How LX.TV killed LX News
Television network you have never heard of
LX News has shut down. You may be wondering, “LX News, what is that, and why should I care?”
LX News was a news brand, one could even call it a news network. It was launched in 2019 on YouTube and on its own website, and was expanded to streaming services and over-the-air broadcast in April 2020. Traditional television is how I discovered it: I was making a video about recording digital TV broadcast onto a VHS VCR, so I took my TV set out of hibernation and skipped through the channels in hope to find something interesting.
I cannot recall seeing a single advert about the network, which is strange considering that I’ve been bombarded with Netflix, Peacock, Disney, Apple TV ads and who knows what else. It took me two years to come across the channel since its launch! So, in the hindsight, LX News was set up for failure right from the start.
Its mission was to provide “visually rich and inspiring longer-form news content” to young adults in “an entirely different way”. LX wanted to deliver “storytelling that was stirring and straightforward”, to help Gen Z and millennial audiences “feel connected to our diverse society”.
The way I understand it, they wanted to create a bunch of short explainers and sandwich them between morning and evening daily live newscasts, which would mix international, national and local news with celebrity gossip and a chatter about social media posts.
Our younger audiences want stories that are relatable. They want to feel a connection with the people delivering the news to them. They want more context about what’s happening in their neighborhoods. LX will deliver this and more — Valari Staab, President, NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations (2019).
The abbreviation “LX” signified the eXponential abilities in telling unique stories of Local communities. Nice cover story, but this is not how the whole “LX” hoopla had started.
In 2006, former MTV executives Morgan Hertzan and Joseph Varet founded LXTV — a website and a privately owned broadband TV network, geared toward young professionals with a taste for luxury and a good dose of social energy. Naturally, they needed a fitting domain name.
The domain lx.com was registered in 1995. Since at least 1998 it belonged to a Massachusetts company Veritech. In 2006 lx.com was transferred to LXTV. The website became not only the home for the company news, but also a web-streaming platform, quite a pioneering endeavor considering that YouTube launched just a year earlier.
In 2008 LXTV was acquired by NBC’s Local Media Division. With the acquisition, Hertzan was appointed senior vice president and general manager at NBC Local Media, while Varet remained on board as a consultant.
LXTV became NBC’s in-house subsidiary of “high-end entertainment and culture” shows like 1st Look, Open House and George to the Rescue, targeting a young affluent audience. At the same time its website changed its hostname to lxtv.com; lx.com would simply redirect to the new host. Clearly, NBC had bigger plans for the juicy two-letter domain name.
By the end of the aughts, a new generation of video encoders allowed to reduce data rate of over-the-air digital television and to squeeze more subchannels, also known as multicast channels or diginets, into each frequency band.
In 2009-2010, NBC Local Media division launched Nonstop subchannel in several regional markets.
It’s a real effort to increase local programming in our markets [using] a story-driven production model.— John Wallace, President of Local Media (2010).
It featured a mix of locally produced newscasts and LXTV lifestyle programming.
By 2011, the constellation of the Nonstop subchannels was on the way to become a single national network, but in 2012, the events took a sharp turn, and the prenatal lifestyle channel was retooled into a classic television network similar to MeTV — the revamped version of NBC Nonstop was named CoziTV. Little House On the Praire and Monk were in, Talk Stoop and Open House were out. LXTV retreated back to its website, and its broadcast content shriveled up to a late night time slot on the main NBC channel, scheduled every Saturday.
In 2010s political, racial, economic and environmental tensions in the U.S. heated up, resulting in Occupy Wall Street in 2011, Anaheim police shootings and protests in 2012, Flatbush Riots in 2013, Ferguson unrest in 2014, Baltimore protests in 2015, Dakota Access Pipeline protests in 2016, Unite the Right rally in 2017. Reporting on these and many other standoffs could benefit from a news network, oriented towards a new generation of TV viewers.
What if lifestyle programming for the young and the restless was combined with a youth-oriented newscast? Bingo! NBC found the recipe for its new brand, with which NBC planned to lure Millenials and Gen-Z to watch television news along with home renovation shows.
Sometime between 2018–2019, the lx.com hostname stopped forwarding to lxtv.com, and the creation of another national network got under way.
In 2019, NBCUniversal launched LX — a package, comprising a digital news brand, a streaming service and a broadcast network.
In an effort to target the younger demographic, LX used “visually rich,” longer-form content, with the news-telling experience more akin to a news magazine, rather than a traditional newscast.
Its “Visual Storytellers,” as the reporters were called, worked within their own communities — including Los Angeles, Boston, Dallas, Miami and New York — to offer local stories and background on complex issues.
In 2020, a live news program called LX News debuted on LX. It aired on weekdays from 8am-10am and 8pm-10pm EST. LX News was presented by four new hosts from LX’s new workspace and studio, built on the premises of KXAS, the NBC-owned station in Dallas-Fort Worth.
Besides delivering 20 hours of live news programming each week, the studio also was producing daily and weekly specials that featured LX documentary stories and explainers aptly called LX Presents and LX Explains.
At LX, we are innovating on the local news experience for adults 18 to 45 by delivering them powerful and visually-rich storytelling that takes their interests into consideration. LX’s approach to news is personal — Meredith McGinn, Senior Vice President of LX (2020).
Other programming included content from Tastemade, Jukin Media, The Dodo and LXTV. The latter provided lifestyle shows 1st Look, George To The Rescue, Open House and Talk Stoop, which allowed LX audiences “to be in-the-know about the best restaurants and places to visit, watch amazing home renovations, get exclusive tours of celebrities’ homes, and more.”
In 2021, LX installed virtual set equipment to significantly enhance its visual storytelling.
A big part of our brand is authenticity. We wanted the network to have a very normal and authentic voice, and we wanted to do some truly fun stuff with the virtual area. — Meagan Harris, NBCLX’s News Director (2021).
The photorealistic graphics rendering solution was based on Unreal Engine from Epic Games.
The visuals go along with great storytelling and that’s what really captures our audience’s imagination. — Tim Carista, APC Director at NBCLX (2021).
By 2022, the LX News studio in Dallas-Fort Worth was generating the bulk of the programming for the LX channel, including:
- the Current, with breaking news, pop culture trends and entertainment gossip.
- LX News — news presented using a storytelling approach that was “personal, inspiring, thought-provoking, and community focused”.
- LX Explains — a deep dive into the issues and events, focusing on the environment, politics, technology, community and social justice.
- LX Presents — Daily and weekly specials that featured LX documentary storytelling, explainers, and stories from NBC owned TV stations and NBC News digital.
LX News became the dominant program, so much so that the whole network was re-branded LX News in the summer 2022. Programming from other sources, including LXTV, was curtailed.
In January 2023, LX News network added another news program: LX News Zone — a daily digest of the latest news from NBC local stations. One hour was dedicated to five or six stations from the East Coast and from the Central states, another hour presented a collection of stories from the West Coast. Then these programs would immediately repeat, which LX called “encore” programming.
Aside of the content, produced at the Dallas-Fort Worth studio, the only other programming was Access Hollywood, produced by KNBC in Los Angeles, California. LXTV content has all but disappeared from the channel, I suppose for a good reason, after all feel-good lifestyle shows for the affluent did not jive with environmental and social justice topics. Then the skies have fallen.
In May, 2023, NBCUniversal announced that NBCLX would be shut down within the next few months. According to NBCUniversal,
the channel largely failed to resonate with its intended audience: young people who are more likely to watch news online than pay for cable television. — NBCUniversal (2023)
Less than 8,000 people followed NBC LX’s account on Twitter, and its YouTube videos often pulled in less than 200 views.
On the second week of August 2023, NBCLX or LX or LX News, whatever it had been called, was re-branded NBC LX Home. The original LX News shows were gone, while LXTV shows were in. I am not sure that young adults, who, statistically, are way down on the home ownership ladder and have a lower chance to own a home in the future, are interested in fancy homes and remodeling more than they were troubled with social justice and the breakdown of the environment. On the other hand, with the re-branding, I don’t think that NBC is interested in the Gen Z audience anymore.
Fifteen years after it was acquired by NBC, LXTV won back its Internet domain name and took possession of its own television channel.
I am happy for them, but I mourn the defeat of a news service that reported on burning societal and environmental issues.
Millennials and Gen Z may not have cared, but I, a Gen-X, have got to like LX News.
Rest in peace. ■
