Affiliates
In addition to its carriage on Weigel-owned stations in Chicago (WCIU-TV), Milwaukee (WDJT-TV) and South Bend, Indiana (WCWW-LD) at the network's launch, This TV reached affiliation agreements with several television station groups (including Hearst Television, the Sinclair Broadcast Group, Graham Media Group, Fisher Communications, Raycom Media and Belo) to add the network on the subchannels of some of their stations in 2009.[18][19] A May 2010 renewal of its affiliation agreement with Tribune Broadcasting expanded the network to additional stations owned by the company in markets such as KTLA, WPIX, WSFL-TV and KSWB-TV, helping increase This TV's market coverage to 85% of the U.S.[20] and making it the largest subchannel network by population reach percentage (a status that has since been surpassed by former sister network MeTV). A number of NBC affiliates added This TV as a replacement for the now-defunct NBC Weather Plus service, which shut down in November 2008. Additionally, Equity Media Holdings selected This TV as a replacement for the Retro Television Network on some of its stations after the company terminated its relationship with RTN in January 2009, due to a payment dispute; the Equity-owned stations have since been sold, with several disaffiliating from This TV or shutting down completely.
Stations that carried This TV had the option to air select programming from the network on their main channels; affiliates also had the option to preempt select This TV programs, running alternate programming in place of certain shows from the network's national schedule (some stations may even switch to scheduled alternate programming while a film was in progress), either through a secondary affiliation deal with another network such as The CW or MyNetworkTV (this was particularly common with This TV affiliates in smaller markets), substitutions by locally produced programming, or in the most common case, moving network programming to the This TV subchannel to accommodate local sports or breaking news coverage on the main channel.[21]
After Tribune Broadcasting assumed operational responsibilities for the network, This TV became one of the few television networks to move its flagship station; the network moved from WCIU to a digital subchannel of Tribune's Chicago flagship WGN-TV (which until November 1, 2013 was the largest Tribune-owned station by market size not to carry This TV).[7] In Milwaukee, Weigel continued to carry the network on WDJT following Tribune's December 2013 acquisition of the market's Fox affiliate, WITI (which also carries sister network Antenna TV); on March 3, 2015, Weigel moved This TV to WDJT's sister independent station, WMLW-TV, on its DT3 subchannel; its former channel slot on WDJT was concurrently filled by the Weigel-owned network Heroes & Icons, effectively consolidating the group's main subchannel networks onto WDJT's digital signal while allowing Weigel to fulfill its existing contract for This TV; through the move, the network's cable coverage was affected in the channel exchange with some area cable providers having to sign new agreements to carry the network via WMLW-DT3.[22] In South Bend, its status on WCWW did not change, partly because Tribune does not own a television station in that market, unlike in Chicago and Milwaukee. Weigel transferred This TV to WYTU-LD3 on January 8, 2018, due to a large-scale channel remapping involving the spectrum auction, finally discontinuing their run of This TV in Milwaukee on September 3, 2018, upon the launch of Start TV (it later became a subchannel of local independent subchannel outlet
In 2014, Tribune began to produce promotional advertisements for This TV that it distributed to its affiliates for broadcast on their main signals (which were modified to allow stations to insert over-the-air and cable channel information) in high-definition television.
After Tribune was acquired by Nexstar Media Group on September 19, 2019, a number of former Tribune stations removed This TV by the end of October 2019, due to a new agreement with Katz Broadcasting to carry a reincarnated version of the court/true crime news network Court TV made before the close of the Nexstar deal.[23] A few markets saw This TV move to a new station, though for the most part, the network's distribution was temporarily unavailable in many major markets, or saw downgrades to low-power television stations with no pay TV coverage.
In April 2021, the ABC Owned Television Stations added the network as a replacement for Laff after its owner, E. W. Scripps Company, moved the network to Ion Television stations in those markets after assuming management of Laff's previous owner, Katz Broadcasting, restoring much of the major-market coverage which became unavailable from 2019. ABC Owned Television Stations would later replace This TV with Charge!, a network owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, on April 1, 2024.[24]
