After pulling together some very limited funding from a few East Tennessee businesspeople, SAH began the search for affordable satellite distribution time.
The technical difficulties caused by the hills and valleys of East Tennessee and prohibitive cost-per-mile across the vast expanses of the rural flatlands west of the Mississippi had created a pent up demand for television programing.
Since Overholt and a few others in the Knoxville area were in the process of pioneering the satellite to home backyard dish concept it was logical to search for the programming to go along with it.
The Knoxville group that Overholt approached had formed the "Satellite TV Awareness Association" (STAA), a local trade organization that's purpose was to inform citizens and elected representatives to Congress of the issues surrounding the "business" of the new industry.
From a rented studio in Nashville they hired a local MC to host a panel of "experts" in the field to answer questions and propose solutions to the dish industries problems.
Under new leadership the company moved to a new campus in Nashville Tennessee and opened a state of the art digital production / broadcast facility with studios and an in house call center.
Using this must carry rule to obtain broad market 24 hour coverage of its programming, Shop at Home acquired stations in Bridgeport, Connecticut/New York City, Lawrence/Boston, Massachusetts, San Francisco, California, Wilson/Raleigh, North Carolina, Canton/Cleveland, Ohio, and Houston, Texas.
The success of The Coin Vault (hosted by Robert Chambers for nearly 20 years) allowed the network to branch out into shows that featured other collectible items during the 1990s, thus setting SAH apart from its peers.
The network also kept an eye on the most popular collectible trends of the late 1990s and early 2000s including shows devoted to Beanie Babies and Pokémon.
During this era, the network's late-night fare developed a cult following due to its hosts' outlandish behavior and loud tone of voice.
As a result, the show was parodied several times on Saturday Night Live with Will Ferrell playing Don West.
[3] By the late '90s SAH's collectibles-based format began to decline with strong competition which had developed from the internet and competitor EBAY which was killing the collectibles industry.
In October 2001, Shop At Home (SATH) underwent significant leadership changes when Frank Woods and George Ditomassi were appointed as Co-Chief Executive Officers.
George Ditomassi, with his background as a former chairman of Milton Bradley Company and COO of Hasbro, assumed the roles of co-CEO, president, and chief operating officer.
This move was part of Scripps' broader strategy to expand its media and retailing footprint, which includes various television networks, newspapers, and web properties.
[10] As the scheduled final days of Shop at Home approached, Jewelry Television announced it would purchase all assets of the network and maintain 100 unspecified jobs in Nashville under its sale agreement.
It was announced on January 8, 2008, that Shop at Home would permanently cease its broadcast on March 7, 2008, again citing its failure to successfully compete with QVC, HSN, and ShopNBC (now ShopHQ).
After a period of time where it continued to sell collectibles and knives, the network's domain has since become only a redirect to the Jewelry Television website.