MAVTV
| MAVTV | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Launched | October 1, 2004 |
| Owned by | Lucas Oil |
| Picture format |
480i (SDTV) 1080i (HDTV) |
| Slogan | American Real |
| Country | United States |
| Broadcast area | National |
| Headquarters | Corona, California |
| Formerly called | Maverick Television |
| Website | Mavtv.com |
|
Availability
|
|
| Satellite | |
| DirecTV | Channel 214 (SD) |
| Cable | |
| Verizon FiOS | Channel 810 (HD) |
MAVTV (originally known as Maverick Television) is an American cable and satellite television channel owned by the automotive lubricant company Lucas Oil, a ubiquitous presence in the motorsports world, which mainly airs programming focused around motorsports and programming for automotive enthusiasts. Bob Patison serves as the network's president.
MAVTV launched on October 1, 2004 based out of Atlanta with distribution limited to select cable companies, with the name a shortening of Maverick Television (the network's name at launch). The network was privately held and founded by four former executives from Showtime Networks—Steve Severn, Steve Smith, Doug Jost, Rob Stevens.
In October 2011, longtime partner lubricants company Lucas Oil purchased Maverick Television; the company had provided and sponsored most of the network's motorsports rights even before their purchase, and the network was likely to go dark without the purchase as programming rights had deteriorated towards barter programming and heavy repeats of library content. The network was quickly reformatted away by the new management from a completely male focus featuring lowbrow comedies, low-tier male targeting programming and Canadian content dramas with low cost purchase rights, and late night shows featuring women in bikini shoots towards a general family programming direction.
On July 4, 2012, Lucas re-branded the network, shortening the name to MAVTV (now all capitalized), but with the MAV initials standing for "Movies, Action, and Variety" with the addition of films and more concert programming to the schedule, and a gradual drawdown of racing-related programming to a smaller, yet important part of the schedule to maintain its cable carriage mainly among digital sports tiers, including the Lucas Oil Off Road Racing Series and the Lucas Oil Pro Pulling League.
Until 2015, the network also aired classic programming such as The Lone Ranger, Starsky & Hutch, and Bonanza, along with films. However, the recovery of the network's revenues under Lucas Oil, along with heavy competition in the classic television rights race from digital over-the-air networks such as MeTV, Antenna TV and movies networks like Movies! and getTV meant that the network began to draw down non-motorsports programming by the start of 2016. The conversion of Fox's Speed to the general-interest Fox Sports 1 also left a plethora of motorsports rights for other networks to pick up, which MAVTV took advantage of. The network also carries motorboat racing and various events from the , including ice speedway and motorcycle speedway events.
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