Country United States | Language English | |
 | ||
Launched June 29, 1998; 18 years ago (1998-06-29) Owned by A&E Networks
(Hearst Corporation (50%)/
Disney-ABC Television Group (The Walt Disney Company) (50%) Picture format 1080i (HDTV)
480i (SDTV) Slogan Every Night is Movie Night TV shows Celebrity Ghost Stories, Those Who Kill, The Capture of the Green, I Was Possessed, I Dated A Psycho | ||
LMN (an abbreviation for its former name Lifetime Movie Network) is an American digital cable and satellite television network that is owned by A+E Networks, a joint venture between the Disney–ABC Television Group subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company and the Hearst Corporation. LMN carries movies and exclusive shows aimed at women, especially made for television movies. Many, though not all, of the movies that air on the network are Lifetime originals that were first shown on the flagship Lifetime channel; in turn, the network also premieres original films that are later broadcast on Lifetime. Other made-for-TV movies shown on LMN originally aired on broadcast networks.
As of February 2015, LMN is available to approximately 82,031,000 pay television households (70.5% of households with television) in the United States.
History
The network launched in June 1998 as the Lifetime Movie Network. Variety praised the move as "capitalizing on the expected channel boom from TV’s conversion to digital distribution over the next few years." However, it only reached 3 million of the 70 million cable subscribers in the U.S. at the time.
The original format of the network consisted of longer blocks of made-for-television movies with limited commercial interruptions, airing twice a day. As the network grew and as broadcast networks have ceased producing made-for-TV movies, more commercial breaks were added during its film content; gradually, the network also added theatrical film releases to its schedule. The network airs different movies each day, although some are repeated into the next broadcast day. The channel was rebranded as LMN in 2006, before reverting to using the full name in mid-2009 as part of Lifetime's attempt to broaden its brand. In 2011, the network had switched back to branding as just LMN.
On April 19, 2009, the broadcast of Natalee Holloway attracted 3.2 million viewers for the network, more than 1 million of which were among the demographic of women aged 18–49, garnering the highest ratings in the network's history at that time. On August 27, 2009, A+E Networks acquired Lifetime Entertainment Services, which was jointly owned by the former's corporate parents The Walt Disney Company and the Hearst Corporation in conjunction with NBCUniversal (which sold its interest to the two other companies in 2011).
On October 13, 2013, the network debuted its first original series, the reality-based murder mystery program Killer Profile. In addition, three series that had previously aired on sister network The Biography Channel – The Haunting Of, I Survived... and Celebrity Ghost Stories – also moved to LMN that year. In March 2014, A+E Networks moved the drama series Those Who Kill to LMN, becoming the first scripted series to air on the network, although it solely moved to LMN to burn off the remaining episodes of the low-rated A&E program.