Laff's launch was announced by Katz Broadcasting in January 2015 as having a scheduled launch date of April 15, 2015, coinciding with Tax Day in the United States; the explanation by Katz is that people needed "something to laugh to" on what they deemed one of the most stressful days of the year. The network launched at Noon that day; the first program was the film My Mom's New Boyfriend.[3]
Katz announced that television stations owned by ABC Owned Television Stations and 13 E. W. Scripps Company would serve as the network's charter affiliates; the former serving as a replacement for the standard definition feed of the Live Well Network, which with Laff's announcement also began to roll-back to only being carried by ABCOTS stations.[4][5] On March 13, 2015, Katz Broadcasting announced an affiliation deal with the Cox Media Group to carry Laff on the subchannels of seven of its stations expanding its initial reach to 47% of the country.[6] The following week on March 20, as part of a multi-network affiliation agreement with Katz, the Meredith Corporation announced that it would carry the network on two of its stations.[7][8]
A list of 2019 Nielsen ratings published by Variety indicated that Laff averaged 223,000 viewers in prime time, down 5% from the 2018 average.[13]
The network moved off ABC Owned Television Stations at the beginning of 2021, in favor of new carriage on Scripps's recently-acquired Ion Media stations in place of the now-defunct Qubo, Ion Plus and Ion Shop networks.[14]
Programming
Laff provides comedy programming to owned-and-operated and affiliated stations every day from 6:00 a.m. to 3:00 a.m. Eastern Time, with paid programming filling the remaining vacated hours. Laff's schedule mainly consists of 1980s, 1990s and 2000s off-network sitcoms.[2][4] On September 1, 2021, Nexstar launched a direct competitor to Laff, Rewind TV, and the latter network replaced Laff on Nexstar stations (or will in the upcoming months if not immediately possible due to contractual obligations).
As of 20 July 2022[update], Laff has 425 current or pending affiliation agreements with television stations in 48 states, plus the District of Columbia, covering 91.3% of the United States.[17]
