Key Points
- Law&Crime President Rachel Stockman said the Court TV acquisition is driven by leveraging its 3,000-plus trial archive for digital distribution, primarily on YouTube.
- Court TV will remain a separate brand focused on live trials, while Law&Crime repurposes archival and live content for on-demand programming.
- Executives say live coverage will continue despite internal disputes, with Law&Crime aiming to expand its position as a leading true-crime digital brand.
A leading executive in charge of operations at Law&Crime Network said the company’s decision to acquire Court TV from the E. W. Scripps Company was largely predicated on distributing its archival content online.
In an interview with a podcast called Creator Upload on Friday, Law&Crime President Rachel Stockman reaffirmed Court TV and Law&Crime will continue to be operated as separate brands under common ownership, with Court TV focused primarily on live court proceedings.
Law&Crime, which has a significant online following, will repurpose Court TV’s archive of more than 3,000 criminal and civil trials to produce new live and on-demand programming with a primary focus of distributing that content through YouTube and other channels, Stockman said.
“The most-significant cases from around the country, they have in their archives,” Stockman said. “Now, we have as part of our archives.”
The acquisition of Court TV will make Law&Crime the “biggest true-crime digital brand” on the Internet, something that few people at the network thought would happen when it first launched as a legal blog in 2016.
“They are this iconic legacy brand that has so much recognition, especially in the court and legal space,” Stockman said. “We saw it as a great synergy and a way to really help continue to build out the Law&Crime business.”
On paper, Law&Crime already owns Court TV, according to a Scripps executive. Moving a television network from one company to another takes time; around five dozen employees — most of whom will lose their jobs in April — are working now to facilitate that transition.
Many of those workers at Scripps were told on Monday that Court TV would stop transmitting its linear feed on March 11, something Stockman disputed in a phone call on Wednesday. Scripps has signed a three-year distribution deal to continue offering Court TV on its broadcast TV stations across the country, and the network will maintain its commitment to live trial programming for the foreseeable future, she affirmed.
A current Court TV employee filed a whistleblower complaint at Scripps, saying public comments made by the company and Law&Crime executives were not in line with the operational realities of the channel today. A spokesperson for Scripps said the company was aware of the complaint and dealing with it internally. Law&Crime was not accused of any direct wrongdoing.
Writing on social media, Abrams — who is still involved with Law&Crime — said Court TV will maintain much of the live trial coverage that viewers have come to expect, though the channel is still working out its long-term programming strategy.
“We do need a little time to assess details since we just acquired a major business but big picture live programming and trial streaming continues,” Abrams wrote.
Stockman offered more clarity on how things are expected to play out: Court TV will continue offering live trial coverage on broadcast, cable and streaming, while Law&Crime capitalizes on that coverage and Court TV’s archive through adjacent programming.
“Law&Crime will continue to lean in on all those big true crime cases going on around the country, as well as the law enforcement programming that we do in other long form documentary story telling that we do as well,” Stockman said in the podcast interview.
The strategy appears to be rooted in maintaining its position as one of the leading legal channel on YouTube, where Law&Crime has over 7.4 million followers compared to Court TV’s 2.1 million followers. Vinnie Politan, one of the most-recognizable legal analysts on Court TV, will join Law&Crime and host a YouTube-distributed show, Stockman said. Additional programming-related announcements are expected in the next few months.
