Description and Programming
The channel, which originally focused programming on biographies, documentaries, and drama series (especially crime dramas and mysteries), and has expanded to include reality television programming, reaches more than 85 million homes in the United States and Canada. A&E is a joint venture of the Hearst Corporation (50% ownership) and The Walt Disney Company (50%). NBCUniversal was also a part of the joint venture, with Hearst and Disney each owning a 42.5% stake and NBCUniversal owning a 15% stake, but in July 2012, NBCUniversal confirmed plans to sell its 15.8% stake in A+E Networks to Disney and Hearst, who will become 50-50 partners in the joint venture. The network is a result of a merger in 1984 between Hearst/ABC's Alpha Repertory Television Service (ARTS) and (pre–General Electric merger) RCA-owned The Entertainment Channel.
The A&E Network is the flagship of the A&E Television Networks group, which also includes The History Channel and The Biography Channel. It had often shown programming from abroad, particularly BBC network productions from the United Kingdom. Examples of British programming frequently broadcast on the channel include the documentary Freud.
However, the use of British programming has diminished greatly since A&E began scheduling more reality shows. For example, the network waited almost a year and a half to show the fourth season of MI-5, programmed it after prime time on Friday nights at 11pm Eastern, then stopped showing it after only two episodes, and programmed the rest of the season in one day on October 21, 2006.
Its fine arts programs have also been completely retired. Thursday nights once featured an anthology series called A&E Stage, hosted by Tammy Grimes and later John Mauceri, which featured telecasts of notable plays, concerts, full-length documentaries related to the arts, and complete operas, although shown with commercials. Such programs as Otto Schenk's 1978 production of Fidelio, with Leonard Bernstein conducting, were rebroadcast on this anthology, as well as an adaption of Agatha Christie's Spider's Web, starring Penelope Keith, originally broadcast in the UK on December 26, 1982. The final fine arts-related show to air on the network, Breakfast with the Arts, once featured a higher quantity of classical music than in its final years, and fewer interviews. The show was cancelled in July 2007.
Read more about this topic: A&E (TV Channel)
Famous quotes containing the words description and/or programming:
“God damnit, why must all those journalists be such sticklers for detail? Why, they’d hold you to an accurate description of the first time you ever made love, expecting you to remember the color of the room and the shape of the windows.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“If there is a price to pay for the privilege of spending the early years of child rearing in the driver’s seat, it is our reluctance, our inability, to tolerate being demoted to the backseat. Spurred by our success in programming our children during the preschool years, we may find it difficult to forgo in later states the level of control that once afforded us so much satisfaction.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)