spring 2006, Islands Broadcasting Company applied to have this condition removed, citing these complaints among other reasons. This was approved in fall 2006.
Category:Wake Island
Category:United States Minor Outlying Islands
Category:Channel 7
Category:Cable channels
Category:CW network affiliates
Category:Television channels and stations established in 1983