It's been nearly a year since the ABC owned station group announced it was pulling the plug on Live Well Network, but the comments from former viewers continue to trickle in. What was initially an absolute firestorm of feedback has subsided, but we did get this email, edited a bit for clarity, from a fan of the channel in Boise.
I read your piece about Live Well Network being pulled from different markets, basically due to corporate greed. Their programming is so educational, intelligent and fun ... of course it is being pulled in favor of local drivel that goes in one ear and out of the other. People have been searching for something like Motion, Knock It Off and others and once they found it and told everyone else they know ... ABC-TV decides to pull it without regard to what the viewing public wants. I mean who are we after all?!
We are the people with the deciding ad-dollars who can boycott ABC, Disney and all of their advertisers until they bring back LWN. We are a group of viewers who love watching Live Well ... we are business owners, Moms, shoppers, bloggers with many voices and ever-growing groups who need to know how we can have the greatest impact. Not a few hundred here, a few hundred there but how can we reach thousands? I've read responses from people in other cities who are unhappy as well but we need to have ABC take notice. They admitted that LWN did a great job but apparently greed still won out.
Do you have any ideas that could help us? LWN is fabulous programming ... don't let America revert back to dumbed-down shows but keep these smart shows that whole families can watch together.
Not everyone has PBS- Create on their TV but LWN has those shows and more ... education and entertainment.
Thank you.
Nina Ruch
The Live Well shows, focused on food, fashion, fitness and travel, were for the most part produced by the ABC stations. ABC said at the time of Live Well's termination announcement that it would focus more on local programming in its multicast realm. Said Rebecca Campbell, president of ABC Owned Television Stations, “Despite Live Well's tremendous accomplishments in distribution and original programming, we made a strategic decision that our priority must be local content, and we want to maximize our investment in our core local news brands in the digital space."
ABC said in January that Live Well would go dark for affiliate partners that month, but would continue on its owned stations, though it will not produce new episodes of its various series. In April, the comedy diginet LAFF launched on the ABC owned stations; Live Well remains on the dot-two channels, while LAFF took over the dot-threes.
