As part of the initial six-year affiliation agreements signed in late 1997 and throughout 1998, cable providers that operated local WB 100+ affiliates received the service's programming free of charge, instead of being required to pay a carriage fee directly to the network (as providers were required to do when they agreed to carry Foxnet at its launch); in addition, affiliates and their advertising sales partners shared a percentage of the revenue earned through the sale of local ads. The WB 100+ was designed to comply with Nielsen regulations defining what constitutes a local station; this allowed viewership totals from the cable-only affiliates to be counted alongside the network's conventional broadcast affiliates to accurately count toward the national ratings for WB network programming.