SitcomsOnline.com News Blog

May 2011 kicks off on The Hallmark Channel with a 24-hour marathon of I Love Lucy on Sunday, May 1, 2011 starting at 6am. The regular weekday and weekend schedule will remain unchanged, as of now, so expect the current schedule to go into May as well. The schedule can be found here, if you have forgotten.
No changes to the schedule doesn't mean there won't be any marathon stunts! Other stunts in May 2011 besides the Lucy marathon has a 24-hour Little House on the Prairie marathon on Saturday, May 21, 2011 starting at 6am and a Memorial Day Weekend sitcom stunt! The sitcom stunt lasts three days and starts at 5am on Saturday, May 28, 2011. It's a three-hour tour for three days for Memorial Day Weekend! The laughs begin at 5am with a three-hour block of I Love Lucy, followed by three hours of Empty Nest from 8am-11am. The Golden Girls will air also for three hours starting at 11am and running to 2pm. The triple play marathon continues with three-hours of Frasier beginning at 2pm, then more The Golden Girls at 5pm, and more Frasier starting at 8pm. Cheers gets in on the three hour act starting at 11pm and then Empty Nest closes out the night from 2am-5am. This schedule repeats on Sunday, May 29, 2011 as well! On Memorial Day (Monday, May 30) itself, the marathon is interrupted by the regular Martha Stewart Home block from 10am-3pm, so that is the only change, as the rest of the day will be identical to the previous two days' blocks.


Weigel Broadcasting Co. and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. (MGM) announced that MeTV (Memorable Entertainment Television) Network, the new digital classic television network, will be cleared as primary signals on Newport Television's full power stations KFTY-TV50 serving San Francisco (DMA 6) and KVOS-TV serving Seattle (DMA 13). Both stations have full market distribution with cable and satellite carriage and are scheduled to premiere as MeTV affiliates later this spring. Currently, both KFTY and KVOS are independent stations, so they will be changing to be MeTV affiliates.
These two stations join WBME-TV49, serving the Milwaukee area, as MeTV primary station clearances. Since its 2008 launch, MeTV Milwaukee has experienced impressive triple digit growth across key time periods. MeTV Chicago was where the concept began on primary station WWME-TV23. And now it is available on many digital stations in the United States, with Chicago, Milwaukee and the upcoming San Francisco and Seattle stations being primary stations (meaning on a dot one!). The rest are on digital stations like Raleigh (WRAZ-TV50.2) and Louisville (WLKY-TV32.2).
Me-TV is now cleared in more than 45% of the country on leading station groups including: Hearst Television, Raycom Media, Cox Television, Newport Television, Media General, Capitol Broadcasting, Bahakel Communications, Gray Television, Quincy Newspapers, New Age Media, MPS Media, London Broadcasting Group, Bonten Media Group, and Titan Broadcast Management. We will announce more official clearances when available, whether it is on primary or digital stations. See an unofficial list for now.