Style Network The channel was originally launched as
Style Network (although on-air promotions typically referred to it as simply "Style") on October 1, 1998, serving as a spin-off of
E!. It was intended to leverage E!'s coverage of fashion and to provide an expanded venue for shows such as
Fashion Emergency. The network focused on
fashion,
design,
interior decoration and urban lifestyle-related programming. Style provided coverage of events like
New York Fashion Week and showcased various designers. Early programming included:
The Look for Less,
Shabby Chic with Rachel Ashwell,
Glow: The Beauty Show,
Vogue Takes...,
Stylemaker,
Model,
Runway,
Dining with Style, and
Homes with Style. Around 2003, the channel began airing a variety of "makeover" shows, including the home makeover show
Clean House, which lasted for ten seasons on the network, and a face makeover show
How Do I Look?, which lasted for eight seasons. Starting in 2008, Style shifted its focus to personality-based reality programing such as
Jerseylicious,
Tia & Tamera, and
Big Rich Texas, along with a female-focused
spin-off of
The Soup known as
The Dish. On June 25, 2012, Style Network was rebranded with a revised logo and a new slogan: "Work it. Love it. Style it." In 2013, the channel launched two
real estate related shows:
Hot Listings: Miami and
Built, which featured male models remodeling houses.
Relaunch as Esquire Network In December 2012,
NBCUniversal signed a
brand licensing deal with the
Hearst Corporation, owner of
Esquire magazine, to relaunch
G4 into
Esquire Network, which would air shows aimed at a
metrosexual audience with non-sports related male-targeted programming about travel, cooking, and fashion, alongside acquired and archived programming from the NBCUniversal library including
Party Down,
Parks and Recreation and week-delayed episodes of
Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. The rebranding was scheduled to take place on April 22, 2013, On September 9, 2013, NBCUniversal announced that it would replace Style Network with Esquire Network, leaving G4 "as is for the foreseeable future, though it's highly unlikely the company will invest in more original programming" according to
The Hollywood Reporter. One of the factors was likely Style's distribution on certain pay TV providers, including DirecTV, giving Esquire more homes at launch with the Style channel slot than they would have had with G4 (G4 had earlier been removed by DirecTV in 2010 due to the channel's low viewership and had never been able to come to terms on a new carriage agreement). This forced last-second changes to Esquire Network's planned schedule outside of primetime. Cable-edited reruns of
Sex and the City (a series which took heavy criticism from
Esquire magazine during its original run) remained on its schedule until December 2013 (when the rights were shifted to
E!), with most of Style's series being canceled or transferred to E!,
Bravo and
Oxygen. The last program to air on Style on September 22, 2013, was an overnight repeat of the
Tia & Tamera season finale episode "Twerkin' 9 to 5" (which became its
de facto series finale as Tia and Tamera Mowry opted to cancel the series after the relaunch) at 2 a.m. Eastern Time, with the nightly three-hour
paid programming block leading into the Esquire Network launch special after a 30-second abbreviated version of the Style farewell clip aired on the channel space. The rebranding occurred on September 23, 2013, at 6 a.m.
Eastern Time.
Decline and carriage disputes Throughout 2015 and 2016, the majority of the original programs produced for Esquire Network were canceled due to low ratings, with only the youth football reality series
Friday Night Tykes and the network's
Men in Blazers–produced live broadcasts of ''
Pamplona's
Running of the Bulls receiving any critical acclaim or notice. The rest of its lineup was criticized for depending on derivative and "copycat" formats of better programming, which was often found on other networks or produced for free consumption independently and uploaded to streaming video providers such as YouTube and Vimeo. After only several months, the network discontinued airing repeats of Late Night
after then-host Jimmy Fallon moved to The Tonight Show'' in February 2014, which NBC refused to air repeats of on cable television.
American Ninja Warrior, which first premiered on G4, was expected to be on Esquire Network's original lineup, with its fifth season scheduled to premiere in summer 2013 on the network, but with the delay of the network's launch to September 2013, NBCUniversal opted not to wait until then for the season premiere, and the program had success airing on NBC during the summer as repeats in previous seasons. The show's sixth season, which had been taped expecting to air as part of Esquire Network and visually featured its logo in prominent places, then moved to NBC for the 2014 summer season, and airing as a new season on the broadcast network, which had high ratings and subsequent popularity. NBCUniversal decided to move the series permanently to NBC, leaving Esquire Network with repeats rather than to air new episodes, and even before its launch, removing one of the network's G4-era critical series from being used to promote its other content. Although it did receive a spin-off as consolation,
Team Ninja Warrior, Esquire Network had no other compatible programming to promote it, and it never broke into the top 100 cable shows in any of its first season airings. It was moved to USA Network for its second season and beyond. Press attention for the network's programming soon was limited to network promotions of their premieres, then to their eventual notice of cancellation, including little to no promotion from
Esquire magazine itself due to a lack of compatible promotion. The magazine, which under the brand licensing deal was expected to be used to source new series ideas or its writers participating in factual programming such as countdowns, was also severely underutilized, with most of the content developed for the network ending up being from traditional talent pipelines used by NBCUniversal, rather than the magazine itself. Due to these multiple issues, the network began to carry more repeats of existing library comedy and drama series (many of which were seen over-the-air for free on sister networks
Cozi TV,
LXTV, and NBC's streaming apps, along with other NBCU networks), which again brought the network towards the same issues as other defunct NBCU channels including G4,
Chiller, and
Cloo, where little original content being produced made it a network viewers and providers claimed provided little value for its monthly carriage fees. On October 1, 2016,
Dish Network removed the channel from the lineup, alongside the removal of
Cloo several months earlier, the provider stated that most of the network's rerun-centric programming was duplicative of that available on other networks and streaming services. The only notice of the removal was through the provider's monthly billing statement.
AT&T then gave notice that Esquire Network would be removed from
U-verse and
DirecTV on December 15, 2016, a move that cut the network's availability by 25% and removed almost all consumer-based satellite service availability outside of niche
C-Band consumers.
Charter Communications through its
Time Warner Cable,
Bright House Networks and
Spectrum subsidiaries removed the channel from their lineup nationwide on April 25, 2017 (the same day they removed
Chiller from their lineup, also nationwide), leaving
Verizon FiOS and
Google Fiber as some of the last cable providers to carry Esquire Network until its closure; online access to the network's
TV Everywhere live feed was maintained by Charter until the network's shutdown.
Closure On January 18, 2017, it was announced that the network would close on all pay television distributions in mid-2017 and convert to an online-only model. The network shut down on June 28 at noon Eastern time. The network aired a marathon of
Friday Night Tykes on the day of its closure, with the season one finale, "Finish What We Started", being its final program. After the episode ended, a "thank you" slide was shown with the network's web address (which shortly thereafter was turned into a redirect to the main Esquire website). No further comment was made in regards to the supposed online-only version of the network, and Esquire's "TV" section on their website now contains the general features and behind-the-scenes footage prevalent on most magazine sites. The network's final two projects,
Edgehill (a
true crime series about the
Murder of Suzanne Jovin) and
Borderland USA (a reality series about the
U.S. Border Patrol Tactical Unit) were promised to air on the new digital version of the network, but have since been abandoned. G4's
Canadian network closed on August 31, 2017, two months after than Esquire shut down. G4 would relaunch in the United States in a new hybrid cable-digital form on November 16, 2021, after a year of lead-up promotions and announcements, though it closed on November 18, 2022. Hearst has since re-established
Esquire-branded programming through the stations of
Hearst Television and its streaming network Very Local beginning in 2021, with
In Transit, a tourism travelogue series hosted by
Dave Holmes. ==Programming==