Antenna TV is an American digital television network owned by Nexstar Media Group. The network's programming consists of classic television series, primarily sitcoms, from the 1960s to the early 2000s. Antenna TV's programming and advertising operations are headquartered in the WGN-TV studios in Chicago. The network's operations are overseen by Sean Compton, who serves as the president of networks for Nexstar.
The network is available in many media markets via the digital subchannels of over-the-air television stations, and on select cable television providers through a local affiliate of the network and IPTV. In July 2026, the network was added to Hulu + Live TV, marking the first time the network was added to a national streaming provider after initially rejecting the platform.
Antenna TV broadcasts 24 hours a day in either 480i standard definition or 720p high definition depending on market.
History
Tribune Broadcasting announced the formation of Antenna TV on August 30, 2010, with television stations owned by Tribune and Local TV LLC (an Oak Hill Capital Partners-controlled holding company that Tribune had been co-managing since 2008, in an agreement that remained in place until Tribune completed its outright acquisition of the group in December 2013) serving as its initial charter affiliates; Tribune originally intended to launch the network on January 3, 2011, but executives later chose to push the date of its debut two days ahead of schedule.
Antenna TV was launched on January 1, 2011, at 12:00 a.m. Eastern Time Zone (the late evening of December 31, 2010, in other U.S. time zones), initially debuting on seventeen Tribune-owned stations and thirteen stations owned by Local TV. The first program to air on Antenna TV was The Three Stooges' first short Woman Haters as part of a marathon of short films involving the comedy trio (which became an annual New Year's Day tradition on the network that aired until 2015, originally airing as an all-day marathon before being reduced to airing only on New Year's Day morning in 2013).
On October 1, 2011, Antenna TV introduced block programming scheduling for most of its programs, organized by genre and the decade of their original broadcast; it included a weekday afternoon block of sitcoms from the 1950s, a weekend afternoon block of 1960s sitcoms (including the early 1970s sitcom, The Partridge Family), a Saturday night lineup of drama series (a genre of television programs which had previously aired on the network in very limited form on Sunday mornings only), an overnight block of classic television series from the monochrome era of the 1950s and early 1960s, a Sunday prime time lineup of sitcoms from the 1990s, and a weeknight prime time lineup of comedies from the 1970s; with the exception of the black-and-white program block (which was reduced to once a week and moved to Friday nights, where it remained – except for a brief sabbatical from January to April 2013 – until being dropped completely in November of that same year) and the Saturday night drama block (which was reduced to Saturday evenings only, and was later replaced by movies in September 2013), most of these blocks were dropped on March 26, 2012.
Programming Antenna TV's program schedule relies on the extensive library of films and television programming currently owned by Sony Pictures, which comprises more than 270 television series and over 4,000 films. The network maintains an Eastern Time Zone schedule, with individual programs airing at the same time in the remainder of the country, though by effect, aired locally in earlier time slots from the Central Time Zone westward. As is common with digital multicast networks, advertisements featured during commercial breaks on Antenna TV primarily consist of direct marketing for products featured in infomercials and particularly during its Saturday morning children's programming, public service announcements; satellite provider Dish Network and insurance company Progressive Corporation are currently the network's primary national sponsors. Many Antenna TV affiliates also use the allotted advertising time to feature localized promotions, ranging from upcoming programming seen on that affiliate's other digital channels, to newspaper and vehicle dealership advertisements, to community service announcements.
The network did not display a digital on-screen graphic during its programs until April 2026, but formerly allowed affiliates to incorporate their own bug during Antenna TV programming; many stations that follow this practice utilize modified versions of logos that the affiliate station has used as part of their main branding in the past (for example, WPHL-TV in Philadelphia uses a variant of the logo it used from 1976 to 1987, under the brand "Channel 17, The Great Entertainer").
The network's original continuity announcer was Gary Owens, who served in that capacity until his death on February 12, 2015, although promos that he voiced beforehand continued to air until that September. John B. Wells also provided promotional continuity from November 2011 to July 2015. Shadoe Stevens became the network's main announcer in July 2015.
Antenna TV also runs occasional marathons of series to which it holds rights through its content agreements on major occasions. Prior to "Antenna TV Theater"s discontinuation, the network also aired movie marathons on Valentine's Day, Memorial Day, Veterans Day (until 2013) and Super Bowl Sunday (until 2015) and racing day in 2016. Among the marathons regularly carried by the network are those of Hazel and Father Knows Best that have respectively aired on Mother's Day and Father's Day annually since 2011 (in the former case, the exceptions were in 2015, 2016, 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026, when it aired marathons of One Day at a Time, Family Ties, The Partridge Family, Sanford and Son and Too Close for Comfort on those holidays); it also airs a 48-hour marathon of holiday-themed episodes of its various series from Christmas Eve until Christmas night, which is interrupted for five hours on Christmas morning by its broadcast of the Yule Log (a filmed loop of logs burning inside a fireplace at Gracie Mansion set to a soundtrack of Christmas music, which first aired on co-owned New York City affiliate WPIX in December 1966). Since the network began carrying most of the surviving episodes of the Johnny Carson run of The Tonight Show to its schedule in January 2016, many of these marathons have been followed by Tonight Show episodes featuring guests who starred in the featured marathon program. The acquisition also resulted in the network running fewer marathons that run into the late prime time and overnight hours (among the few exceptions was 2017's "All of All in the Family Marathon," a five-day-long, Thanksgiving weekend stunt of all 205 All in the Family episodes [commemorating the show's then-pending departure from Antenna TV], which included Carson episodes featuring stars of the former as guests that aired in Carsons network-designated timeslots between the nighttime blocks of AITF episodes).
The network also marks the occurrence of an actor's recent death (either an established or character actor) with an "in memoriam" bumper shown during breaks between certain programs, and an occasional afternoon-long marathon showcasing episodes of that artist's television series roles – either guest appearances, episodes of series in which the person was a regular cast member, or both. Classic television series Antenna TV has program licensing agreements with Sony Pictures Entertainment (which includes series produced by Columbia Pictures Television, TriStar Television and their merged production unit Columbia TriStar Television (which was reorganized as Sony Pictures Television in 2002), Screen Gems, and ELP Communications (including predecessors Tandem Productions, ELP Communications), CBS Media Ventures, and DLT Entertainment. The network also shares broadcast rights to classic television programs from the NBCUniversal Syndication Studios and Disney Media Distribution's 20th Television libraries with competing Weigel Broadcasting-owned digital broadcast network and primary rightsholder MeTV (with Antenna TV gaining access to Universal's program library in the fall of 2011, after those shows were removed from the Retro Television Network, and access to 20th Television's library via its April 2012 acquisition of WKRP in Cincinnati with other series from the library being added in January 2015) and rights to select program titles from Warner Bros. Television Distribution, and MGM Television (which includes series produced by Filmways and United Artists Television, but does not include content owned by its Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer prior to the 1986 acquisition of films and television programs produced directly by MGM by Ted Turner) with Antenna TV sister network This TV.
The network's series programming primarily covers sitcoms from the 1960s to the early 2000s and () includes shows such as The Drew Carey Show; Becker; Wings; Designing Women; Family Ties; Who's the Boss?; Sabrina the Teenage Witch; Sanford and Son; One Day at a Time; Three's Company; I Dream of Jeannie; Bewitched; Mad About You; Head of the Class; The Partridge Family, The Jeffersons; Barney Miller; Alice; Benson; The Facts of Life; 227; Too Close for Comfort; NewsRadio and Just Shoot Me!. While several series on the network have been widely syndicated on other television outlets in the United States and abroad, some series featured on the network (such as Hazel, McHale's Navy, My Favorite Martian, Evening Shade, Dear John, Soap, Doogie Howser, M.D., Bachelor Father, My Two Dads and Small Wonder) have not been seen on television – at least, in the U.S. – for several years or have been syndicated on a fairly inconsistent basis, and a few (such as My Mother the Car, It's About Time, Good Morning World, The Paul Lynde Show and Lotsa Luck) were too short-lived to have ever had a syndication afterlife.
Drama series, which occupied a limited amount of the network's schedule for the first few months on the air, later expanded with an October 2011 programming realignment, with crime drama, mystery and suspense programs airing in an evening block on Saturdays, which included It Takes a Thief, Adam-12, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, S.W.A.T. and Suspense Theatre/Crisis; some of these programs are also aired during the week in limited form during the late afternoon and overnight hours. The Saturday drama block was discontinued in September 2012, with drama series on Saturdays being moved to the late afternoon hours and movies replacing them in prime time on that night. Drama series are now only seen on Saturday mornings as of January 2017 and were later discontinued altogether, becoming a comedy-only network.
In a rarity for television, Antenna TV has rotated a television series and its spinoffs on its schedule in the same hour, airing the shorter-lived spinoffs of Three's Company (The Ropers and Three's a Crowd) with the parent show being relegated to the first half-hour of the hour-long block (differing from the network's normal double-episode scheduling for its series) once they cycle back onto the schedule (the cycling of The Ropers and Three's a Crowd ended with a January 2015 programming realignment that saw both series given their own separate weekend-only runs on the network). This discontinued when the Three's Company spinoffs were replaced with Saturday Summerthons. After losing the rights to All in the Family in 2018, Antenna TV acquired rights to the sequel series Archie Bunker's Place.