21 Facts About Ion Television

In January 2008, Ion Media and Comcast reached a carriage agreement to continue carrying Ion Television, while adding Qubo and Ion Life to the cable provider's channel lineups.

Ion Television disclosed that it was in discussions with lenders on "a comprehensive recapitalization" of its balance sheet, translating to an effort to restructure its considerable debt, which, according to The Wall Street Journal, stood at $2.

Some Ion Television-owned and affiliate stations which carry the network as a multicast offering continue to carry the network in 480i widescreen over-the-air.

Ion Television owned-and-operated stations and affiliates formerly provide limited local programming on weekday mornings to fulfill public affairs guidelines, which ranged from entirely local productions to Ion Television Life-sourced programs within which commercial slots are instead devoted to local physicians or experts giving locality-specific health advice or advertising their services.

Ion Television maintains film distribution deals with Universal Pictures, Paramount Pictures, 20th Century Studios and Warner Bros.

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In September 2008, Ion Television reached a multi-year film rights agreement with Warner Bros.

In July 2011, Ion Television acquired the broadcast television rights to six films produced by Starz Media as part of its weekend film block ; the films started airing on the network in November of that year.

Ion Television acquired the syndication rights to the USA Network series Psych and Monk from NBCUniversal; the two series respectively began airing in late 2011 and early 2012.

In September 2011, Ion Television acquired the syndication rights to George Lopez and Leverage.

In December 2011, Ion Television acquired the syndication rights to Cold Case, which debuted in 2012.

Ion Television obtained rights to televise games from the American Indoor Football Association, which were slated to begin airing in March 2008.

Ion Television aired the preliminary fights for UFC 127 and UFC 140 later in 2011, before the organization signed an exclusive programming agreement with Fox.

Ion Television has the most owned-and-operated stations of any commercial broadcast network in the United States, reaching 65.

In most markets with a Scripps or Inyo-owned Ion station outside early mornings, the only sign of the network being carried on a broadcast television station is a small automatically generated station identification on the bottom of the screen at the top of each hour containing the call letters, city of license and state abbreviation, which is repeated across its subchannels.

Two major factors that have limited the network's national broadcast coverage are that unlike the major commercial broadcast networks, Ion did not actively seek over-the-air distribution on the digital subchannels of other network-affiliated stations in the five years following the digital television transition, until it reached a multi-station agreement with Media General in November 2015; prior to that deal, it long had very few stations that contractually carry the network's programming .

WAZE-LP was silent at the time of acquisition, having gone dark the previous year after failing to construct its digital transmitter facilities, and Ion Television eventually decided on an affiliation deal with Nexstar Media Group's cluster in the area instead, using a subchannel of CW affiliate WTVW.

Ion Television subchannels were added in markets such as Austin, Texas; Colorado Springs, Colorado; Green Bay, Wisconsin; Lafayette, Indiana; Davenport, Iowa; Lafayette, Louisiana; Lansing, Michigan; Richmond, Virginia; Springfield, Massachusetts; and Wichita, Kansas.

Ion Television's stations have made notable use of "multiplexing" or splitting a digital broadcast television signal into separate subchannels.

The network originally maintained a 24-hour entertainment schedule until 2013, when Ion Television Life added a limited number of infomercials in mid-morning and midday timeslots.

Currently, Ion Television follows programming strategy similar to major cable networks, with majority of its schedule being filled by acquired broadcast and cable drama series, few original programs, holiday films and other original movies, and theatrically released movies sourced mainly from major film studios, with its entertainment programming schedule occupying 18 hours of its daily broadcast schedule.

However, this is a drawback as, in the past, Ion had relied more on infomercials rather than sitcoms and dramas; sponsors of television series often have qualms about their message being lost on stations whose primary content is infomercials and other paid programming.