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.
Video MAVTV
History
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.
Purchase by Lucas Oil and change of programming direction
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 Federation of International Motorcycling, including ice speedway and motorcycle speedway events.
Past programming
The network's 1080i high definition fee was launched during the fall of 2008. The standard definition version of the network is downscaled from the HD master feed at the cable operator's headend level.
Before Lucas Oil took over full management of the network, MAVTV carried programming such as the second season of Rad Girls, SpeedFreaks, Women's Flat Track Roller Derby, American Tailgater, AMA Motorcycle Racing, Wrestlicious TakeDown, Ultimate Combat Experience, Bikini AllStars and Best of the Best. In addition, MAVTV presented the male-specific documentary series Manumentaries. Except for existing Lucas Oil programming and the AMA, none of this programming currently remains on the network's schedule. Overnights had been filled by music video/interactive SMS programming from NOYZ via a time brokerage agreement before that company went bankrupt in early 2008.
Sports deals
In 2007, MAVTV struck a deal with the Women's Flat Track Derby Association to broadcast two of the three roller derby finals: the Eastern Regional Tournament (Heartland Havoc, which was broadcast as a series of one-hour weekly episodes) and the National Championships (Texas Shootout).
MAVTV contracted with the Automobile Racing Club of America, the auto racing sanctioning body, to air at least 6 races in 2008, including both 100-mile dirt races at the Illinois State Fairgrounds in Springfield, and the Southern Illinois State Fairgrounds in DuQuoin. SpeedFreaks hosts Kenny Sargent and Crash Gladys also appeared on episodes of the Lucas Motorsports hour.
MAVTV sponsored the MAVTV 500, the final race in the 2012 season of the IndyCar Series, which took place at the Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California.
MAVTV is partnered with King of the Cage, broadcasting their live and past Martial Arts events, as well as Championship Wrestling From Hollywood.
MAVTV did their 1st live motorsports event, the Lucas Oil Challenge Cup featuring the Lucas Oil Off Road Racing Series on October 27, 2013 from Lake Elsinore Motorsports Park. They will also do live coverage of the Lucas Oil Chili Bowl Nationals, one of the biggest midget car races every year. The East Bay Winter Nationals from the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series and all Moto1 rounds of the Lucas Oil AMA Pro Motorcross championship in 2014. They will also cover several King of the Cage MMA events live in 2014.
In 2014, MAVTV partnered with professional road racing series Pirelli World Challenge to air the Pirelli World Challenge Touring Car Championship.
Movie deals
On April 27, 2010, MAVTV signed a deal with Sony Pictures giving them access to select titles from Sony's film library. The deal was part of MAVTV's programming strategy to expand its schedule and abandon their former all-male programming direction. The network added films from the Warner Bros. library in July 2012. These deals eventually expired though as mentioned above, and MAVTV eventually went to an all-motorsports schedule by the start of 2016.
Maps MAVTV
Personnel
Key people at MAVTV include:
- Bob Patison, President of MAVTV and Executive Vice President and General Counsel of Lucas Oil
- Dan Teitscheid, Vice President of Content Distribution & Partner Marketing
- Ed Niemi, Vice President of Distribution
- Mark Mitchell, Vice President of Sales, Marketing and Business Development
- Jason Patison, Director of Programming
- Stuart Rowlands, Publicity and Public Relations
Carriage
MAVTV can be found in the US on Cablevision, Spectrum, GCI in Alaska, select cable systems within the Caribbean Co-op, Xfinity, RCN Corporation, AT&T U-verse and DirecTV.
As per an email sent to its subscribers, Verizon FiOS removed the channel from its TV service along with Youtoo TV, Blue Highways TV, and Black Belt TV as of December 31, 2012, making it available as an "On Demand" service. However, the channel returned to Verizon FiOS on June 10, 2014.
DirecTV added MAVTV on June 10, 2013. The channel is being carried in standard definition.
MAVTV Canada was launched in January, 2017 in a partnership with the Neon Star Sports & Entertainment Inc, which produces Canadian content.
MAVTV previously carried Dish Network in high definition from May 8, 2009 to May 12, 2015, when Dish dropped the channel as MAVTV and its parent company Lucas Oil failed to reach a new agreement to continue carrying the channel.
Programming
Motorsports coverage
- Acceleration (2014-present)
- ARCA Racing Series (2008, 2015, 2017-present)
- Nashville round shown on tape delay in 2015
- Lucas Oil ASCS Sprint Car Series
- Lucas Oil Chili Bowl Nationals presented by General Tire (2014-present)
- Saturday night alphabet mains are featured live.
- INEX Legends Cars & Bandolero Cars (2014-present)
- Bojangles Summer Shootout at Charlotte Motor Speedway has aired on the network since 2014.
- Apart of the Acceleration 2014 coverage, the Legend SuperCup was aired on the network
- Knoxville Raceway's Dirt Dreams (2014-present)
- Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series
- live coverage of the East Bay Winter Nationals
- Lucas Oil Modified Series
- The 2013 Lucas Oil Challenge Cup was live on the network, it was the network's first live race. The series did not feature live coverage in 2014 however.
- Lucas Oil Pro Pulling League
- Lucas Oil POWRI Midgets
- the 2013 & 2014 Jason Leffler Memorial from Wayne County Speedway was covered on Dirty 30
- Other races such as DuQuoin from 2014 will be covered on Lucas Oil On The Edge
- NEMA Midgets
- The 2014 Boston Louie Seymour Memorial at Seekonk was featured with full race coverage on the SPEED SPORT program.
- Novelis Supermodifieds
- 2 to 3 races from the 2014 season at Oswego Speedway were shown on MavTV under the SPEED SPORT program. Those races included the Budweiser International Classic & the Jim Shampine Memorial
- Outlaw kart racing
- The network featured the SPEED SPORT Challenge at Millbridge Speedway on the SPEED SPORT program in 2014 and 2015.
- SRL Spears Southwest Tour (2014-present)
- The 2014 races at Irwindale & The Bullring at LVMS were aired.
- Super DIRTcar Series (2015)
- The round at Rolling Wheels in 2015 was shown on the network
- The Dirt (2014-present)
- The Dirt features the weekly divisions at WXC Speedway at Western Springs.
- USAC Silver Crown Series (2015-present)
- Sulmar Classic @ Terre Haute to be shown, apart of the JackSlash Dirty 30 program.
- USAC AMSOIL National Sprint Cars (2014-present)
- several rounds from the 2014 season were featured on the JackSlash Dirty 30 program. Those include the Kokomo Sprint Car Smackdown, Oval Nationals @ Perris and the season finale at Canyon.
- USAC Honda National Midget Championship (2014-present)
- several rounds from the 2014 and 2015 seasons were featured on the JackSlash Dirty 30 program.
- World of Outlaws Sprint Cars (2014-present)
- The FVP Knoxville Nationals presented by Lucas Oil have been aired on the network on a tape delay basis since 2014.
- Road racing
- Kuhmo Tyres V8 Touring Car Series
- Pirelli World Challenge (2013, 2014)
- TC rounds aired originally on the network, GT/GTA/GTS races from the 2014 season were re-aired on the network afterwards.
- Drag racing
- ANDRA Drag Racing Series (2014-present)
- FIA European Drag Racing Championship
- Pinks All Out
- A four-episode revival of the series, to be taped at Rockingham Dragway in July 2015 as four different $10,000 to win races, will air on MAVTV.
- Drifting
- Australian Drifting Grand Prix (2014-present)
- British Drift Championship
- D1NZ
- Off-road racing
- Best In The Desert
- Lucas Oil Off Road Racing Series
- World Rally Championship (2013-present)
- live coverage of several stages started in 2014
- Motorcycling
- ATVMX National Championship (2014-present)
- AMA Endurocross
- Australasian Superbike Championship (2014-present)
- British Motocross Championship
- Lucas Oil AMA Pro Motocross Championship
- Sidecar World Championship
- GEICO Motorcycle Superbike Shootout
- FIM Supermoto World Championship
- FIM X-Trial World Championship
- Ice Speedway Gladiators
- Superprestigio Dirt Track
- The Superprestigio Dirt Track Barcelona 2014 was featured with full race coverage on the SPEED SPORT program in 2014.
- Boat racing
- American Sprint Boat Racing Association
- Lucas Oil Drag Boat Racing Series
- Powerboat P1 SuperStock Championship
- V8 Superboats
Motorsport highlight and reality shows
- Dirty 30/Pavement 30/Jackslash.com
- Lucas Oil Motorsports Hour
- Lucas Oil On the Edge
- SPEED SPORT
- SPEED SPORT Magazine
- The Dave Despain Show
References
External links
- Official Network Site
Source of the article : Wikipedia
0 Comments