Editing Esquire Network (section)

===2016–2017 carriage decline===
Throughout 2015 and into 2016, the majority of the original programs produced for Esquire Network ended up being low-rated, 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.{{cite needed|date=September 2023}} The rest of its lineup was criticized{{by who|date=September 2023}} 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 stopped airing repeats of ''Late Night with Jimmy Fallon'' after its February 2014 end, immediately upon his move to the higher-profile ''[[The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon|Tonight Show]]'', which NBC refused to dilute the value of with cable repeats.

''[[American Ninja Warrior]]'', which had started on G4, was expected to be a linchpin of Esquire Network's lineup, but with the delay of the network's launch to the fall of 2013, NBCUniversal did not want to wait to launch the season, 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, proved the show's worth with great ratings. NBCUniversal decided to move the series permanently to NBC, leaving Esquire Network with repeats rather than 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.

Though it did receive a spin-off as consolation, ''[[American Ninja Warrior: Ninja vs. Ninja|Team Ninja Warrior]]'', Esquire Network had no other compatible programming to promote it, and it never cracked 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 the bookends 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]], [[LX (TV network)|LXTV]], and NBC's streaming apps, along with other NBCU networks), which again brought the network towards the same issues befalling G4, [[Chiller (TV channel)|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. As with their earlier dropping of [[Cloo]], 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 dropping was through the provider's monthly billing statement. [[AT&T]] then gave notice that Esquire Network would be dropped 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 (IEEE)|C-Band]] consumers.<ref name="varietyatt">{{cite news |last=Holloway |first=Daniel |date=14 December 2016 |title=DirecTV Drops Esquire Network |url=https://variety.com/2016/tv/news/directv-dropping-esquire-1201942553/ |work=[[Variety (magazine)|Variety]] |access-date=15 December 2016}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last=Littleton |first=Cynthia |date=18 August 2016 |title=Demise of Participant's Pivot Reflects Niche Cable's Diminished Fortunes |url=https://variety.com/2016/tv/news/demise-of-participants-pivot-reflects-niche-cables-diminished-fortunes-1201840225/ |work=[[Variety (magazine)|Variety]] |access-date=February 7, 2017}}</ref> [[Charter Communications]] through its [[Time Warner Cable]], [[Bright House Networks]] and [[Charter Spectrum|Spectrum]] subsidiaries removed the channel from their lineup nationwide on April 25, 2017 (the same day they removed [[Chiller (TV channel)|Chiller]] from their lineup, also nationwide), leaving [[Verizon FiOS]] and [[Google Fiber]] as a few of the last cable providers to carry Esquire Network until its demise; online access to the network's [[TV Everywhere]] live feed was maintained by Charter until the network's termination.