Omni Broadcasting Network

The Omni Broadcasting Network (simply known as "Omni") is an over-the-air broadcast television network in the United States (not to be confused with the Canadian broadcast system Omni Television). The company's motto was "Less Edge and More Entertaining". After 10 years, Omni had a change of direction and ratings started to grow little by little. The majority of Omni's affiliates carry the network on one of their digital subchannels.

## History

### 2003-13: The first Decade

The Omni Broadcasting Network was launched in 2003 by Omni Holdings. Omni broadcast 60 hours of programming per week, 21 hours during prime time. The network primarily ran classic films, usually during late-night hours or on the weekends. Omni also offers a few original television series, "Thirteen O'Clock Theater", an umbrella title for old sci-fi and horror films in public domain shown at 1 a.m. ET. The network also showed older children's programming such as *Birdz* to meet E/I requirements. After 2013 and barely even getting any ratings at all, and the network deep in debt, Omni Holdings was ready to close down the network when Lucie Salhany, who was the CEO of UPN from 1995-97, formed a company with her husband, John Polcari, Jr, called JH Media. JH Media bought enough stock in Omni to become the majority owners of the network.

### 2013-20: Change of Direction

One of Salhany's first moves was to change the programming and began offering 2 hours of prime-time programming filled with original programming. With JH Media producing the majority of the shows, Omni started a slow climb towards respectability. "Rome wasn't built in a day," Salhany said. "It takes time and patience, but Omni will be the most entertaining network on television." One of the first series that Omni picked up was a remake of the classic TV Western *The Rifleman*. After being passed by CBS in 2011, Chris Columbus, Robert Levy, Steven Gardner, and Arthur Gardner (related to original producers Levy-Gardner-Laven), who were executive producers to the series, started shopping around looking to see who will pick up the show, and Omni agreed. In Fall 2014, Ronald D. Moore had some series that was passed by the major networks, and Omni was willing to put some of them on the schedule. One of them was another western remake. This time, *The Wild, Wild West*. Once again, Omni hit pay dirt, and with both *The Rifleman*and *The Wild, Wild West* airing on the same night (Friday night), Omni was finally able to make it out of the ratings basement.

### New Owners and a new direction

On Sept. 10, 2020, it was announced that OBN Holdings was exiting from broadcasting and sold Omni to Adelphia Communications. Adelphia then announced that it was going to be the last season Omni will have original programming, instead going the route of MyNetworkTV as a television subscription service, airing repeats from recent broadcast and cable series. To get programming, Adelphia announced a deal with Disney/ABC to air encore programming from their library.

## Affiliates

*If you wish to be an affiliate of Omni, feel free to do so and add your station to the table. Keep in mind that the stations are in alphabetical order.*

## 2021-22 Programming Schedule

 8:30 PM
 9:00 PM
 9:30 PM