DIY Network was an now-defunct American cable network owned by Discovery, Inc. The network was a spin-off of the also defunct HGTV. It launched on New Years Day 1999. Discovery announced that HGTV and DIY Network would be merged into the Magnolia Network and thus go defunct effective August 15, 2019. This announcement was made March 17, 2019. While it originally focused on do-it-yourself activities, the network slowly began to transition into a documentary network about said activities. Unlike HGTV, which was aimed at a female audience, DIY was aimed at a male audience. As of February 2015, DIY was available to approximately 60,942,000 pay television households in the United States. This number dropped to 11,977,500 by the time the network closed.
History (post-2018)
Collapse (2018-2019)
On January 14, 2018, PlayStation Vue announced that DIY Network, as well as all other Discovery networks would launch on PlayStation Vue effective January 20, 2018. This bumped the availability of DIY up by about 500,000. However, just 3 days later, on January 17, 2018...after a carriage dispute between Verizon Fios and Discovery over HGTV, Food Network and DIY Network, Verizon temporarily cut all ties with Discovery, making Discovery apps unavailable over their mobile data and removing all Discovery programming from their Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, Oklahoma City, Nashville, Knoxville, Fort Wayne and Indianapolis headends. After Discovery sued Fios over illegally limiting access of Discovery apps to those using their mobile service, on March 1, 2018...the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of Discovery. Verizon Fios was to pay money ($100 for every viewer lost) to Discovery, and was also forced to lift $50 off of viewers bills for that months bill (March 19-24, 2018). This, as well as the fact that almost all Discovery networks and apps were to return to Fios. However, DIY Network and HGTV were excluded from the agreement, causing the first theories that Discovery was shutting down these two networks. The Portland, Maine and Dallas, Texas Xfinity/Comcast headends dropped DIY Network due to decreasing viewer amounts effective September 17 and October 1, 2018 respectively. Dish Network announced that they were dropping HGTV and DIY Network effective at 11:59PM on December 31, 2018 due to mild disputes between Dish and Discovery. PlayStation Vue dropped DIY Network exactly one year after it was added due to little viewer counts. It was leaked on February 14, 2019 that Discovery was planning on ceasing DIY Network's programming permanently sometime that summer or fall. However the Discovery CEO stated that there was no plans of shutting down DIY Network or HGTV in the near future. However, at a meeting on March 11, 2019, Discovery gave the OK to announce the closure of DIY Network and HGTV would be coming that summer. It was announced at a press conference with the media on March 17, 2019, that DIY Network and HGTV would cease all programming on August 15, 2019 at 11:59PM and would merge into the Magnolia Network effective September 1, 2019. The program spaces of the two networks would be free for cable and satellite providers to hold placeholder programming during the time span.
Closure (2019)
Just a day after that announcement, AT&T U-Verse dropped DIY Network and HGTV from their channel lineup. The following day, DIRECTV signed on with Discovery and agreed to keep DIY Network and HGTV up until they ceased broadcasts. Several DIY and HGTV shows were cancelled in April and May 2019, while all Spectrum providers were forced to pull HGTV on July 17, 2019 and DIY on August 10, 2019. HGTV ceased usual programming on August 13, 2019 and began airing infomercials for the final 2 days of operations. DIY Network's final program was a rerun of "Building Alaska", which aired in the 7:30-8:00PM ET time slot on the evening of August 14. After this, DIY Network began broadcasting infomercials and DIY Network contest ads for the final 4 hours of it's existence. At 11:58PM, a infomercial for Flex Tape ended and a DIY Network tribute bumper began playing, showing many important steps of it's history, it ended with "We thank you for your kind support. And from all of us here at DIY, thank you." After that it aired a loop of a normal DIY Network bumper for 25 seconds until at 11:59:59PM, in the middle of a DIY bumper on DIY and in the middle of a infomercial on HGTV, the plug was pulled on HGTV and DIY. After 5 seconds of a black screen, the NTSC color bars saying "HGTV-DIY" in the middle appeared. This was overwritten by a template saying "We thank you for all the kind support since 1999, however, all good things must come to a end. And DIY Network and HGTV have ceased programming permanently. Thank you for your kind support. - HGTV/DIY Teams" over a gradient, this started at around 12:00:35AM. The power to HGTV and DIY's broadcasts were cut at Discovery headquarters that evening. However, Comcast and DIRECTV had already replaced it with channel lineups or infomercials. At 12:00AM on September 1, Magnolia Network launched.