Shop at Home Network

The Shop at Home Network (also called Shop at Home, Shop at Home TV and SATH) was a television network in the United States, owned and operated by the E. W. Scripps Company from 2002 to 2006, then by Jewelry Television. It primarily aired home shopping programming. During Scripps' ownership, some shows simulcast on sister channels (such as Food Network).

Shop At Home (SATH (Shop At The Home) stock symbol) was started by Joe Overholt in the middle 1980s. Located in a strip mall just off of Interstate 40 in Newport, Tennessee, the original programs were taped in segments and mailed to head-end origination studios to be played when time was available on satellite. The low budget production was aired over unused satellite transponders to an audience who had large satellite dishes installed at their houses. It soon became apparent that these inconsistent excursions would not make a shopping channel successful. 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. Homeowners many of whom had no access to cable and a minimal number of off-air television channels were looking for a way to receive some of the same programs their urban cousins had access to. 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 first shopping channel (Home Shopping Network) had just appeared out of Florida, so the network was launched as a rival. The ability to reach this entertainment starved market was important to the fledgling experiment and this markets appreciation and monetary encouragement was key to SAH's progress. The beginnings of today's satellite television as an industry began by providing the dish and electronics to receive the signals from satellites in space that coincidentally was the same way that HBO and other entertainment was distributed to cable systems across the country. 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. The cable lobby had portrayed back yard dish owners as pirates and accused them of stealing their programming. The STAA (Overholt was a member) and others made it public that offers had been made to the programmers to pay for the product being received but most programmers had refused the "offer to pay". The STAA sought assistance from their elected representatives, of which Al Gore was one, for a fair solution to the problem. Gore was conducting local town hall meetings and had a sympathetic ear for this ground roots movement from his constituents. A few months later when the STAA decided to bring the issues to dish owners they used the same satellite signal to do so. 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. Gore was unable to attend in person but had pledged his support and participated in the event via telephone.

In 1987 the company sold shares and became a penny stock listed in the pink sheets as SATH. By 1993 the company was struggling to attain profitability. Paul Cowell the majority shareholder sold the company to venture capitalist JD Clinton and his partners. Kent Lillie moved from General Manager of Fox TV in Atlanta to become the CEO. 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. Shop at Home became a cable and broadcast media company purchasing cable time and acquiring television stations. Under the FCC rules all local cable companies "must carry" local programing at no charge to a local broadcaster. 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. Shop at Home built coverage into approximately one hundred million households. Expanding this audience drove the revenue and gave the opportunity for product volume and profitability. With growth came a listing of SATH on NASDAQ and expansion of management.

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. Most shopping networks, like QVC and HSN, targeted a predominantly female audience, while SAH's collectible-themed shows attracted a mostly male audience. The company grew into a major retailer of men's memorabilia and collectibles.

Popular shows during the 1990s and early 2000s also included The Knife Collector's Show, co-hosted for most of its run by Shawn Leflar and former SAH personality Tom O'Dell, and the Sports Collectibles show, emceed by Don West for a majority of its run. 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.

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. The management migrated the network to a more traditional shopping channel format, and as a result, replaced many of its old hosts and brought in new personalities from Scripps' sister networks such as HGTV and Food Network to tie into those popular channels, most notably Paula Deen and Emeril Lagasse (The Coin Vault was retained, and remained successful).