The WB 100+ Station Group (originally called The WeB from its developmental stages until March 1999) was a national programming service of The WB—owned by the Warner Bros. Entertainment division of Time Warner, the Tribune Company, and group founder and longtime WB network president Jamie Kellner—intended primarily for American television markets ranked #100 and above by Nielsen Media Research estimates.
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.
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.
[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 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.
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.
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.
[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.
The WB offered a multi-tiered advertising sales plan to prospective affiliates allowing for the sale and transmission of commercials for local, regional and national businesses on the customized feed; it also handled responsibility for marketing campaigns customized for each affiliate that were developed through an in-house marketing department operated by The WB for the station group.