Alpha Repertory Television Service
| Alpha Repertory Television Service | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Launched | April 12, 1981 |
| Closed | February 1, 1984 |
| Owned by | Hearst/ABC Video Services |
| Picture format | 480i (SDTV) |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Broadcast area | Nationwide |
| Replaced by | A&E |
The Alpha Repertory Television Service (ARTS) is a defunct American cable television network that was owned by Hearst/ABC Video Services, a joint venture between the Hearst Corporation and the American Broadcasting Company (ABC). The network, which operated nightly on the channel space of Nickelodeon, focused mainly on fine arts programming. It merged with The Entertainment Channel in 1984 to become the Arts and Entertainment Network (A&E).
By the early 1980s, cable television had reached millions of American households and was starting to draw significant audiences away from the "Big Three" broadcast television networks. All three networks saw opportunities to expand into cable television in order to protect and grow their audiences, and they all experimented with niche programming. In fact, all three traditional networks introduced arts-related channels within one year of each other. CBS launched CBS Cable in 1981, which focused on "art house" and critical acclaimed programs; NBC, meanwhile, launched the similarly formatted The Entertainment Channel.
ABC partnered with the Hearst Corporation to create its own arts-oriented service, the Alpha Repertory Television Service. ARTS launched on April 12, 1981, focusing on highbrow cultural fare such as opera, ballet, classical symphonic performances, dramatic theater productions and select foreign films (besides CBS Cable and The Entertainment Channel, ARTS also competed with Bravo and the Public Broadcasting Service). Many cable providers had limited channel bandwidth at that time over their headends; as a result, CBS Cable struggled to find channel carriage and an audience, eventually folding in late 1982. However, while ARTS fared no better in finding viewers, it shared channel space with Nickelodeon, signing on at 9:00 p.m. Eastern Time after the children's television network ended its broadcast day. That shared channel arrangement was a perfect symbiotic scheduling match for the two networks given their respective audience demographics (the target viewership of ARTS either did not have young children or had sent them to bed by the time the channel began its programming).
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