Pre-launch

The history of The WB 100+ can be traced back to a charter affiliation agreement reached on December 3, 1993, between The WB and Tribune Broadcasting (whose corporate parent, the Tribune Company (later Tribune Media), held minority ownership in the network), which resulted in Tribune's Chicago television flagship WGN-TV carrying The WB's prime time programming (the Kids' WB block – which debuted in September 1995, eight months after The WB's launch – would air instead on independent station WCIU-TV before moving to WGN-TV in September 2004).^[1]

Through that deal, WGN's national superstation feed (later separately branded as WGN America and operating as a conventional basic cable channel) would act as a default WB affiliate for select markets where the network would have difficulty securing an affiliation with a broadcast television station at The WB's launch on January 11, 1995 (either due to the lack of available over-the-air stations or the absence of a secondary affiliation with an existing station within the market). This arrangement was conceived to give the network enough time to find affiliates in those "white areas" (a term referring to areas in which a national broadcaster does not have market clearance), allowing the WGN superstation feed to nationally distribute The WB's programming to a broader audience than would be possible without such an agreement in the interim.^[1] Some cable providers also carried either Los Angeles affiliate KTLA (for areas in the Pacific Time Zone) or New York City affiliate WPIX (for areas in the Eastern Time Zone) depending on the location in addition to or in lieu of WGN's national feed.

Development and launch

Jamie Kellner – co-founder, and original president of The WB – conceived the concept of a cable-originated programming service that would serve smaller markets, originally titled The WeB, in June 1996; the network formally presented its concept for the service, which would function similarly to the reasoning behind the agreement with the WGN superstation feed, to cable providers on September 24 of that year.^[2][3][4] Kellner had previous experience in developing such a service; during his tenure as Fox's original network president from 1986 to 1993, Kellner developed a similar (but less localized) service, Foxnet, a cable channel owned by News Corporation (the corporate parent of Fox at the time) that operated from June 1991 to September 2006, and was the first cable channel that designed to distribute a broadcast network's programming directly to cable providers in smaller markets where the network could not maintain an exclusive affiliation due to the limited number of available commercial television stations. After Russell Myerson (who would serve as the group's executive vice president and general manager) joined The WB in 1997, Kellner came to Myerson with his idea for a national cable feed of the network that would distribute WB programming to these "white area" markets with five or fewer commercial stations (including some markets where UPN, which debuted five days after The WB launched, managed to obtain an affiliation).^[5]

Time Warner, the network's majority owner, commissioned IBM (for hardware and infrastructure) and Enterprise Systems Group (later known as Encoda and then Harris Corporation; contracted for software systems at the national and local level) to develop a national data server network that would digitally transmit local and national advertisements, promos, station identifications and customized logo bugs for each individual affiliate to headends operating the local WB 100+ affiliate in their home market. The network would be relayed to a "station in a box" (SIB), a 5.25-inch (13.3 cm) wireless PC-based system that was programmed to download (through a data feed distributed via satellite), store and insert advertising appropriate to the individual affiliate's home market in pre-determined time periods set through a playlist over the satellite-delivered national feed as well as to transfer the programming feeds, via a disseminated address header based on the affiliate's designated call letters. The SIB units – which cost $9,000 per unit – were sold to each prospective affiliate operator with costs fully shouldered by The WB; the SIBs held 90 minutes of programming material at a time, in addition to transmitting advertisements and program promotions, and logging previously aired ad spots. Affiliates trafficked local advertising via logfiles sent over the Internet to a Novar management system located at The WB's corporate offices, that handled trafficking, programming feed dissemination and local insertion to individual affiliates.^[6][7][5][8] All programming provided by the service was distributed to WB 100+ affiliates via a centralcasting hub based at the California Video Center in southwestern Los Angeles (near Los Angeles International Airport).^[7][5][8]

Originally slated for a September 8 launch, The WeB was launched at 7:00 p.m. Eastern Time on September 21, 1998 on 80 cable-only affiliates, reaching 2.8 million cable television subscribers in the United States – the largest simultaneous launch of a station group in the history of American television. The service (which was renamed The WB 100+ Station Group in March 1999^[9]) was created to serve a similar capacity that Superstation WGN held as a national distributor of The WB – the difference being that stations within The WB 100+ group were structured in the manner of a local broadcast station: local WB 100+ affiliates were managed by either a local cable provider or an affiliate of a larger over-the-air television station (usually those affiliated with networks that were established long before The WB debuted in January 1995), which may have produced some local programming – such as a prime time newscast – or televised local sporting events.

WB 100+ stations also aired local commercial inserts and promotions, although promotions for syndicated programs aired on the service omitted affiliate references (either in the form of verbal identification or use of the affiliate's logo) in favor of network branding and were not customized to reference the program's local airtime (all airtimes listed in syndicated program promos were based on their scheduling in the Eastern and Central Time Zones), with the announcer being used to read the promo's airtime card only identifying that the program airs "[today/tonight/tomorrow/day of week] on The WB". Each affiliate had their own individual branding (usually in the form of a fictional call sign, the combination of "The WB" name with either the parent station's city of license/cable franchise's service area or a regional descriptor of the area, or both).^{[10][6][7][5]}

As part of the initial six-year affiliation agreements signed in late 1997 and throughout 1998, cable providers that operated local WB 100+ affiliates received the service's programming free of charge, instead of being required to pay a carriage fee directly to the network (as providers were required to do when they agreed to carry Foxnet at its launch); in addition, affiliates and their advertising sales partners shared a percentage of the revenue earned through the sale of local ads. The WB 100+ was designed to comply with Nielsen regulations defining what constitutes a local station; this allowed viewership totals from the cable-only affiliates to be counted alongside the network's conventional broadcast affiliates to accurately count toward the national ratings for WB network programming.^[7][5]

As time went on, The WB 100+ expanded, increasing its body of cable-only affiliates, while also adding affiliations with conventional broadcast television stations in a few markets. By September 2001, The WB 100+'s national availability had increased to 7.4 million households. The service's programming reached 109 out of 111 television markets within those eligible to affiliate with The WB 100+, totaling nine million households by January 2005.^{[5][11][12][13]} By the time The WB ceased operations in September 2006, the only eligible market never to have been served by a WB 100+ affiliate was Lafayette, Indiana, which received WB programming via WTTK (a satellite station of WTTV, which later became a CW affiliate and is now a CBS affiliate) in the adjacent Indianapolis market.

In some markets where a local cable provider carried Superstation WGN upon the initial rollout of the service, a WB 100+ affiliate supplanted WGN as the local WB affiliate; though for a year following the launch of The WB 100+, programming duplication between the local WB 100+ affiliate and WGN persisted in some areas where a cable provider did not black out WB programming airing over the WGN superstation feed. As additional WB 100+ affiliates signed on, network management deemed that The WB's affiliate footprint was large enough to request that WGN drop its programming from the station's national feed in October 1999;^[14] the local WGN-TV Chicago signal remained a WB affiliate until the network's September 2006 shutdown (the WGN local feed – which later became a CW affiliate, and is now an independent station – would become available to U.S. viewers outside of the Chicago market in the spring of 2015, when it was added as part of the initial offerings of Channel Master's LinearTV service^[15]).

Transition to The CW Plus

On January 24, 2006, Time Warner and CBS Corporation announced that The WB and UPN would each be shut down; in turn, the two companies would partner to launch The CW Television Network, a new network that would feature some programs from The WB and UPN initially forming the nuclei of its schedule in September of that year.^[16] To coincide with the change, The CW announced on February 24, that it would start a service called The CW Plus, a group of primarily digital subchannels, analog and non-broadcast cable television outlets affiliated with the network, serving areas of the United States ranked below the top 99 television markets; this service is nearly identical in structure to The WB 100+, albeit with a more diversified body of affiliates. There was no guarantee that existing affiliates of The WB 100+ would automatically join The CW Plus, although the vast majority ultimately did, and programming transitioned seamlessly from The WB 100+ to the successor CW Plus service (for example, The Daily Buzz remained on The CW Plus until September 2014).^[17][18]

Since digital television allows multiple "subchannels" to be carried on a single over-the-air signal, most of the CW Plus' affiliates air on the multicast feeds of those stations that manage the affiliates. Thus, they are no longer technically "cable-only" and must now use the parent station's licensed callsigns instead of a fictional one (although some of the service's over-the-air affiliates use altered versions of the parent station's call letters – with an "E" often replacing the leader "W" or "K" – merely for identification purposes, both on-air and in Nielsen diary-tabulated ratings reports). However, some stations (such as WBVC in Northern Michigan; WBWO in Wheeling, West Virginia; CW Glendive in Glendive, Montana; KWMK in Bismarck, North Dakota; WBAE in Alpena, Michigan and KSXF in Joplin, Missouri) remain cable-exclusive outlets.