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Ion Plus is an American broadcast television network and FAST television channel owned by the Scripps Networks subsidiary of the E. W. Scripps Company. The network originally launched in 2007 as Ion Life, maintaining a format featuring lifestyle programming focused on health and wellness, cooking, home decor, and travel. With expanded cable carriage, in 2019, Ion Media converted the network into a general entertainment format that matched that of parent network Ion Television, featuring day-long marathons of various drama series.
Ion Plus was carried mainly as a digital multicast service on Ion Media Networks-owned stations as well as select Ion Television affiliates, usually to the third subchannel; its base national feed was also available on select cable television and satellite providers. In select markets, Ion Plus has had main channel placement, allowing it must-carry coverage on local cable and satellite services.
Ion Plus ceased broadcasting over-the-air in 2021 after Ion Media's acquisition by the E. W. Scripps Company and merger with Katz Broadcasting to form Scripps Networks, but continued to air as an advertising-supported video-on-demand network through several AVOD streaming services, including Samsung TV Plus, and Vizio WatchFree. The Latest Xumo TV Free Channels, Definitions, and Links On July 1, 2024, Ion Plus returned to over-the-air broadcasting as a replacement for Defy TV.
On January 14, 2008, as part of a carriage agreement that allowed the provider to continue to carry Ion Television, Ion Media Networks reached an agreement with Comcast to carry both Ion Life and its children's-targeted network Qubo on its systems. Subsequently, in May 2010, Ion Media signed carriage agreements with Advanced Cable Communications and Comcast's system in Colorado Springs, Colorado to add Ion Life to digital tiers in several markets.
Even though Ion Life's parent network Ion Television overhauled its logo as part of an extensive rebranding on September 8, 2008, Ion Life retained its existing logo – a green variant of the logo Ion Television used from 2007 to 2008 – and graphics package, the latter of which remained in use until 2011. In February 2010, the network added theatrically released to its schedule, usually airing from 7:00 p.m. to 12:00 a.m. Eastern Time (the airtimes vary, sometimes starting earlier or ending later depending on the length and number of the films) on Monday through Friday evenings. By 2012, the number of films featured on the network had decreased, with more lifestyle-oriented programming being added to its prime time schedule; films returned to the lineup full-time the following year. During December (expanding to between Thanksgiving and Christmas in 2018), the network ran a limited selection of Christmas movies that were previously shown on Ion Television through its contracts with MarVista Entertainment and Hybrid LLC. In January 2015, Ion Life began incorporating blocks of infomercial-based and compensated religious paid programming scheduled in an interspersed manner alongside its lifestyle programs in the morning and early afternoon.
On March 27, 2017, the network's logo was updated to reflect Ion Television's current design language. Throughout 2017 and 2018, Ion Media purchased several stations which became channel sharing partners with their stations after the 2016 FCC spectrum auction, specifically to exploit those stations' existing must-carry coverage on multichannel television providers to allow the addition of Ion Life to their lineups, carriage which had been refused to the network in the past when it was exclusively transmitted as a digital subchannel. (Ion's main channel had traditionally been the only Ion Media-owned network carried on many providers.) Many of these stations were formerly owned-and-operated stations associated with the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), which withdrawn from over-the-air broadcasting in non-critical markets.
As a general entertainment network, acquired entertainment programming was reduced to 13 hours per day (from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 a.m. Eastern Time), with infomercials filling the remaining overnight and morning timeslots. (Sister children's network Qubo—which also originally maintained a 24-hour entertainment schedule from its launch—added a five-hour-long overnight block of infomercials, beginning at the same start time as the Ion Life/Plus block, on January 8, 2019.) On September 8, 2020, the network replaced its slate of factual educational programs that fulfilled its educational content requirements with an extension of Ion Television's "Qubo Kids Corner" block on Monday through Wednesday mornings; the addition of the Qubo E/I block was due to commitments that Ion Media had to fulfill after adding eight primary affiliates—Ion-owned KILM, WFPX, WDPX-TV, WCLJ-TV, WDLI, WSFJ and WLWC, and affiliate WIFS—to its slate through the TBN deals and ancillary affiliation agreements.
On September 24, 2020, the E. W. Scripps Company announced an agreement to buy Ion Media for $2.65 billion. "Scripps creates national television networks business with acquisition of ION Media," press release from Scripps.com, September 24, 2020 The transaction, which closed on January 7, 2021, saw Ion Television, Ion Plus, Qubo and infomercial service Shop Ion integrated into Scripps' Katz Broadcasting subsidiary (operator of fellow multicast networks Court TV, Ion Mystery, Bounce TV, Laff and Grit). "No Retrans, No Problem for Scripps’ Ion Deal," from Broadcasting & Cable, September 25, 2020
While both Qubo and Shop Ion ceased operations altogether on February 28, 2021, Scripps continued to provide a live feed of Ion Plus to smart TV providers and their advertiser-supported channel portals even after its over-the-air discontinuation that same date, including Vizio's WatchFree service, and Samsung TV Plus on that manufacturer's Tizen-supported sets. It, alongside the main Ion network, has since added additional streaming coverage through Xumo, Tubi, Freevee and Roku, as well as their associated mobile phone/tablet apps on both Google Play and iOS, appealing specifically to a cord-cutting audience looking for alternative entertainment options.
The first iteration Ion Plus did not have any over-the-air stations in several major media market, most notably Toledo, Ohio; San Diego; Charlotte, North Carolina; Richmond, Virginia; Green Bay, Wisconsin; and Cincinnati. A key factor in the network's limited national broadcast coverage is the fact that Ion Media Networks does not actively seek over-the-air distribution for the network on the digital subchannels of other network-affiliated stations (in contrast, its parent network Ion Television – which had similarly limited national coverage following the digital television transition – has begun subchannel-only affiliation arrangements through agreements with NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations' Telemundo subsidiary and Nexstar Media Group during 2014 and 2015), with very few stations that contractually carry the network's programming (with limited exceptions in markets and Anchorage, Alaska). As a result, Ion Media Networks owns the vast majority of the stations within Ion Plus's affiliate body, a situation that changed when the 2024 iteration launched on July 1, 2024, though some markets with a traditional Scripps station in an Ion duopoly have allowed the new Ion Plus coverage in cities it formerly was not in, in addition to its established streaming coverage nationwide.
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