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.
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.
I miss the old days of MTV, where they would show the ‘new’ Duran Duran video every hour on the hour… and those silly VJs…
First of all, I dig the site.
Second, well, I’m not a fan of channel deviations myself. American Movie Classics rarely show classics or even American movies (they too show episodic television). Even Sci-Fi deviates from the script at times. Tuesdays at 10 in the East belongs to Extreme Championship Wrestling.
But the deviation that has hurt me, tore through the core of my soul, is Cartoon Network. It’s bad enough Time Warner (the most poorly ran entertainment company on the planet) has taken Looney Tunes from their lineup since 2002, but in 2005, they actually began airing live-action movies like The Goonies, Dumb and Dumber, Batman (1989), Snow Day, Ace Ventura, and School of Rock and aired acquired live-action series like Saved By The Bell and Zixx. Cartoon Network has created their own live-action films and shows including Out of Jimmy’s Head (which spun off from their first live-action original film Re-Animated), several shows on Adult Swim, a live-action version of Ben 10, and more coming out the gate this year.
I’ve been following this for years at The X Bridge and Thoughtnami, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many diverse animation fans who usually don’t see eye-to-eye on anything become so frustrated that a channel that once proclaimed to be all animation until the end of time swerve in this direction.
Just the nature of the beast, I guess.