Pointless ramble on a Sunday morning

Posted on February 24, 2008 by Gene

There was once a concept — the 500 Channel television universe. I suppose it began with the cable and satellite revolution, when people started to get their television in bulk rather than over the air with rabbit ears. The idea of the 500 channel universe was that there would be room for specialization in television, that niche audiences would be served and that there would always be something to watch.
Guess what? It didn’t work out that way. Big surprise.
The first evidence of this was, in my opinion, MTV. You kids these days don’t remember, but way back in the 1980s when MTV debuted it was something completely, totally new: a channel that did nothing but play music videos. Talk about niche programming! Then they diversified, bringing online VH1 — again, music videos but with a adult contemporary vibe.
Then something happened: MTV started putting regular, scheduled “shows” on the air, eventually squeezing out music videos altogether and then creating MTV2 for the videos. Over time, they disappeared from there as well. Today, MTV, MTV2, and VH1 are like any other channel with a variety of programming.
Remember CourtTV? Here was a channel that was devoted to trials and court cases. Today, they show procedural crime dramas and movies. Like any other channel.
One used to tune in to The Weather Channel for… the weather. Today, the channel fills their schedule with actual shows. CNN was once 24 hours of news every day, now they have programmed shows built around personalities. Headline News — again, a channel that was very focused on news on a loop — does regular programming.
There is some irresistible force (ratings?) that compels media companies to continually target the broadest audience possible. Why the owners of CourtTV figured that they had to compete with, say, TNT boggles the mind.
When I was prepping to move back to DC, I canceled my pay TV. Today I am living quite happily watching just local over-the-air stations; not just because I was tired of paying for so much crap but because all those channels were the same. Hundreds of channels all showing the same formula of utter drivel. (I will admit to missing a few channels which have mostly stuck to their niche mission, such as SciFi and BBC America.)
When the digital television system began, a couple of stations back in DC used the multichannel abilities of DTV to show live weather radar on one of the subchannels. NBC glommed onto this idea and launched “Weather Plus” for digital subchannels. Like MTV, at first it did one thing and did it well: it showed the weather. But as more people bought digital televisions and cable started carrying those subchannels, the same compulsion overtook Weather Plus. Today when I tuned in, I was assaulted by a barrage of ads, rotating graphics, and a commercial followed by some kind of medical programming. The only weather information I got was that it was cloudy in Santa Cruz, and I didn’t have the stamina to wait for those interminable graphics to roll around to San Jose.
There’s more money to be made, I suppose, by diluting the original mission and trying to be everything to everyone; a strategy which never works and makes it unsatisfying for everyone.