History AudienceAlienatingEra / TelevisionNetworks

* Some viewers feel that Creator/{{Netflix}} began falling into one from late 2018 and into early 2021, with rate hikes, cancellation of more popular originals (the most high-profile being ''Series/{{One Day at a Time|2017}}'', ''WesternAnimation/TucaAndBertie'', ''Series/PatriotActWithHasanMinhaj'', ''Series/IAmNotOkayWithThis'', and ''Series/AlteredCarbon'', all five of which were highly-acclaimed by critics and audiences alike; the former two shows would be {{Uncanceled}} via ChannelHop[=s=]), competition from other streaming services like Creator/DisneyPlus, Creator/{{Peacock}} and Creator/HBOMax causing popular properties like ''Series/TheOfficeUS'', ''Series/{{Friends}}'', ''Franchise/StarWars'' and the Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse to leave, and lower quality original series and movies being cited as potential sticking points. While there have been a few hits, with ''Series/{{The Witcher|2019}}'' and ''Series/TigerKing'' being notable examples, they've put out more than the occasional stinker (''Follow This'', ''WesternAnimation/PinkyMalinky'', ''Soundtrack'' and ''Series/SpaceForce2020'', among other shows), and some shows that were critically-acclaimed (including the aforementioned high-profile cancellations) never got another season despite Netflix never releasing its ratings data. Questions regarding its long-term content strategy also began to linger as more and more studios pulled their content for their own services to exploit, even as the company boomed in the wake of the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic. It doesn't help that because Netflix doesn't have its own full-fledged production studio (most of its originals are commissioned by Netflix to third party producers, most of whom retain ownership of their IP with Netflix not seeing a dime from merch sales), the service relies heavily on debt to continue funding originals, only making money through subscriber fees rather than continued exploitation of the IP. It's become such a mixed bag for them that, despite winning the most Emmy nominations (160) in 2020, ahead of Creator/{{Disney}} (126) and Creator/{{WarnerMedia}} (120), they fell behind ''both of them'' in overall wins (21, versus Disney's 22 wins, in large part thanks to ''Series/TheMandalorian'', and [=WarnerMedia=]'s 37, for them thanks to critically-acclaimed HBO programming like ''Series/{{Euphoria}}'' and ''Series/{{Watchmen|2019}}'')[[note]]It was especially embarrassing for them that ''Tiger King'', despite high critical praise and massive media and public attention, was [[AwardSnub shut out]] from any nominations; the Emmy for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series ended up going to Creator/{{ESPN}}'s ''The Last Dance''[[/note]]. While Netflix has responded to these challenges by increasing its originals budget, not to mention signing a first-run pay TV window agreement with Creator/SonyPictures for its slate beginning in 2022, it remains to be seen if Netflix will be able to deal with its long-term challenges more efficiently.

** Whether or not the network is still in an Audience-Alienating Era is up for debate, as the general consensus is that Nickelodeon has been improving itself since 2016 following the premiere of ''WesternAnimation/HarveyBeaks'' and ''WesternAnimation/TheLoudHouse''. Nevertheless, complaints still remain--and it's still agreed the network has done little to counter its reputation of poorly treating animated shows if they aren't immediate smash hits like ''[=SpongeBob=]'' (or ''The Loud House'', which managed to become a surprising exception). Additionally, nearly half a dozen live-action shows continued to get ScrewedByTheNetwork [[Series/TheOtherKingdom and often receive]] 1 season before prematurely getting shown to the door, or 2 [[Series/IAmFrankie if the series]] [[Series/MakeItPop was fortunate enough.]] ''Harvey Beaks'' was infamously punted around to various timeslots and then barely promoted, due to it not being the instant ratings success Nick wanted it to be in spite of acclaim, and then was ''very'' quietly cancelled, much to the surprise and disappointment of creator C.H. Greenblatt; it didn't help that, when C.H. talked about his disappointment regarding the show's treatment (despite saying he had no issues with the Animation Studio and its personnel there), Nick forced him to apologize and delete his comments. This was later followed by the network heavily delaying two hyped revival specials, ''WesternAnimation/RockosModernLifeStaticCling'' and ''WesternAnimation/InvaderZimEnterTheFlorpus'', and halting production and laying off crew members on ''WesternAnimation/GlitchTechs'' '''before the show even premiered''', before all three (and ''WesternAnimation/PinkyMalinky'') were eventually added to Creator/{{Netflix}}. Thankfully, things seem to have settled with the premiere of ''WesternAnimation/ItsPony'', which has managed to be both well-reviewed and well-promoted in spite of not doing amazingly ratings-wise.

** Some put the start of the Audience-Alienating Era as far back as TheNineties, when MTV first began developing original, non-music-related programming. However, fans of animation often consider the '90s to be one of MTV's ''best'' periods, being when they premiered numerous hit animated series as ''WesternAnimation/BeavisAndButtHead'', ''WesternAnimation/LiquidTelevision'', ''WesternAnimation/AeonFlux'', ''WesternAnimation/TheHead'', ''WesternAnimation/{{Daria}}'', and ''WesternAnimation/CelebrityDeathmatch''. Also, while RealityTV is undoubtedly a touchy subject for MTV fans for reasons detailed below, the early seasons of ''Series/TheRealWorld'' and ''Series/RoadRules'' still won genuine acclaim for their looks at the '90s youth counterculture. Plus, the network still regularly aired music videos and performances; during this time, both ''Total Request Live'' (or ''TRL''), a music video countdown show that introduced AudienceParticipation to MTV by letting viewers vote for their favorite videos, and its ''MTV Unplugged'' series of live acoustic shows became a pop culture phenomenon.

** Some put the start of the Audience-Alienating Era as far back as TheNineties, when MTV first began developing original, non-music-related programming. However, fans of animation often consider the '90s to be one of MTV's ''best'' periods, being when they premiered numerous hit animated series as ''WesternAnimation/BeavisAndButtHead'', ''WesternAnimation/LiquidTelevision'', ''WesternAnimation/AeonFlux'', ''WesternAnimation/TheHead'', ''WesternAnimation/{{Daria}}'', and ''WesternAnimation/CelebrityDeathmatch''. Also, while RealityTV is undoubtedly a touchy subject for MTV fans for reasons detailed below, the early seasons of ''Series/TheRealWorld'' and ''Series/RoadRules'' still won genuine acclaim for their looks at the '90s youth counterculture. Plus, the network still regularly aired music videos and performances; during this time, its ''MTV Unplugged'' series of live acoustic shows became a pop culture phenomenon.
** Fewer people, however, will defend the network's programming in the 21st century, the point at which MTV was taken over by reality shows about teenage airheads and hard-partying twentysomethings. ''Series/LagunaBeach'', ''Series/TeenMom'', ''Series/MySuperSweetSixteen'', and, most infamously of all, ''Series/JerseyShore'' all became mega-hits that spawned franchises and spinoffs, and all were held up as symbols of everything wrong with reality TV by its critics, with many suspecting that the shows were possibly [[{{Kayfabe}} staged]] and ''definitely'' trashy. (''Series/{{Jackass}}'' is the lone exception; perhaps not coincidentally, it has little in common culturally with the aforementioned shows.) Music increasingly grew relegated to ''Total Request Live'', and even that was canceled in 2008, revived intermittently over the years. In the 2010s, MTV attempted to jump on the scripted series bandwagon and compete with fellow teen-oriented networks Creator/TheCW and Creator/{{Freeform}}, but while they did put out some acclaimed shows like ''Series/{{Awkward}}'' and ''Series/SweetVicious'', and greenlight a new season of ''Beavis and Butt-Head'', only ''Series/TeenWolf'' managed to become a legitimate hit on top of it, causing them to abandon scripted programming and go back to reality shows late in the decade, with ''Beavis and Butt-Head'' making the jump to Creator/ComedyCentral for future seasons.

* Some viewers feel that Creator/{{Netflix}} began falling into one from late 2018 and into early 2021, with rate hikes, cancellation of more popular originals (the most high-profile being ''Series/{{One Day at a Time|2017}}'', ''WesternAnimation/TucaAndBertie'', ''Series/PatriotActWithHasanMinhaj'', ''Series/IAmNotOkayWithThis'' and ''Series/AlteredCarbon'', all five of which were highly-acclaimed by critics and audiences alike; the former two shows would be {{Uncanceled}} via ChannelHop[=s=]), competition from other streaming services like Creator/DisneyPlus, Creator/{{Peacock}} and Creator/HBOMax causing popular properties like ''Series/TheOfficeUS'', ''Series/{{Friends}}'', ''Franchise/StarWars'' and the Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse to leave, and lower quality original series and movies being cited as potential sticking points. While there have been a few hits, with ''Series/{{The Witcher|2019}}'' and ''Series/TigerKing'' being notable examples, they've put out more than the occasional stinker (''Follow This'', ''WesternAnimation/PinkyMalinky'', ''Soundtrack'' and ''Series/SpaceForce2020'', among other shows), and some shows that were critically-acclaimed (including the aforementioned high-profile cancellations) never got another season despite Netflix never releasing its ratings data. Questions regarding its long-term content strategy also began to linger as more and more studios pulled their content for their own services to exploit, even as the company boomed in the wake of the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic. It doesn't help that because Netflix doesn't have its own full-fledged production studio (most of its originals are commissioned by Netflix to third party producers, most of whom retain ownership of their IP with Netflix not seeing a dime from merch sales), the service relies heavily on debt to continue funding originals, only making money through subscriber fees rather than continued exploitation of the IP. It's become such a mixed bag for them that, despite winning the most Emmy nominations (160) in 2020, ahead of Creator/{{Disney}} (126) and Creator/{{WarnerMedia}} (120), they fell behind ''both of them'' in overall wins (21, versus Disney's 22 wins, in large part thanks to ''Series/TheMandalorian'', and [=WarnerMedia=]'s 37, for them thanks to critically-acclaimed HBO programming like ''Series/{{Euphoria}}'' and ''Series/{{Watchmen|2019}}'')[[note]]It was especially embarrassing for them that ''Tiger King'', despite high critical praise and massive media and public attention, was [[AwardSnub shut out]] from any nominations; the Emmy for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series ended up going to Creator/{{ESPN}}'s ''The Last Dance''[[/note]]. While Netflix has responded to these challenges by increasing its originals budget, not to mention signing a first-run pay TV window agreement with Creator/SonyPictures for its slate beginning in 2022, it remains to be seen if Netflix will be able to deal with its long-term challenges more efficiently.

** What came after those two decades, though, would prove to be an Audience-Alienating Era of its own. Tartikoff died unexpectedly in 1997, but many of the hit shows he greenlit continued for years after. However, following the end of ''Series/{{Frasier}}'' and ''Series/{{Friends}}'', two of the network's last big sitcom hits of the Must See TV era, in 2004, NBC slipped from first to fourth as its new shows either failed to catch on or experienced {{Second Season Downfall}}s, and most of its attempts to make a {{Reality TV}} hit like ''Series/{{Survivor}}'' or ''Series/AmericanIdol'' turned out to be failures. Their Thursday night comedy block[[note]]The downfall of Creator/{{NBC}}'s Thursday night "Must See TV" block can be attributed to the combination of oversaturation of sitcoms all across NBC's line-up (to put things into proper perspective, during the 1997-98 season, NBC had about ''18'' sitcom slots on Mondays-Thursdays and Sunday), which for the most part seemed nearly identical to one another (i.e. multi-camera shows about young, affluent white people living in UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity), Jeff Zucker's "super-sizing" concept for ''Series/{{Friends}}'', made it much harder to nurture another show right after it, the lack of strong shows to replace staples like ''Series/{{Seinfeld}}'', ''Series/{{Frasier}}'' and ''Friends'' (which in the meantime, were usually sandwiched in-between otherwise mediocre or forgettable shows like ''The Single Guy'', ''Series/SuddenlySusan'', ''Series/CarolineInTheCity'' and ''Veronica's Closet'') such as the disastrous American adaptation of ''Series/{{Coupling}}'', other networks' (i.e. Creator/{{CBS}} and Creator/{{ABC}}) Thursday night line-ups becoming increasingly stronger by around 2004, and ''Series/TheApprentice'' moving into the 9 p.m. timeslot.[[/note]] was one of its few points of consistent acclaim, and even then, shows like ''Series/{{Community}}'' and ''Series/ThirtyRock'' struggled in the ratings. The low point came in the 2009-10 season, when the UsefulNotes/{{Vancouver}} Winter Olympics proved themselves to be a $250 million money pit for the network, and the failure of ''The Creator/JayLeno Show'' left huge holes across a third of the network's UsefulNotes/PrimeTime schedule and caused a "Late Night War" between Leno and Creator/ConanOBrien that left TV fans with a lot of ill will against NBC's executives. The ouster of unpopular CEO Jeff Zucker in late 2010 saw the network finally start to turn itself around. ''Series/TheVoice'' premiered in the 2010-11 season and became a smash hit (though it was only one of two freshman series that season to get renewed[[note]]The other being ''Series/HarrysLaw'', which itself only lasted one more season.[[/note]]), and the network edged out ABC for third place at the end of the 2011-12 season. After equaling that rank the following season, they surged all the way back to number one in the 2013-14 season on the back of the Winter Olympics and several new hits, particularly ''Series/TheBlacklist'', ''Series/ChicagoFire'', and its {{spinoff}} ''Series/ChicagoPD'' This dominance continued through the 2014-15 season even as their Thursday night comedy block has completely collapsed and been pulled (in favor of using ''The Blacklist'' to attack ABC's dominant Creator/ShondaRhimes trio on the night). Today, they run neck-and-neck with CBS as the #1 network, with NBC claiming the 18-49 demographic and CBS claiming the most total viewers.

* Creator/CartoonNetwork has gone through two distinct ages. The first happened from 2007 to 2010, while the second, depending on who you ask, started in 2015 and lasted to 2020 or possibly later:
** The first one began with the tenure of Stuart Snyder as CEO of the channel, a period roughly synonymous with the "Fall" and "Nood" eras of bumpers [[note]] Snyder's predecessor, Jim Samples, resigned due to the fallout from a promotion for ''WesternAnimation/AquaTeenHungerForceColonMovieFilmForTheaters'', in which the Boston police department mistook LED displays of the characters for bombs.[[/note]]. This period saw a push towards live-action shows on a channel that had [[NetworkDecay built its very name on being void of them]], with ''[=CN=] Real'' being generally regarded as the absolute low point of this trend. Creator/{{Toonami}} practically deserves a bullet point of its own. The TOM 4 era was hated by a lot of fans for [[UncannyValley TOM's]] [[YouDontLookLikeYou redesign]], the Absolution and [[SpaceshipGirl SARA]] being [[ChuckCunninghamSyndrome dropped without any indication as to why]], and the block's shows almost exclusively consisted of re-runs, with the block's biggest draw, ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'', being in the middle of its lengthy filler arc. Then it was announced on September 20, 2008 that the 11-year-long programming block would be ending ''that very same day'', which upset many fans. Though this period did see some hits, they are viewed as exceptions rather than the rule, and Snyder himself became the face of everything that went wrong. The "CHECK it" era, which began in 2010, was a return to form that saw the debut of many of Cartoon Network's biggest hits, Toonami would return in 2012 as a part of the Creator/AdultSwim block, and some would actually end up forgiving Snyder.
** When Stuart Snyder left and Christina Miller took over, she was welcomed with open arms... only for fans to soon find that her tenure did not fare any better. First by reportedly [[ExecutiveMeddling forcing some of the]] [[WhatDoYouMeanItsForKids more mature shows]] [[MoralGuardians to tone down their content]], despite Cartoon Network being well-loved for not being afraid for pushing the envelope compared to other kids' channels, and then turning the highly-polarizing [[CriticProof but highly successful]] ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitansGo'' into the flagship show of the channel, while the WesternAnimation/DCNation block it was once a part of was unceremoniously cancelled in 2014 (before Miller took over, mind you) with ''WesternAnimation/BewareTheBatman'', ''WesternAnimation/GreenLanternTheAnimatedSeries'', and ''WesternAnimation/YoungJustice'' joining it. Then in 2015, [[AdoredByTheNetwork their adoration for]] ''AdoredByTheNetwork/TeenTitansGo'' led to the show dominating the airtime, [[ScrewedByTheNetwork brushing other hits to the side like]] ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'', ''WesternAnimation/RegularShow'', and SleeperHit ''WesternAnimation/StevenUniverse''. Advertisements calling it "Your New Favorite Show", and using ''Teen Titans Go!'' as a template for its other reboots, ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls2016'', ''WesternAnimation/Ben102016'', and ''WesternAnimation/ThunderCatsRoar'', only fanned the flames further and led Snyder's tenure of CEO being VindicatedByHistory as a golden era for the network when they weren't afraid to experiment and push boundries. By 2018, [[AuthorsSavingThrow things were beginning to improve again for the network]], as new, and much better-received, series such as ''WesternAnimation/CraigOfTheCreek'', ''WesternAnimation/SummerCampIsland'' and ''WesternAnimation/InfinityTrain'' joined the network, and reruns of ''We Bare Bears'' and even ''Total Drama Island'' became more frequent. Finally, at the end of 2019, [[https://variety.com/2019/tv/news/christina-miller-president-cartoon-network-warnermedia-departure-1203418284/ it was announced that]] Christina Miller would leave Creator/WarnerMedia.
** Around the time Miller left the network, Cartoon Network had its operations restructured into Creator/WarnerBros to provide better organization in the company after its acquisition by AT&T. Many hoped this wouldn't affect the station all that much, but unfortunately the AT&T merger proved to be a complete disaster throughout the company.[[note]]Reasons include multiple instances of culture clashing, the botched launch of Creator/HBOMax in the U.S, an underperforming film slate in 2019, and the COVID-19 Pandemic affecting operations.[[/note]] In Cartoon Network's case, Miller's replacement Tom Ascheim wanted to transition Cartoon Network into something more family-friendly. This resulted in multiple shows like ''Infinity Train'' getting canceled prematurely. Then once the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic hit, multiple budget cuts occurred to the point where many felt the station was running on autopilot. In 2021, Cartoon Network received some drastic changes. One of which was the announcement of a preschool programing block known as Creator/{{Cartoonito}}, which resulted in their schedule being shortened to '''six hours a day'''. [[note]]It didn't really help that the block picked up the rights to some [[WesternAnimation/ThomasAndFriendsAllEnginesGo controversial]] [[WesternAnimation/{{Caillou}} programming]].[[/note]] In addition, the network announced that they'd start airing live-action programming again, which brought back many a painful flashback to the "CN Real" era. Then early in 2021, the already declining ratings from cord-cutting and previous NetworkDecay were affected even more by the announcement that Xfinity[[note]]Itself the most commonplace and successful cable operator[[/note]] would stop carrying Cartoon Network in their ''Basic and Expanded'' package,[[note]]Their most popular subscription package.[[/note]] causing the ratings to plummet throughout the rest of the year. While time will tell how these events will affect the channel in the long run, this new era hasn't gotten off to the best of starts.

CBS News also found itself in a major leadership crisis in April 2021 when three of its top executives left within the course of a week; senior vice president David Friend was canned for allegations of abuse, president Susan Zirinsky turned in her resignation papers after only two years on the job[[note]]With tabloids and insiders noting that she was unhappy with her job, feeling she was press ganged into the role so CBS could save face from the Moonves scandal[[/note]], and executive vice president and number-two Kim Godwin elected to jump ship to ABC as their news president.[[note]]Rumor also has it that CBS [[KickedUpstairs offered Friend's position to Godwin in an effort to keep her from defecting]], as Godwin never really saw eye-to-eye with Zirinsky. Understandably, [[TakeThisJobAndShoveIt Godwin balked at the offer]] and requested her release instead.[[/note]] Perplexingly, CBS decided to merge its TV stations and news departments into one entity in the aftermath. In the backdrop of all this, ABC and NBC have all bolstered their news divisions and seen their ratings for their morning and evening programs closely mirror in each other, resulting in increased media attention for both of them, while CBS remains the third wheel with no hope of returning to the glory days of Creator/WalterCronkite.

** The first one was during Fred Silverman's tenure as president and CEO, 1978–81. Hot off of his success turning Creator/{{ABC}} into a titan in 1975–78, NBC brought him on hoping that lightning would strike twice. [[BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor What they got instead]] was a slew of gimmicky shows that were often canceled after only a season, with ''Series/{{Supertrain}}'' and ''Series/PinkLadyAndJeff'' being among the most notorious (both of these shows are listed in ''Literature/WhatWereTheyThinkingThe100DumbestEventsInTelevisionHistory'', which takes several additional shots at Silverman). The former hit ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'' went through its first Audience-Alienating Era during the 1980-81 season, and was nearly canceled after the [[PrecisionFStrike F-bomb]] dropped on the [[Series/{{Dallas}} Charlene Tilton]] episode. Morale at the network crumbled with each passing year spent in a distant third behind ABC and Creator/{{CBS}}; Creator/AlFranken ran the famous "Limo for the Lame-O" sketch on ''SNL'' skewering Silverman's handling of the network (which led to Franken getting sacked and, with it, the aforementioned Audience-Alienating Era. the following season), while the production studio and singers responsible for NBC's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AEhc2cgCnw "Proud as a Peacock"]] campaign song recorded [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mN9wJ75DjdA a parody version]] mocking Silverman, something he didn't take well. The final straw came when the US Olympic team boycotted the 1980 UsefulNotes/{{Moscow}} UsefulNotes/{{Olympic|Games}}s as a result of the UsefulNotes/SovietInvasionOfAfghanistan, resulting in an Eastern Bloc-dominated affair that few Americans were interested in watching -- very bad news for the network that had bet the farm on Olympic programming that year to turn its fortunes around. Between that and the financial troubles of NBC's corporate owners, the electronics company RCA, it was speculated that the network would be shut down or sold off in a matter of years in order to prevent RCA from going bankrupt. Fortunately for NBC, in 1981 they ousted Silverman and brought in Grant Tinker (co-founder of MTM Enterprises) as the new chairman and CEO, and put Brandon Tartikoff in charge of programming duties. Together, despite a few false starts, Tinker and Tartikoff oversaw the beginning of a golden age for NBC that would last for nearly two decades, with the network dominating the ratings and, in particular, being responsible for many of the great American {{sitcom}}s of TheEighties and TheNineties. In fact, when General Electric bought out RCA in 1986, it was mainly ''because'' they wanted NBC, which by then was one of the last profitable divisions of a company that was otherwise circling the drain.

** Even when NBC's entertainment programming showed a decline, its broadcast news programs (''Series/{{Today}}'', ''NBC Nightly News'', and ''Meet the Press'') remained dominant at the close of UsefulNotes/The2000s, while Creator/{{MSNBC}} showed impressive gains on cable. However, a series of increasingly disastrous PR flaps at the start of TheNewTens damaged the brand of NBC News and ended their two-decade-long ratings streak. It started with Ann Curry's lackluster tenure and botched firing as co-host of ''Today'', and continued with the similarly controversial firings of Creator/KeithOlbermann, David Gregory, and Melissa Harris-Perry, which led to MSNBC constantly changing its schedule to a ridiculous degree (Ed Schultz saw his show change time slots ''five times'' in ''four years'' before he joined Creator/RussiaToday). ''Nightly News'' anchor Brian Williams getting caught [[UnreliableNarrator embellishing his experiences]] covering the Iraq War didn't help matters, resulting in his replacement by then-weekend anchor Lester Holt. Ratings began to rebound with NBC News veteran Andy Lack returning as president, helped by the fact that Holt is the first solo African-American news anchor for a weekday network nightly newscast[[note]]the first overall weeknight African-American news anchor for a network broadcast was Max Robinson, who was part of a three-anchor team alongside Frank Reynolds and Creator/PeterJennings for the original format of ''Series/ABCWorldNewsTonight'' from 1978-83; when reshuffling after Reynolds took ill and ultimately died resulting in ABC naming Jennings as solo anchor[[/note]], but that was offset by the controversial hire of ex-Creator/FoxNews host Megyn Kelly and the subsequent bombing of her Sunday night newsmagazine, relegating her to hosting the 9:00 a.m. hour of ''Today'' later that year.[[note]] Let's just say that Kelly wasn't well liked by both sides of the political spectrum to begin with---liberals hated her for being a conservative and working for Fox News, and conservatives hated her for betraying her Fox News viewers by being critical of President Donald Trump.[[/note]] Perhaps their biggest lows of the new tens, however, came when they got caught in the crosshairs of the Weinstein effect. First, there was the revelation NBC News ''refused'' to publish Ronan Farrow's initial findings on Harvey Weinstein's history of sexual assault, then longtime ''Today'' staple Matt Lauer was fired for sexual misconduct, an action that Lauer had reportedly performed on other women for decades (including a report that he outright ''raped'' an junior colleague while covering the Sochi Olympics), and then came a massive [[https://www.thedailybeast.com/again-and-again-accused-sexual-harassers-kept-their-jobs-under-nbc-news-chief-andy-lack exposé]] from ''The Daily Beast'' outlining Lack's history of letting accused sexual predators, including Lauer, thrive at NBC and other companies he worked at for decades. The public relations disaster stemming from the scandals led to persistent rumors of Lack's potential ouster. By then, NBC News' ratings gains began to reverse, losing audiences to rivals ABC News and CBS News; ''Nightly News'' mostly ranks second behind ''ABC World News'' as of May 2019. Additionally, Kelly found herself out of a job after only a year-and-a-half with the network following a controversial segment where she defended {{Blackface}} Halloween costumes. Lack would ultimately get the boot in May 2020 as part of a major Creator/NBCUniversal restructuring.

* Creator/TheBBC was not above an Audience-Alienating Era either. The late 70s to the early 80s were a tough time in Britain, and the BBC suffered too. Its reputation as a trusted news source was shaken with some blatant pandering to the current governments. Its budgets were getting tighter, with ''Series/DoctorWho'' suffering its worst production and ratings in its history. Its output was also seen as stale and safe compared to the edgier ITV. At a time when its directors were seriously concerned that any signs of over spending or not appeasing the highly conservative government might get the channel privatized, it's not that surprising.

* [[Creator/TheBBC BBC America]] has been in one ever since 2016 when Creator/{{AMC}} bought out half the network, with BBC Worldwide still holding the controlling interest. ''Actual'' British programs which are supposed to be the network's main selling point are becoming more scarce outside the network's flagship show ''Series/DoctorWho'', ''Series/TopGear'', ''Series/TheGrahamNortonShow'', and Creator/DavidAttenborough nature films. The main weekday is an endless parade of ''Franchise/StarTrek'', ''Series/CSIMiami'', ''Series/TheXFiles'' reruns, and whatever movie by a British director or featuring a British cast the network is obsessed with that week. Compare this to the network's peak at the mid-2000's which featured a steady stream of British imports like ''Series/BeingHumanUK'', ''Series/{{Skins}}'', ''Series/LawAndOrderUK'', ''Series/TheHour'', and ''Series/{{Luther}}'' all of which were well-received by audiences and were frequently repeated, as well as simulcasts of BBC World News (indeed, nowadays the BBC just distributes their BBC World News channel to cable providers or just has Creator/{{PBS}} air their broadcasts). This has coincided with the rising of online streaming: as production costs rise more and more British networks like the BBC are sharing costs with services like Creator/{{Netflix}}, and Creator/AmazonPrime so the programs are forced to be online exclusives rather than be shown on BBC America like they would in the past.

* Creator/{{Channel4}} is in the midst of a prolonged Audience-Alienating Era in the eyes of older viewers. Originally touted as an 'alternative' channel to the more mainstream BBC and ITV, its programming catered to a lot of niche interests, such as animation. Its comedic output from the late 80's to late 90's is particularly well-regarded, featuring a mix of home-grown classics such as ''Series/FatherTed'' and ''Series/{{Spaced}}'' as well as imports of American sitcoms. This halted in 1997 with the appointment of Michael Jackson [[NamesTheSame (no, not]] [[Music/MichaelJackson that one)]] as Controller of Channel 4, which caused the network to rely more on those imports as well as more broadly accessible programming, the crux of which was ''Series/BigBrother''. Nowadays the network draws in viewers with more populist programming such as ''Series/MyBigFatGypsyWedding'' and ''Series/BenefitsStreet'', which keep the network afloat despite criticism from its older fans over what it has become.

** The first one was during Fred Silverman's tenure as president and CEO, 1978–81. Hot off of his success turning Creator/{{ABC}} into a titan in 1975–78, NBC brought him on hoping that lightning would strike twice. [[BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor What they got instead]] was a slew of gimmicky shows that were often canceled after only a season, with ''Series/{{Supertrain}}'' and ''Series/PinkLadyAndJeff'' being among the most notorious (both of these shows are listed in ''Literature/WhatWereTheyThinkingThe100DumbestEventsInTelevisionHistory'', which takes several additional shots at Silverman). The former hit ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'' went through its first Audience-Alienating Era during the 1980-81 season, and was nearly canceled after the [[PrecisionFStrike F-bomb]] dropped on the [[Series/{{Dallas}} Charlene Tilton]] episode. Morale at the network crumbled with each passing year spent in a distant third behind ABC and Creator/{{CBS}}; Creator/AlFranken ran the famous "Limo for the Lame-O" sketch on ''SNL'' skewering Silverman's handling of the network (which led to Franken getting sacked and, with it, the aforementioned Audi. the following season), while the production studio and singers responsible for NBC's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AEhc2cgCnw "Proud as a Peacock"]] campaign song recorded [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mN9wJ75DjdA a parody version]] mocking Silverman, something he didn't take well. The final straw came when the US Olympic team boycotted the 1980 UsefulNotes/{{Moscow}} UsefulNotes/{{Olympic|Games}}s as a result of the UsefulNotes/SovietInvasionOfAfghanistan, resulting in an Eastern Bloc-dominated affair that few Americans were interested in watching -- very bad news for the network that had bet the farm on Olympic programming that year to turn its fortunes around. Between that and the financial troubles of NBC's corporate owners, the electronics company RCA, it was speculated that the network would be shut down or sold off in a matter of years in order to prevent RCA from going bankrupt. Fortunately for NBC, in 1981 they ousted Silverman and brought in Grant Tinker (co-founder of MTM Enterprises) as the new chairman and CEO, and put Brandon Tartikoff in charge of programming duties. Together, despite a few false starts, Tinker and Tartikoff oversaw the beginning of a golden age for NBC that would last for nearly two decades, with the network dominating the ratings and, in particular, being responsible for many of the great American {{sitcom}}s of TheEighties and TheNineties. In fact, when General Electric bought out RCA in 1986, it was mainly ''because'' they wanted NBC, which by then was one of the last profitable divisions of a company that was otherwise circling the drain.
** What came after those two decades, though, would prove to be an audience-alienating era of its own. Tartikoff died unexpectedly in 1997, but many of the hit shows he greenlit continued for years after. However, following the end of ''Series/{{Frasier}}'' and ''Series/{{Friends}}'', two of the network's last big sitcom hits of the Must See TV era, in 2004, NBC slipped from first to fourth as its new shows either failed to catch on or experienced {{Second Season Downfall}}s, and most of its attempts to make a {{Reality TV}} hit like ''Series/{{Survivor}}'' or ''Series/AmericanIdol'' turned out to be failures. Their Thursday night comedy block[[note]]The downfall of Creator/{{NBC}}'s Thursday night "Must See TV" block can be attributed to the combination of oversaturation of sitcoms all across NBC's line-up (to put things into proper perspective, during the 1997-98 season, NBC had about ''18'' sitcom slots on Mondays-Thursdays and Sunday), which for the most part seemed nearly identical to one another (i.e. multi-camera shows about young, affluent white people living in UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity), Jeff Zucker's "super-sizing" concept for ''Series/{{Friends}}'', made it much harder to nurture another show right after it, the lack of strong shows to replace staples like ''Series/{{Seinfeld}}'', ''Series/{{Frasier}}'' and ''Friends'' (which in the meantime, were usually sandwiched in-between otherwise mediocre or forgettable shows like ''The Single Guy'', ''Series/SuddenlySusan'', ''Series/CarolineInTheCity'' and ''Veronica's Closet'') such as the disastrous American adaptation of ''Series/{{Coupling}}'', other networks' (i.e. Creator/{{CBS}} and Creator/{{ABC}}) Thursday night line-ups becoming increasingly stronger by around 2004, and ''Series/TheApprentice'' moving into the 9 p.m. timeslot.[[/note]] was one of its few points of consistent acclaim, and even then, shows like ''Series/{{Community}}'' and ''Series/ThirtyRock'' struggled in the ratings. The low point came in the 2009-10 season, when the UsefulNotes/{{Vancouver}} Winter Olympics proved themselves to be a $250 million money pit for the network, and the failure of ''The Creator/JayLeno Show'' left huge holes across a third of the network's UsefulNotes/PrimeTime schedule and caused a "Late Night War" between Leno and Creator/ConanOBrien that left TV fans with a lot of ill will against NBC's executives. The ouster of unpopular CEO Jeff Zucker in late 2010 saw the network finally start to turn itself around. ''Series/TheVoice'' premiered in the 2010-11 season and became a smash hit (though it was only one of two freshman series that season to get renewed[[note]]The other being ''Series/HarrysLaw'', which itself only lasted one more season.[[/note]]), and the network edged out ABC for third place at the end of the 2011-12 season. After equaling that rank the following season, they surged all the way back to number one in the 2013-14 season on the back of the Winter Olympics and several new hits, particularly ''Series/TheBlacklist'', ''Series/ChicagoFire'', and its {{spinoff}} ''Series/ChicagoPD'' This dominance continued through the 2014-15 season even as their Thursday night comedy block has completely collapsed and been pulled (in favor of using ''The Blacklist'' to attack ABC's dominant Creator/ShondaRhimes trio on the night). Today, they run neck-and-neck with CBS as the #1 network, with NBC claiming the 18-49 demographic and CBS claiming the most total viewers.

** The 2000s were undoubtedly the worst period for NBC's sports division. It began back in 1998, when NBC, citing their inability to come to terms with the extraordinarily rising costs, declined to renew their contract with the UsefulNotes/NationalFootballLeague's American Football Conference, allowing CBS to return to NFL broadcasting after a four-year absence. In 2001, NBC tried to fill the void that the NFL left by partnering with Wrestling/{{WWE}} to create the XFL. Unfortunately, within weeks, the football league set a record for the lowest primetime ratings ever on a major network. Ultimately, NBC's loss for the 10-week season was around $35 million. Two years later, NBC tried to fill the NFL void again by partnering with the Arena Football League. While NBC didn't have to pay any rights fees to broadcast the Arena Football League, the ratings were nonetheless minuscule, with the average rating around 1.00 for the four-year run. Then, in 2008, NBC renewed its TV contract with Notre Dame football, but the downside was that at the time, the Irish had only finished a season ranked 10th or higher just 3 times in the 19 years they'd been on NBC. It was also during the 2000s, that NBC lost the broadcast rights for UsefulNotes/MajorLeagueBaseball to Creator/{{Fox}} following the 2000 season [[note]] When Fox began airing MLB games in 1996, NBC was delegated to air certain MLB games such as the All-Star Game and certain postseason games. NBC's last MLB telecast was Game 6 of the 2000 American League Championship Series between the New York Yankees and the Seattle Mariners. [[/note]], the UsefulNotes/NationalBasketballAssociation to ABC/ESPN following the 2001-02 season, UsefulNotes/{{NASCAR}} to ABC/ESPN following the 2006 season, and the [[UsefulNotes/HorseRacing Belmont Stakes]] to [[RuleOfThree ABC/ESPN]] starting in 2006. By 2003-04, NBC was the only one of the four major American networks to not have any of the four major North American professional team sports on its schedule. Curiously, NBC paid $820 million for the 2010 Winter [[UsefulNotes/OlympicGames Olympics]][[note]]which wound up costing NBC up to and possibly over $200 million, according to parent company GE, due to low ratings[[/note]] whereas by 2010, Major League Baseball received about $670 million a year in TV rights fees for the entire season and the NBA received about $930 million a year. To add insult to injury, NBC didn't get around to launching its own sports website site until the tail end of 2006. While NBC did obtain the rights to the UsefulNotes/NationalHockeyLeague from ABC, their initial coverage was delayed by a year due to the 2004–05 NHL lockout, which wound up cancelling the entire regular season and playoffs. It wasn't until NBC regained the NFL rights via the Sunday night package (formerly held by ESPN) that they slowly started to return to prominence.

** The Alphabet Network went through an AudienceAlienatingEra of its own from 2000-2004, when many new shows didn't draw much in the ratings. The beginning of this was when the network gave WolverinePublicity to ''Series/WhoWantsToBeAMillionaire'' for the 2000-01 season, saturating the schedule by airing the game show in prime time as many as ''five nights a week''. In addition, Michael Eisner, then CEO of parent company Creator/{{Disney}}, turned down Creator/JerryBruckheimer's pitch for ''Series/{{CSI}}'', which instead became a hit for Creator/{{CBS}}, and many of the new shows that debuted on ABC in that period were hardly successful in terms of ratings (note that Disney as a whole was in an Audience-Alienating Era at the time, with traditional 2D animation quickly falling to Creator/{{Pixar}} and Creator/{{DreamWorks|Animation}}, Ride/{{Disneyland}} being turned into what amounted to a shopping mall while maintenance suffered, and a general decline in customer service in favor of profit). The network fell to fourth place and almost went bankrupt in this period (and was part of the reason behind Eisner being replace with Bob Iger), ultimately being spared by the debuts of ''Series/{{LOST}}'', ''Series/DesperateHousewives'', and ''Series/GreysAnatomy'', which boosted the network's ratings to second place for the 2004-05 season. Since then, the network has been a reliable third place finisher, an unspectacular but comfortable position, only falling to fourth place several times (in the 2011-12 season, when Creator/{{NBC}} was beginning to mount its comeback but before Creator/{{Fox}} started to seriously collapse, and during the 2018-19 and 2019-20 seasons, when ABC's schedule consisted mostly of past holdovers and when the network was [[ExecutiveMeddling undergoing management shifts]] following its parent company's buyout of Creator/TwentiethCenturyFox, not to mention the conclusion of network darling ''Series/ModernFamily'', though ''ABC World News'' managed to overtake ''NBC Nightly News'' as the top nightly newscast nationally, so not a complete loss). While it only has a few megahits (and virtually none from people not named Creator/ShondaRhimes), it does have a large stable of fairly modest hits with devoted fanbases.

* Creator/{{ITV}} suffered a major Audience-Alienating Era in the mid 2000s. After its attempt to launch a over-the-air digital TV broadcasting service collapsed (due to various issues, mostly relating to Creator/{{Sky}} Digital stealing customers and hiring hackers to break [=ONDigital=]/ITV Digital's encryption system) it seemed to completely lose its bottle. Once a channel known for its dramas, gameshows and current events, it slowly decayed into a channel associated with awful reality TV featuring F-list celebrities. It didn't help that corporate consolidation saw local identities and personalities-- for decades the heart of the network-- removed in favor of (mostly) national ITV branding. This killed off its loyal older fans, and some disastrous attempts to capture the youth market showed it up as a poor attempt to imitate the much more successful Channel 4. This peaked when the channel that had once rivaled the BBC was reduced to broadcasting late night phone-in game shows associated with the filler channels. After years of failing, it's only just managed to turn things around. The insanely successful ''X-Factor'' finally caught the younger market, and series of high quality dramas including ''Series/DowntonAbbey'' drew back its older fanbase.

** The Alphabet Network went through an A.A.E. of its own from 2000-2004, when many new shows didn't draw much in the ratings. The beginning of this was when the network gave WolverinePublicity to ''Series/WhoWantsToBeAMillionaire'' for the 2000-01 season, saturating the schedule by airing the game show in prime time as many as ''five nights a week''. In addition, Michael Eisner, then CEO of parent company Creator/{{Disney}}, turned down Creator/JerryBruckheimer's pitch for ''Series/{{CSI}}'', which instead became a hit for Creator/{{CBS}}, and many of the new shows that debuted on ABC in that period were hardly successful in terms of ratings (note that Disney as a whole was in an Audience-Alienating Era at the time, with traditional 2D animation quickly falling to Creator/{{Pixar}} and Creator/{{DreamWorks|Animation}}, Ride/{{Disneyland}} being turned into what amounted to a shopping mall while maintenance suffered, and a general decline in customer service in favor of profit). The network fell to fourth place and almost went bankrupt in this period (and was part of the reason behind Eisner being replace with Bob Iger), ultimately being spared by the debuts of ''Series/{{LOST}}'', ''Series/DesperateHousewives'', and ''Series/GreysAnatomy'', which boosted the network's ratings to second place for the 2004-05 season. Since then, the network has been a reliable third place finisher, an unspectacular but comfortable position, only falling to fourth place several times (in the 2011-12 season, when Creator/{{NBC}} was beginning to mount its comeback but before Creator/{{Fox}} started to seriously collapse, and during the 2018-19 and 2019-20 seasons, when ABC's schedule consisted mostly of past holdovers and when the network was [[ExecutiveMeddling undergoing management shifts]] following its parent company's buyout of Creator/TwentiethCenturyFox, not to mention the conclusion of network darling ''Series/ModernFamily'', though ''ABC World News'' managed to overtake ''NBC Nightly News'' as the top nightly newscast nationally, so not a complete loss). While it only has a few megahits (and virtually none from people not named Creator/ShondaRhimes), it does have a large stable of fairly modest hits with devoted fanbases.

** The channel went through one of these during the mid-2000s, generally agreed to have begun with the premiere of ''Series/HannahMontana'' (which coincides with the end of ''WesternAnimation/KimPossible'') and to have concluded with the premiere of ''WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerb''. The animated shows were sidelined in favor of a focus on the teenybopper demographic; even WesternAnimation/MickeyMouse and the gang had a minor presence. This alienated Disney Channel's other demographics. It doesn't help that Creator/{{Disney}} in general was going through some rough times of their own. Fortunately, ''Phineas and Ferb'' helped to broaden the appeal of the channel. Interestingly, the shows such as ''Series/ThatsSoRaven'' and its sequel ''Series/CoryInTheHouse'', ''Series/TheSuiteLifeOfZackAndCody'' and its sequel ''Series/TheSuiteLifeOnDeck'', ''Series/WizardsOfWaverlyPlace'', and ''Series/HannahMontana'' are usually exempt from the A.A.E., with all of the aforementioned shows having large fanbases, especially in {{The New Twenties}} due to nostalgia from the Generation Z demographic, and people realizing they weren't nearly as awful as they were made out to be.
** Their next A.A.E. began with ''Series/ShakeItUp'' in 2010. Most people believe the sitcoms beforehand, like ''Series/WizardsOfWaverlyPlace'', were well-written {{Guilty Pleasure}}s that were fun to watch. By the time ''Shake It Up!'' premiered, however, the new sitcoms were seen as dumb as opposed to funny with the only general-type sitcoms to near unanimously achieve praise being low-concept shows like ''Series/GirlMeetsWorld'', ''Series/LivAndMaddie'', and ''Series/GoodLuckCharlie''. Pretty soon, the sitcoms began swallowing the lineup, as Creator/{{Disney}} adopted an attitude of "Disney Channel is for girls and Creator/DisneyXD[[note]]a replacement for Creator/ToonDisney[[/note]] is for boys". As another consequence of this, much of their much more acclaimed animated lineup, like ''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls'' and ''WesternAnimation/WanderOverYonder'', wound up being [[ChannelHop shifted over to]] Disney XD. ''Wander Over Yonder'' is an especially sore spot, considering that its move to Disney XD played a part in its cancellation (unlike ''Gravity Falls'' which ended because the creator wanted it to); Disney XD is on fewer cable providers than Disney Channel is, thus dooming the show to lower ratings, hence the show's cancellation before its MythArc could even begin led many fans [[SendingStuffToSaveTheShow to write a petition to continue the series.]] Several other animated shows like ''WesternAnimation/KickButtowskiSuburbanDaredevil'', ''WesternAnimation/{{Motorcity}}'', and ''WesternAnimation/RandyCunninghamNinthGradeNinja'' were exclusive to XD and thus never able to gain any widespread exposure despite getting plenty of acclaim from those who saw it. While Disney Channel's live-action content was being panned (although not as badly is Nickelodeon's), XD's shows, like ''Series/LabRats'' and ''Series/MightyMed'', were getting better reception, but suffered from the same low ratings as other shows on the network. Fortunately, Disney Channel has learned from XD's success and quickly turned around their misfortunes; they have since added more animated series to their lineup, most notably ''WesternAnimation/DuckTales2017'', ''WesternAnimation/TheOwlHouse'' and ''WesternAnimation/{{Amphibia}}'', and have debuted the well-received series ''Series/KCUndercover'', ''Series/StuckInTheMiddle'', and ''Series/AndiMack'', the former of which takes more influence from XD's shows and the latter two of which eschew normal Disney Channel series elements like a LaughTrack. Unfortunately, this period of success may not last long as their parent company have shifted focus on their streaming service Creator/DisneyPlus as since then, several international feeds have been shut down due to the rising popularity of said service with plans to shut down at least '''100 channels''' during 2021.

During the TV affiliation switcheroo of the '90s, CBS began an affiliation contract with Westinghouse, which led to the latter's ABC station in Baltimore and NBC affiliates in Boston and Philadelphia to switch to CBS. This courtship would lead to Westinghouse buying CBS outright in 1995, which, along with the installation of Les Moonves as network head, signalled an upswing for the beleagured nework. CBS would start to recover in 2000 with the debut of ''Series/{{CSI}}'' and ''Series/{{Survivor}}'', its first mega-hits in a long while, and since then, it's been a regular contender for the #1 spot on the Nielsen charts. Of course, it has since gone back to being "the network of the living dead," with those series largely appealing to older viewers now, but that's less of an issue these days. Their biggest shows right now seem to be anything created by Creator/ChuckLorre, primarily ''Series/TheBigBangTheory'', which premiered in 2007 and has become a highly-popular LongRunner that later spawned a [[Series/YoungSheldon spin-off prequel]] focusing on the childhood of BreakoutCharacter Sheldon Cooper.

** The first one was during Fred Silverman's tenure as president and CEO, 1978–81. Hot off of his success turning Creator/{{ABC}} into a titan in 1975–78, NBC brought him on hoping that lightning would strike twice. [[BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor What they got instead]] was a slew of gimmicky shows that were often canceled after only a season, with ''Series/{{Supertrain}}'' and ''Series/PinkLadyAndJeff'' being among the most notorious (both of these shows are listed in ''Literature/WhatWereTheyThinkingThe100DumbestEventsInTelevisionHistory'', which takes several additional shots at Silverman). The former hit ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'' went through its first A.A.E. during the 1980-81 season, and was nearly canceled after the [[PrecisionFStrike F-bomb]] dropped on the [[Series/{{Dallas}} Charlene Tilton]] episode. Morale at the network crumbled with each passing year spent in a distant third behind ABC and Creator/{{CBS}}; Creator/AlFranken ran the famous "Limo for the Lame-O" sketch on ''SNL'' skewering Silverman's handling of the network (which led to Franken getting sacked and, with it, the aforementioned A.A.E. the following season), while the production studio and singers responsible for NBC's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AEhc2cgCnw "Proud as a Peacock"]] campaign song recorded [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mN9wJ75DjdA a parody version]] mocking Silverman, something he didn't take well. The final straw came when the US Olympic team boycotted the 1980 UsefulNotes/{{Moscow}} UsefulNotes/{{Olympic|Games}}s as a result of the UsefulNotes/SovietInvasionOfAfghanistan, resulting in an Eastern Bloc-dominated affair that few Americans were interested in watching -- very bad news for the network that had bet the farm on Olympic programming that year to turn its fortunes around. Between that and the financial troubles of NBC's corporate owners, the electronics company RCA, it was speculated that the network would be shut down or sold off in a matter of years in order to prevent RCA from going bankrupt. Fortunately for NBC, in 1981 they ousted Silverman and brought in Grant Tinker (co-founder of MTM Enterprises) as the new chairman and CEO, and put Brandon Tartikoff in charge of programming duties. Together, despite a few false starts, Tinker and Tartikoff oversaw the beginning of a golden age for NBC that would last for nearly two decades, with the network dominating the ratings and, in particular, being responsible for many of the great American {{sitcom}}s of TheEighties and TheNineties. In fact, when General Electric bought out RCA in 1986, it was mainly ''because'' they wanted NBC, which by then was one of the last profitable divisions of a company that was otherwise circling the drain.

The A.A.E. fully began in 2020, right after former parent Creator/{{Viacom}} re-merged with CBS. With the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic resulting in the cancellation of the advertising cash cow March Madness basketball tournament, the postponement of many of their originals and Creator/TomBrady leaving the New England Patriots for the NFC's Tampa Bay Buccaneers causing a viewership drop for AFC football, CBS fell to a horrific [[https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/network-ratings-2020-top-channels-fox-news-cnn-msnbc-cbs-1234866801/ fourth place]] in the 18-49 demographic for the year, a 30% drop from the year prior even as the network was still the most watched overall. An attempt to reverse the decline with Super Bowl LV backfired when the Buccaneers defeated the defending Kansas City Chiefs [[CurbStompBattle in a landslide]], resulting in the viewership drop ''eclipsing'' that of Super Bowl LIII. That, along with the returning March Madness tournament, were the only things keeping them in third place among the demo for the season. Not helping matters were allegations of Creator/ViacomCBS engaging in tax evasion and a muted response to the network's 2021-22 upfronts leading them falling behind its peers in quickly selling its ad inventory.\\\

** The Alphabet Network went through an A.A.E. of its own from 2000-2004, when many new shows didn't draw much in the ratings. The beginning of this was when the network gave WolverinePublicity to ''Series/WhoWantsToBeAMillionaire'' for the 2000-01 season, saturating the schedule by airing the game show in prime time as many as ''five nights a week''. In addition, Michael Eisner, then CEO of parent company Creator/{{Disney}}, turned down Creator/JerryBruckheimer's pitch for ''Series/{{CSI}}'', which instead became a hit for Creator/{{CBS}}, and many of the new shows that debuted on ABC in that period were hardly successful in terms of ratings (note that Disney as a whole was in an A.A.E. at the time, with traditional 2D animation quickly falling to Creator/{{Pixar}} and Creator/{{DreamWorks|Animation}}, Ride/{{Disneyland}} being turned into what amounted to a shopping mall while maintenance suffered, and a general decline in customer service in favor of profit). The network fell to fourth place and almost went bankrupt in this period (and was part of the reason behind Eisner being replace with Bob Iger), ultimately being spared by the debuts of ''Series/{{LOST}}'', ''Series/DesperateHousewives'', and ''Series/GreysAnatomy'', which boosted the network's ratings to second place for the 2004-05 season. Since then, the network has been a reliable third place finisher, an unspectacular but comfortable position, only falling to fourth place several times (in the 2011-12 season, when Creator/{{NBC}} was beginning to mount its comeback but before Creator/{{Fox}} started to seriously collapse, and during the 2018-19 and 2019-20 seasons, when ABC's schedule consisted mostly of past holdovers and when the network was [[ExecutiveMeddling undergoing management shifts]] following its parent company's buyout of Creator/TwentiethCenturyFox, not to mention the conclusion of network darling ''Series/ModernFamily'', though ''ABC World News'' managed to overtake ''NBC Nightly News'' as the top nightly newscast nationally, so not a complete loss). While it only has a few megahits (and virtually none from people not named Creator/ShondaRhimes), it does have a large stable of fairly modest hits with devoted fanbases.

** By 2018, many began questioning the future of Fox as the network took a number of dramatic actions to end the A.A.E. The most significant action was the decision to exit television production entirely by including its television production unit with the 21st Century Fox assets purchased by Creator/{{Disney}}, and deciding to focus on ordering shows from studios not attached to a particular network and taking an ownership stake in said shows. In addition, the network is broadening its scale in non-scripted and sports programming, not renewing their contract with UsefulNotes/UltimateFightingChampionship due to poor ratings, acquiring the rights to [[UsefulNotes/NationalFootballLeague NFL]] ''Thursday Night Football'' for four years and replacing Creator/USANetwork as the broadcasting home for ''Wrestling/WWESmackDown'' beginning October 2019. One of the first new series in this strategy -- Creator/FoxEntertainment's ''Series/TheMaskedSinger'' -- wound up becoming a surprise hit for the network in early-2019. Beyond that, the network has more or less begun to slowly phase out live-action scripted programming in favor of more animated shows, limited series, reality and sports programs. Even [[WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons their]] [[WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy animated]] [[WesternAnimation/BobsBurgers mainstays]]' longevity has been put into question, with Creator/{{Disney}} now owning most of those shows, meaning they could be moved to ABC or Creator/{{Freeform}} any day.

The A.A.E. continued after The WB merged with UPN (the result of a corporate shakeup at Creator/{{Viacom}}) in 2006 to form The CW. For fans of ''Series/GilmoreGirls'', ''Series/VeronicaMars'', ''Series/EverybodyHatesChris'', ''Series/{{Smallville}}''... well, it's easier to list the CW programs that ''weren't'' sidelined as the network focused itself around (often short-lived) {{reality show}}s and vapid 'rich kids living the good life' dramas designed to [[FollowTheLeader cash in]] on ''Series/GossipGirl'' and ''[[Series/BeverlyHills90210 90210]]'', two of the network's breakout hits. More distressingly, The WB's absorption of UPN to create The CW was a short-term GenreKiller for African-American-led programming on network television after ''Everybody Hates Chris'' finished its run, as UPN, ''Chris''[='=] former network, had been one of the main homes for such, and The CW was interested in more lucrative demographics. The network turned itself around starting in 2012, after unpopular network head Dawn Ostroff stepped down, by gunning for the position of 'the geek network'. During this time, they premiered new sci-fi and fantasy shows like ''Series/{{Arrow}}'', ''Series/BeautyAndTheBeast2012'', ''Series/IZombie'', and ''Series/{{The 100}}'' and gave renewed focus to genre hits like ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'' and ''Series/TheVampireDiaries'', and beyond sci-fi and fantasy, they also premiered shows like ''Series/JaneTheVirgin'' and a revival of ''Series/WhoseLineIsItAnyway'' that helped boost their critical reputation. While it's still not a ratings-winner, The CW today has a devoted fanbase, and its embrace of online platforms to a greater degree than its bigger rivals has proven very fruitful.

** Depending on whom you ask, Herb Scannell's tenure as President of Nickelodeon from the late '90s to mid 2000s was its own audience-alienating era. It was during this period in which Nickelodeon:

The Audience-Alienating Era fully began in 2020, right after former parent Creator/{{Viacom}} re-merged with CBS. With the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic resulting in the cancellation of the advertising cash cow March Madness basketball tournament, the postponement of many of their originals and Creator/TomBrady leaving the New England Patriots for the NFC's Tampa Bay Buccaneers causing a viewership drop for AFC football, CBS fell to a horrific [[https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/network-ratings-2020-top-channels-fox-news-cnn-msnbc-cbs-1234866801/ fourth place]] in the 18-49 demographic for the year, a 30% drop from the year prior even as the network was still the most watched overall. An attempt to reverse the decline with Super Bowl LV backfired when the Buccaneers defeated the defending Kansas City Chiefs [[CurbStompBattle in a landslide]], resulting in the viewership drop ''eclipsing'' that of Super Bowl LIII. That, along with the returning March Madness tournament, were the only things keeping them in third place among the demo for the season. Not helping matters were allegations of Creator/ViacomCBS engaging in tax evasion and a muted response to the network's 2021-22 upfronts leading them falling behind its peers in quickly selling its ad inventory.\\\

** The Alphabet Network went through an A.A.E. of its own from 2000-2004, when many new shows didn't draw much in the ratings. The beginning of this was when the network gave WolverinePublicity to ''Series/WhoWantsToBeAMillionaire'' for the 2000-01 season, saturating the schedule by airing the game show in prime time as many as ''five nights a week''. In addition, Michael Eisner, then CEO of parent company Creator/{{Disney}}, turned down Creator/JerryBruckheimer's pitch for ''Series/{{CSI}}'', which instead became a hit for Creator/{{CBS}}, and many of the new shows that debuted on ABC in that period were hardly successful in terms of ratings (note that Disney as a whole was in an Audience-Alienating Era at the time, with traditional 2D animation quickly falling to Creator/{{Pixar}} and Creator/{{DreamWorks|Animation}}, Ride/{{Disneyland}} being turned into what amounted to a shopping mall while maintenance suffered, and a general decline in customer service in favor of profit). The network fell to fourth place and almost went bankrupt in this period (and was part of the reason behind Eisner being replace with Bob Iger), ultimately being spared by the debuts of ''Series/{{LOST}}'', ''Series/DesperateHousewives'', and ''Series/GreysAnatomy'', which boosted the network's ratings to second place for the 2004-05 season. Since then, the network has been a reliable third place finisher, an unspectacular but comfortable position, only falling to fourth place several times (in the 2011-12 season, when Creator/{{NBC}} was beginning to mount its comeback but before Creator/{{Fox}} started to seriously collapse, and during the 2018-19 and 2019-20 seasons, when ABC's schedule consisted mostly of past holdovers and when the network was [[ExecutiveMeddling undergoing management shifts]] following its parent company's buyout of Creator/TwentiethCenturyFox, not to mention the conclusion of network darling ''Series/ModernFamily'', though ''ABC World News'' managed to overtake ''NBC Nightly News'' as the top nightly newscast nationally, so not a complete loss). While it only has a few megahits (and virtually none from people not named Creator/ShondaRhimes), it does have a large stable of fairly modest hits with devoted fanbases.
** For the 2009-2010 prime time broadcast season, ABC saw its average viewership come in third, behind Creator/{{CBS}} and Creator/{{Fox}}, according to Nielsen. More crucial, perhaps, is its viewership in the demographic coveted by advertisers -- people between the ages of 18 and 49. ABC nabbed an average of 2.692 million viewers. This was coupled with a then recent spate of executive turnover -- ABC news chief David Westin had indicated he would leave by the end of 2010, and the network had already parted ways with both Stephen [=McPherson=], the man who devised the 2010-11 fall schedule, and Michael Benson, one of the executives who was supposed to market its then new shows to the masses. Under Anne Sweeney's watch, ABC no longer understood the creation of prime time programming or the unique relationship with affiliate stations. Cable and satellite MSO's were loosely defined as affiliates. That's dramatically different and less synergistic than that between a broadcast network and an affiliated station. Both create content, have unique brands and specific relationships with viewers. Meanwhile, Sweeney easily embraced the rationale for taking UsefulNotes/NationalFootballLeague games off ABC in 2005 for the benefit of Creator/{{ESPN}}. While this makes financial sense, when isolated, it hurt ABC's ability to promote new programming and train large younger audiences to tune to ABC stations.

** By 2018, many began questioning the future of Fox as the network took a number of dramatic actions to end the Audience-Alienating Era. The most significant action was the decision to exit television production entirely by including its television production unit with the 21st Century Fox assets purchased by Creator/{{Disney}}, and deciding to focus on ordering shows from studios not attached to a particular network and taking an ownership stake in said shows. In addition, the network is broadening its scale in non-scripted and sports programming, not renewing their contract with UsefulNotes/UltimateFightingChampionship due to poor ratings, acquiring the rights to [[UsefulNotes/NationalFootballLeague NFL]] Thursday Night Football for four years and replacing Creator/USANetwork as the broadcasting home for ''Wrestling/WWESmackDown'' beginning October 2019. One of the first new series in this strategy -- Creator/FoxEntertainment's ''Series/TheMaskedSinger'' -- wound up becoming a surprise hit for the network in early-2019. Beyond that, the network has more or less begun to slowly phase out live-action scripted programming in favor of more animated shows, limited series, reality and sports programs. Even [[WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons their]] [[WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy animated]] [[WesternAnimation/BobsBurgers mainstays]]' longevity has been put into question, with Disney now owning most of those shows, meaning they could be moved to ABC or Creator/{{Freeform}} any day.

The Audience-Alienating Era continued after The WB merged with UPN (the result of a corporate shakeup at Viacom) in 2006 to form The CW. For fans of ''Series/GilmoreGirls'', ''Series/VeronicaMars'', ''Series/EverybodyHatesChris'', ''Series/{{Smallville}}''... well, it's easier to list the CW programs that ''weren't'' sidelined as the network focused itself around (often short-lived) {{reality show}}s and vapid 'rich kids living the good life' dramas designed to [[FollowTheLeader cash in]] on ''Series/GossipGirl'' and ''[[Series/BeverlyHills90210 90210]]'', two of the network's breakout hits. More distressingly, The WB's absorption of UPN to create The CW was a short-term GenreKiller for African-American-led programming on network television after ''Everybody Hates Chris'' finished its run, as UPN, ''Chris''[='=] former network, had been one of the main homes for such, and The CW was interested in more lucrative demographics. The network turned itself around starting in 2012, after unpopular network head Dawn Ostroff stepped down, by gunning for the position of 'the geek network'. During this time, they premiered new sci-fi and fantasy shows like ''Series/{{Arrow}}'', ''Series/BeautyAndTheBeast2012'', ''Series/IZombie'', and ''Series/{{The 100}}'' and gave renewed focus to genre hits like ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'' and ''Series/TheVampireDiaries'', and beyond sci-fi and fantasy, they also premiered shows like ''Series/JaneTheVirgin'' and a revival of ''Series/WhoseLineIsItAnyway'' that helped boost their critical reputation. While it's still not a ratings-winner, The CW today has a devoted fanbase, and its embrace of online platforms to a greater degree than its bigger rivals has proven very fruitful.
* A lot of sports fans consider Creator/{{ESPN}} to be in one now, especially with its flagship program ''Series/SportsCenter''. The sports news show rose to great popularity in TheNineties due to its charismatic anchors that could deliver scores and highlights with a touch of witty banter. (It in turn has decimated the various attempts by other networks to have their own flagship highlights/news show, especially the various Fox Sports shows-- ''Fox Sports News''/''National Sports Report'', ''(FSN) Final Score'', and most recently ''Fox Sports Live'', which even recruited the hosts of the Canadian ''[=SportsCentre=]''.) Unfortunately, the rise of social media in the late 2000s allowed sports fans to see the biggest highlights as soon as they happened, making it unnecessary for them to tune into the show to ensure they saw the best plays of the night. Additionally, the network began to focus most of its ''[=SportsCenter=]'' segments and programming around the sports and leagues that they have the rights to air games to (the NFL, NBA, college football, etc) which caused viewers who felt their preferred sport/team was being ignored to tune out. Later still, the show's analysis and discussion segments began to slip away from focusing on strategy and performances to bits focusing on athletes' personal issues and off the field/court/diamond controversies that last way too long for many viewers. What's more, some of the hosts they have now, such as Stephen A. Smith and Max Kellerman, come off as too egotistical and provocative for viewers looking for meaningful sports insights rather than "hot takes".\\\

*** [[{{Retool}} Revamped]] ''Series/TheWubbulousWorldOfDrSeuss'' for its second season, which aired on the Nick Jr. block.

** The channel went through one of these during the mid-2000s, generally agreed to have begun with the premiere of ''Series/HannahMontana'' (which coincides with the end of ''WesternAnimation/KimPossible'') and to have concluded with the premiere of ''WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerb''. The animated shows were sidelined in favor of a focus on the teenybopper demographic; even WesternAnimation/MickeyMouse and the gang had a minor presence. This alienated Disney Channel's other demographics. It doesn't help that Creator/{{Disney}} in general was going through some rough times of their own. Fortunately, ''Phineas and Ferb'' helped to broaden the appeal of the channel. Interestingly, the shows such as ''Series/ThatsSoRaven'' and its sequel ''Series/CoryInTheHouse'', ''Series/TheSuiteLifeOfZackAndCody'' and its sequel ''Series/TheSuiteLifeOnDeck'', ''Series/WizardsOfWaverlyPlace'', and ''Series/HannahMontana'' are usually exempt from the A.A.E., with all of the aforementioned shows having large fanbases, especially in {{The New '20s}} due to nostalgia from the Generation Z demographic, and people realizing they weren't nearly as awful as they were made out to be.

** Around the time Miller left the network, Cartoon Network had its operations restructured into Creator/WarnerBros to provide better organization in the company after its acquisition by AT&T. Many hoped this wouldn't affect the station all that much, but unfortunately the AT&T merger proved to be a complete disaster throughout the company.[[note]]Reasons include multiple instances of culture clashing, the botched launch of Creator/HBOMax in the U.S, an underperforming film slate in 2019, and the COVID-19 Pandemic affecting operations.[[/note]] In Cartoon Network's case, Miller's replacement Tom Ascheim wanted to transition Cartoon Network into something more family-friendly. This resulted in multiple shows like ''Infinity Train'' getting canceled prematurely. Then once the COVID-19 Pandemic hit, multiple budget cuts occurred to the point where many felt the station was running on autopilot. In 2021, Cartoon Network received some drastic changes. One of which was the announcement of a preschool programing block known as Creator/{{Cartoonito}}, which resulted in their schedule being shortened to '''six hours a day'''. [[note]]It didn't really help that the block picked up the rights to some [[WesternAnimation/ThomasAndFriendsAllEnginesGo controversial]] [[WesternAnimation/{{Caillou}} programming]].[[/note]] In addition, the network announced that they'd start airing live-action programming again, which brought back many a painful flashback to the "CN Real" era. Then early in 2021, the already declining ratings from cord-cutting and previous NetworkDecay were affected even more by the announcement that Xfinity[[note]]Itself the most commonplace and successful cable operator[[/note]] would stop carrying Cartoon Network in their ''Basic and Expanded'' package,[[note]]Their most popular subscription package.[[/note]] causing the ratings to plummet throughout the rest of the year. While time will tell how these events will affect the channel in the long run, this new era hasn't gotten off to the best of starts.

** The first one was during Fred Silverman's tenure as president and CEO, 1978–81. Hot off of his success turning Creator/{{ABC}} into a titan in 1975–78, NBC brought him on hoping that lightning would strike twice. [[BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor What they got instead]] was a slew of gimmicky shows that were often canceled after only a season, with ''Series/{{Supertrain}}'' and ''Series/PinkLadyAndJeff'' being among the most notorious (both of these shows are listed in ''Literature/WhatWereTheyThinkingThe100DumbestEventsInTelevisionHistory'', which takes several additional shots at Silverman). The former hit ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'' went through its first A.A.E. during the 1980-81 season, and was nearly canceled after the [[PrecisionFStrike F-bomb]] dropped on the Charlene Tilton episode. Morale at the network crumbled with each passing year spent in a distant third behind ABC and Creator/{{CBS}}; Creator/AlFranken ran the famous "Limo for the Lame-O" sketch on ''SNL'' skewering Silverman's handling of the network (which led to Franken getting sacked and, with it, the aforementioned A.A.E. the following season), while the production studio and singers responsible for NBC's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AEhc2cgCnw "Proud as a Peacock!"]] campaign song recorded [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mN9wJ75DjdA a parody version]] mocking Silverman, something he didn't take well. The final straw came when the US Olympic team boycotted the 1980 UsefulNotes/{{Moscow}} UsefulNotes/{{Olympic|Games}}s as a result of the UsefulNotes/SovietInvasionOfAfghanistan, resulting in an Eastern Bloc-dominated affair that few Americans were interested in watching -- very bad news for the network that had bet the farm on Olympic programming that year to turn its fortunes around. Between that and the financial troubles of NBC's corporate owners, the electronics company RCA, it was speculated that the network would be shut down or sold off in a matter of years in order to prevent RCA from going bankrupt. Fortunately for NBC, in 1981 they ousted Silverman and brought in Grant Tinker (co-founder of MTM Enterprises) as the new chairman and CEO, and put Brandon Tartikoff in charge of programming duties. Together, despite a few false starts, Tinker and Tartikoff oversaw the beginning of a golden age for NBC that would last for nearly two decades, with the network dominating the ratings and, in particular, being responsible for many of the great American {{sitcom}}s of TheEighties and TheNineties. In fact, when General Electric bought out RCA in 1986, it was mainly ''because'' they wanted NBC, which by then was one of the last profitable divisions of a company that was otherwise circling the drain.
** What came after those two decades, though, would prove to be an audience-alienating era of its own. Tartikoff died unexpectedly in 1997, but many of the hit shows he greenlit continued for years after. However, following the end of ''Series/{{Frasier}}'' and ''Series/{{Friends}}'', two of the network's last big sitcom hits of Must See TV era, in 2004, NBC slipped from first to fourth as its new shows either failed to catch on or experienced {{Second Season Downfall}}s, and most of its attempts to make a {{reality TV}} hit like ''Series/{{Survivor}}'' or ''Series/AmericanIdol'' turned out to be failures. Their Thursday night comedy block[[note]]The downfall of Creator/{{NBC}}'s Thursday night "Must See TV" block can be attributed to the combination of oversaturation of sitcoms all across NBC's line-up (to put things into proper perspective, during the 1997-98 season, NBC had about ''18'' sitcom slots on Mondays-Thursdays and Sunday), which for the most part seemed nearly identical to one another (i.e. multi-camera shows about young, affluent white people living in UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity), Jeff Zucker's "super-sizing" concept for ''Series/{{Friends}}'', made it much harder to nurture another show right after it, the lack of strong shows to replace staples like ''Series/{{Seinfeld}}'', ''Series/{{Frasier}}'' and ''Friends'' (which in the meantime, were usually sandwiched in-between otherwise mediocre or forgettable shows like ''The Single Guy'', ''Series/SuddenlySusan'', ''Series/CarolineInTheCity'' and ''Veronica's Closet'') such as the disastrous American adaptation of ''Series/{{Coupling}}'', other networks' (i.e. Creator/{{CBS}} and Creator/{{ABC}}) Thursday night line-ups becoming increasingly stronger by around 2004, and ''Series/TheApprentice'' moving into the 9 p.m. timeslot.[[/note]] was one of its few points of consistent acclaim, and even then, shows like ''Series/{{Community}}'' and ''Series/ThirtyRock'' struggled in the ratings. The low point came in the 2009-10 season, when the UsefulNotes/{{Vancouver}} Winter Olympics proved themselves to be a $250 million money pit for the network, and the failure of ''The Creator/JayLeno Show'' left huge holes across a third of the network's UsefulNotes/PrimeTime schedule and caused a "Late Night War" between Leno and Creator/ConanOBrien that left TV fans with a lot of ill will against NBC's executives. The ouster of unpopular CEO Jeff Zucker in late 2010 saw the network finally start to turn itself around. ''Series/TheVoice'' premiered in the 2010-11 season and became a smash hit (though it was only one of two freshman series that season to get renewed[[note]]The other being ''Series/HarrysLaw'', which itself only lasted one more season.[[/note]]), and the network edged out ABC for third place at the end of the 2011-12 season. After equaling that rank the following season, they surged all the way back to number one in the 2013-14 season on the back of the Winter Olympics and several new hits, particularly ''Series/TheBlacklist'', ''Series/ChicagoFire'', and its {{spinoff}} ''Series/ChicagoPD'' This dominance continued through the 2014-15 season even as their Thursday night comedy block has completely collapsed and been pulled (in favor of using ''The Blacklist'' to attack ABC's dominant Creator/ShondaRhimes trio on the night). Today, they run neck-and-neck with CBS as the #1 network, with NBC claiming the 18-49 demographic and CBS claiming the most total viewers.

** After a botched takeover attempt by Creator/TedTurner, CBS was acquired by Larry Tisch, owner of Loew's Theatres. Tisch began slashing the network's budget, selling among others, its Columbia Records unit (to Sony) and St. Louis station KMOX-TV (to Viacom, who renamed it KMO''V''-TV) This coincided with its shows beginning to skew much older than its competitors Creator/{{ABC}}, Creator/{{NBC}}, and (starting in 1987) Creator/{{Fox}} – meaning that, while it was pulling in huge ratings from seniors and retirees with shows like ''Series/{{Dallas}}'' and ''Series/MurderSheWrote'', it wasn't hitting the lucrative 18-49 demographic that advertisers crave. [[note]](Interestingly, CBS went through the same problem two decades earlier, which it resolved with UsefulNotes/TheRuralPurge.)[[/note]] This earned it the nickname "The Network of the Living Dead", and by the early '90s [[{{Foreshadowing}} they were relying on their weekend sports coverage to stay in the black]].\\\

** Another Audience-Alienating Era seems to be on the horizon for CBS as of UsefulNotes/TheNewTens. With ''The Big Bang Theory'' ending with its 12th season, CBS is left without its biggest ratings hit and will largely consist of drama series that are outside of the coveted 18-49 demographic. Attempts at newer sitcoms, most notably ''Series/KevinCanWait'', ''Series/TheCrazyOnes'', ''Series/YoungSheldon'', an ill-fated revival of ''Series/MurphyBrown'', and ''Series/{{Mom}}'', have either failed or seen its ratings under-perform against ''Big Bang'', portending a difficult period for CBS post-''Big Bang''. Not helping was that what was intended to be their next reality TV hit, ''The World's Best'', got massive amounts of hype from the network, debuted strong with viewers due to airing right after Super Bowl LIII (more on that below), only for ratings to catastrophically collapse within ''days''. Additionally, its long-respected news division (which got out of an audience-alienating era of its own following the Killian documents controversy, which saw Dan Rather lose his longtime gig as ''CBS Evening News'' host) is beginning to show strain thanks to Scott Pelley getting replaced as ''CBS Evening News'' anchor by the more-younger Jeff Glor due to sagging ratings. Glor's hiring did almost nothing to reverse the declines, and the network replaced him with Norah O'Donnell after just a year and a half on the job. Further tarnishing the network are exposés, stemming from ''Series/SixtyMinutes'' correspondent Charlie Rose being ousted following sexual harassment allegations in the wake of the #[=MeToo=] movement, alleging years of institutional sexual misconduct at the network, perpetuated by longtime CEO of CBS Corporation Les Moonves, who himself was the target of sexual assault allegations by way of a ''New Yorker'' report from Ronan Farrow, the same journalist who first brought attention to Harvey Weinstein's sexual assault scandal that launched #[=MeToo=], and was later terminated.\\\
The turmoil has also threatened CBS's sports division, with UsefulNotes/SuperBowl LIII[[note]]which featured mediocre performances from both featured teams, the Los Angeles Rams and New England Patriots (the Patriots scored the ''sole touchdown in the whole game'' during the fourth quarter) and a critically-panned halftime show with Music/Maroon5[[/note]] becoming [[https://variety.com/2019/tv/news/super-bowl-liii-ratings-1203127648/ the lowest-rated Super Bowl broadcast since Super Bowl XLII]]; this was not helped at all when the fanbase of the New Orleans Saints called for a boycott of the Super Bowl, following their team's loss to the Rams in the NFC Championship game over what the Saints considered a blown call. Their biggest loss, though, came later that year when CBS opted not to continue its relationship with the [[UsefulNotes/CollegiateAmericanFootballConferences Southeastern Conference]] football division, whose rights had been one of CBS Sports' [[CashCowFranchise golden geese]] for more than 20 years, when their contract ended in 2023, allowing Creator/{{ESPN}}[=/=]Creator/{{ABC}} to scoop up their package and fully consolidate their grasp on the conference's media rights. CBS has attempted to address these concerns by scooping up rights to various worldwide [[UsefulNotes/AssociationFootball soccer]] leagues (a sport CBS hadn't aired in any capacity since ''1990'') as well as the Women's National Basketball Association in order to both bolster youth viewership and to fill the void left by the SEC's exit, notably picking up the UsefulNotes/UEFAChampionsLeague rights after a previous deal with Creator/{{TNT}} quickly went south.\\\

** The channel went through one of these during the mid-2000s, generally agreed to have begun with the premiere of ''Series/HannahMontana'' (which coincides with the end of ''WesternAnimation/KimPossible'') and to have concluded with the premiere of ''WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerb''. The animated shows were sidelined in favor of a focus on the teenybopper demographic; even WesternAnimation/MickeyMouse and the gang had a minor presence. This alienated Disney Channel's other demographics. It doesn't help that Creator/{{Disney}} in general was going through some rough times of their own. Fortunately, ''Phineas and Ferb'' helped to broaden the appeal of the channel. Interestingly, the shows such as ''Series/ThatsSoRaven'' and its sequel ''Series/CoryInTheHouse'', ''Series/TheSuiteLifeOfZackAndCody'' and its sequel ''Series/TheSuiteLifeOnDeck'', ''Series/WizardsOfWaverlyPlace'', and ''Series/HannahMontana'' are usually exempt from the A.A.E., with all of the aforementioned shows having large fanbases, especially in TheNew20s due to nostalgia from the Generation Z demographic, and people realizing they weren't nearly as awful as they were made out to be.

* Creator/NineNetwork fell into this around [[TurnOfTheMillennium the mid-noughties]], because all of the American shows it aired were either getting cancelled (like ''Series/{{Friends}}'' and ''Series/{{Frasier}}'') or were losing their charm (like ''Series/{{CSI}}'') and they didn't have anything to fill the holes in the schedule. Their foray into reality TV failed when they cancelled ''The Block'' and the Australian version of ''Series/{{Survivor}}'' flopped. Since this was also the time when internet speeds in Australia were getting fast enough that many Aussies simply downloaded any good foreign shows, in the panic Australian networks started airing shows as soon as they possibly could; it's just that Nine did this to, of all things, ''Viva Laughlin'', which was cancelled after its second episode. Luckily, their fortunes has turned around, due to a combination of good reality properties like the return of ''The Block'' and Australian ''Series/BigBrother'', as well as good drama like ''Series/{{Underbelly}}'' and a number of CBS comedy imports like ''Series/TwoAndAHalfMen'' and ''Series/TheBigBangTheory'' (although they might be playing them too much...)

** Even when NBC's entertainment programming showed a decline, its broadcast news programs (''Series/{{Today}}'', ''NBC Nightly News'', and ''Meet the Press'') remained dominant at the close of UsefulNotes/The2000s, while Creator/{{MSNBC}} showed impressive gains on cable. However, a series of increasingly disastrous PR flaps at the start of TheNewTens damaged the brand of NBC News and ended their two-decade-long ratings streak. It started with Ann Curry's lackluster tenure and botched firing as co-host of ''Today'', and continued with the similarly controversial firings of Creator/KeithOlbermann, David Gregory, and Melissa Harris-Perry, which led to MSNBC constantly changing its schedule to a ridiculous degree (Ed Schultz saw his show change time slots ''five times'' in ''four years'' before he joined Creator/RussiaToday). ''Nightly News'' anchor Brian Williams getting caught [[UnreliableNarrator embellishing his experiences]] covering the Iraq War didn't help matters, resulting in his replacement by then-weekend anchor Lester Holt. Ratings began to rebound with NBC News veteran Andy Lack returning as president, helped by the fact that Holt is the first African-American news anchor for a weekday network nightly newscast, but that was offset by the controversial hire of ex-Creator/FoxNews host Megyn Kelly and the subsequent bombing of her Sunday night newsmagazine, relegating her to hosting the 9:00 a.m. hour of ''Today'' later that year.[[note]] Let's just say that Kelly wasn't well liked by both sides of the political spectrum to begin with---liberals hated her for being a conservative and working for Fox News, and conservatives hated her for betraying her Fox News viewers by being critical of President Donald Trump.[[/note]] Perhaps their biggest lows of the new tens, however, came when they got caught in the crosshairs of the Weinstein effect. First, there was the revelation NBC News ''refused'' to publish Ronan Farrow's initial findings on Harvey Weinstein's history of sexual assault, then longtime ''Today'' staple Matt Lauer was fired for sexual misconduct, an action that Lauer had reportedly performed on other women for decades (including a report that he outright ''raped'' an junior colleague while covering the Sochi Olympics), and then came a massive [[https://www.thedailybeast.com/again-and-again-accused-sexual-harassers-kept-their-jobs-under-nbc-news-chief-andy-lack exposé]] from ''The Daily Beast'' outlining Lack's history of letting accused sexual predators, including Lauer, thrive at NBC and other companies he worked at for decades. The public relations disaster stemming from the scandals led to persistent rumors of Lack's potential ouster. By then, NBC News' ratings gains began to reverse, losing audiences to rivals ABC News and CBS News; ''Nightly News'' mostly ranks second behind ''ABC World News'' as of May 2019. Additionally, Kelly found herself out of a job after only a year-and-a-half with the network following a controversial segment where she defended {{Blackface}} Halloween costumes. Lack would ultimately get the boot in May 2020 as part of a major Creator/NBCUniversal restructuring.

* Creator/{{CBC}} (the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) has one of these every five years or so, always as a result of network/government bigwigs trying to draw in new audiences by making it more [[WereStillRelevantDammit "relevant"]]. This naturally turns-off long term fans (who watched CBC precisely because it doesn't typically trade in LowestCommonDenominator fare), while "mainstream" audiences get their entertainment from Creator/{{CTV}} and Creator/{{Global}}.

** The period that lasted from around 2010 to 2015 is generally seen as the channel's lowest point. During this time, half of the channel's timeslots were filled with reruns of ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'', which was widely considered to be in the middle of its own [[SeasonalRot Audience-Alienating Era]], while their live-action shows were either widely panned, like ''Series/HenryDanger'', or barely got off the ground, like ''Series/SupahNinjas''. They gave ''WebVideo/{{Fred}}'' three poorly-received movies and a show that didn't even get a second season, and gave star Lucas Cruikshank [[Series/MarvinMarvin another show]] that bombed just as badly. They regularly rejected promising pilots from talented creators, including turning down the chance to make, with frequent collaborator Creator/FrederatorStudios, ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'' into a full series, which was later picked up by Creator/CartoonNetwork and went on to become a huge success for them (and help end their own audience-alienating era). They gave ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'', one of their biggest hits, a sequel miniseries titled ''WesternAnimation/TheLegendOfKorra'', then expanded it to a full 52 episode series, only to make it online exclusive partway through Book 3, often considered the show's creative high point, no less. It also didn't help that they gained a nasty reputation for [[ScrewedByTheNetwork relegating any new animated shows they received that doesn't become a massive success to low-rated spin-off channel Nicktoons, usually after only a month or two of their premiere on Nickelodeon, virtually guaranteeing their eventual cancellations]]. They repeatedly showed themselves to be out of touch with what audiences were interested at the time (compared to rival networks Disney XD and Cartoon Network), resulting in many of their new shows being criticized for lacking substance in comparison to animated shows on said rival networks. Even their live-action content was, by the middle of the decade, considered vastly inferior to Creator/DisneyChannel's output. During several points in this period, Nickelodeon's ratings plummeted to lows that hadn't been seen on the network since the early 80s. Incidentally, this is also the point where they replaced their traditional iconic orange logo that could take any shape imaginable, with a generic "professional"-looking one as the splat logo apparently doesn't look good on a business card, and lost longtime exec Majorie Cohn, who defected to Creator/DreamWorksAnimation, something that ''really'' hurt the network.

** The channel went through one of these during the mid-2000s, generally agreed to have begun with the premiere of ''Series/HannahMontana'' (which coincides with the end of ''WesternAnimation/KimPossible'') and to have concluded with the premiere of ''WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerb''. The animated shows were sidelined in favor of a focus on the teenybopper demographic; even WesternAnimation/MickeyMouse and the gang had a minor presence. This alienated Disney Channel's other demographics. It doesn't help that Creator/{{Disney}} in general was going through some rough times of their own. Fortunately, ''Phineas and Ferb'' helped to broaden the appeal of the channel. Interestingly, the shows such as ''Series/ThatsSoRaven'' and its sequel ''Series/CoryInTheHouse'', ''Series/TheSuiteLifeOfZackAndCody'' and its sequel ''Series/TheSuiteLifeOnDeck'', ''Series/WizardsOfWaverlyPlace'', and ''Series/HannahMontana'' are usually exempt from the A.A.E., with all of the aforementioned shows having large fanbases, especially now due to nostalgia.

* [[Creator/TheBBC BBC America]] has been in one ever since 2016 when Creator/{{AMC}} bought out half the network, with BBC Worldwide still holding the controlling interest. ''Actual'' British programs which are supposed to be the network's main selling point are becoming more scarce outside the network's flagship show ''Series/DoctorWho'', ''Series/TopGear'', ''Series/TheGrahamNortonShow'', and Creator/DavidAttenborough nature films. The main weekday is an endless parade of ''Franchise/StarTrek'', ''Series/CSIMiami'', ''Series/TheXFiles'' reruns, and whatever movie by a British director or featuring a British cast the network is obsessed with that week. Compare this to the network's peak at the mid-2000's which featured a steady stream of British imports like ''Series/BeingHuman'', ''Series/{{Skins}}'', ''Series/LawAndOrderUK'', ''Series/TheHour'', and ''Series/{{Luther}}'' all of which were well-received by audiences and were frequently repeated, as well as simulcasts of BBC World News (indeed, nowadays the BBC just distributes their BBC World News channel to cable providers or just has Creator/{{PBS}} air their broadcasts). This has coincided with the rising of online streaming: as production costs rise more and more British networks like the BBC are sharing costs with services like Creator/{{Netflix}}, and Creator/AmazonPrime so the programs are forced to be online exclusives rather than be shown on BBC America like they would in the past.

** The first one was during Fred Silverman's tenure as president and CEO, 1978–81. Hot off of his success turning Creator/{{ABC}} into a titan in 1975–78, NBC brought him on hoping that lightning would strike twice. [[BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor What they got instead]] was a slew of gimmicky shows that were often canceled after only a season, with ''Series/{{Supertrain}}'' and ''Series/PinkLadyAndJeff'' being among the most notorious (both of these shows are listed in ''Literature/WhatWereTheyThinkingThe100DumbestEventsInTelevisionHistory'', which takes several additional shots at Silverman). The former hit ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'' went through its first DorkAge during the 1980-81 season, and was nearly canceled after the [[PrecisionFStrike F-bomb]] dropped on the Charlene Tilton episode. Morale at the network crumbled with each passing year spent in a distant third behind ABC and Creator/{{CBS}}; Creator/AlFranken ran the famous "Limo for the Lame-O" sketch on ''SNL'' skewering Silverman's handling of the network (which led to Franken getting sacked and, with it, the aforementioned DorkAge the following season), while the production studio and singers responsible for NBC's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AEhc2cgCnw "Proud as a Peacock!"]] campaign song recorded [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mN9wJ75DjdA a parody version]] mocking Silverman, something he didn't take well. The final straw came when the US Olympic team boycotted the 1980 UsefulNotes/{{Moscow}} UsefulNotes/{{Olympic|Games}}s as a result of the UsefulNotes/SovietInvasionOfAfghanistan, resulting in an Eastern Bloc-dominated affair that few Americans were interested in watching -- very bad news for the network that had bet the farm on Olympic programming that year to turn its fortunes around. Between that and the financial troubles of NBC's corporate owners, the electronics company RCA, it was speculated that the network would be shut down or sold off in a matter of years in order to prevent RCA from going bankrupt. Fortunately for NBC, in 1981 they ousted Silverman and brought in Grant Tinker (co-founder of MTM Enterprises) as the new chairman and CEO, and put Brandon Tartikoff in charge of programming duties. Together, despite a few false starts, Tinker and Tartikoff oversaw the beginning of a golden age for NBC that would last for nearly two decades, with the network dominating the ratings and, in particular, being responsible for many of the great American {{sitcom}}s of TheEighties and TheNineties. In fact, when General Electric bought out RCA in 1986, it was mainly ''because'' they wanted NBC, which by then was one of the last profitable divisions of a company that was otherwise circling the drain.
** What came after those two decades, though, would prove to be a dork age of its own. Tartikoff died unexpectedly in 1997, but many of the hit shows he greenlit continued for years after. However, following the end of ''Series/{{Frasier}}'' and ''Series/{{Friends}}'', two of the network's last big sitcom hits of Must See TV era, in 2004, NBC slipped from first to fourth as its new shows either failed to catch on or experienced {{Second Season Downfall}}s, and most of its attempts to make a {{reality TV}} hit like ''Series/{{Survivor}}'' or ''Series/AmericanIdol'' turned out to be failures. Their Thursday night comedy block[[note]]The downfall of Creator/{{NBC}}'s Thursday night "Must See TV" block can be attributed to the combination of oversaturation of sitcoms all across NBC's line-up (to put things into proper perspective, during the 1997-98 season, NBC had about ''18'' sitcom slots on Mondays-Thursdays and Sunday), which for the most part seemed nearly identical to one another (i.e. multi-camera shows about young, affluent white people living in UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity), Jeff Zucker's "super-sizing" concept for ''Series/{{Friends}}'', made it much harder to nurture another show right after it, the lack of strong shows to replace staples like ''Series/{{Seinfeld}}'', ''Series/{{Frasier}}'' and ''Friends'' (which in the meantime, were usually sandwiched in-between otherwise mediocre or forgettable shows like ''The Single Guy'', ''Series/SuddenlySusan'', ''Series/CarolineInTheCity'' and ''Veronica's Closet'') such as the disastrous American adaptation of ''Series/{{Coupling}}'', other networks' (i.e. Creator/{{CBS}} and Creator/{{ABC}}) Thursday night line-ups becoming increasingly stronger by around 2004, and ''Series/TheApprentice'' moving into the 9 p.m. timeslot.[[/note]] was one of its few points of consistent acclaim, and even then, shows like ''Series/{{Community}}'' and ''Series/ThirtyRock'' struggled in the ratings. The low point came in the 2009-10 season, when the UsefulNotes/{{Vancouver}} Winter Olympics proved themselves to be a $250 million money pit for the network, and the failure of ''The Creator/JayLeno Show'' left huge holes across a third of the network's UsefulNotes/PrimeTime schedule and caused a "Late Night War" between Leno and Creator/ConanOBrien that left TV fans with a lot of ill will against NBC's executives. The ouster of unpopular CEO Jeff Zucker in late 2010 saw the network finally start to turn itself around. ''Series/TheVoice'' premiered in the 2010-11 season and became a smash hit (though it was only one of two freshman series that season to get renewed[[note]]The other being ''Series/HarrysLaw'', which itself only lasted one more season.[[/note]]), and the network edged out ABC for third place at the end of the 2011-12 season. After equaling that rank the following season, they surged all the way back to number one in the 2013-14 season on the back of the Winter Olympics and several new hits, particularly ''Series/TheBlacklist'', ''Series/ChicagoFire'', and its {{spinoff}} ''Series/ChicagoPD'' This dominance continued through the 2014-15 season even as their Thursday night comedy block has completely collapsed and been pulled (in favor of using ''The Blacklist'' to attack ABC's dominant Creator/ShondaRhimes trio on the night). Today, they run neck-and-neck with CBS as the #1 network, with NBC claiming the 18-49 demographic and CBS claiming the most total viewers.

** After a botched takeover attempt by Creator/TedTurner, CBS was acquired by Larry Tisch, owner of Loew's Theatres. Tisch began slashing the network's budget, selling among others, its Columbia Records unit (to Sony) and St. Louis station KMOX-TV (to Viacom, who renamed it KMO''V''-TV) This coincided with its shows beginning to skew much older than its competitors Creator/{{ABC}}, Creator/{{NBC}}, and (starting in 1987) Creator/{{Fox}} – meaning that, while it was pulling in huge ratings from seniors and retirees with shows like ''Series/{{Dallas}}'' and ''Series/MurderSheWrote'', it wasn't hitting the lucrative 18-49 demographic that advertisers crave. [[note]](Interestingly, CBS went through the same problem two decades earlier, which it resolved with UsefulNotes/TheRuralPurge.)[[/note]] This earned it the nickname "The Network of the Living Dead", and by the early '90s [[{{Foreshadowing}} they were relying on their weekend sports coverage to stay in the black]].\\
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You can guess how that went. In 1993, after CBS had already lost broadcast rights to the [[UsefulNotes/NationalBasketballAssociation NBA]] and [[UsefulNotes/MLBTeams MLB]], Creator/{{Fox}} signed a contract with [[UsefulNotes/AmericanFootball the NFL]] that gave them the exclusive rights to air NFC games, a move that firmly established Fox as America's fourth network but utterly devastated CBS. A common joke claimed that CBS stood for [[FunWithAcronyms "Can't Broadcast Sports"]]; despite this, though, CBS managed to maintain their UsefulNotes/{{NASCAR}} contracts, and with the sport becoming hugely popular in the 90s, this was a lifesaver, especially since they held the exclusive rights to the Daytona 500 (having done so since 1979, and doing so until 2000 when it was split between Fox and NBC from 2001 to 2006, and then exclusively on Fox since 2007). This was followed by Fox's plundering of CBS' sportscasters and, in 1994, through a contract with New World Communications and its merger with Argyle Television, poaching CBS affiliates in such key markets as [[UsefulNotes/DFWMetroplex Dallas-Fort Worth]], UsefulNotes/{{Atlanta}}, UsefulNotes/{{Milwaukee}} and UsefulNotes/{{Detroit}},[[note]] (NWC would be purchased outright by News Corporation, Fox's parent company at the time, in 1997)[[/note]] forcing CBS to move to lower-tier UHF stations in those and other cities.[[note]] CBS was spared the UHF demotion in Dallas-Fort Worth but still had to move up the dial to Channel 11.[[/note]]\\
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** Another Dork Age seems to be on the horizon for CBS as of UsefulNotes/TheNewTens. With ''The Big Bang Theory'' ending with its 12th season, CBS is left without its biggest ratings hit and will largely consist of drama series that are outside of the coveted 18-49 demographic. Attempts at newer sitcoms, most notably ''Series/KevinCanWait'', ''Series/TheCrazyOnes'', ''Series/YoungSheldon'', an ill-fated revival of ''Series/MurphyBrown'', and ''Series/{{Mom}}'', have either failed or seen its ratings under-perform against ''Big Bang'', portending a difficult period for CBS post-''Big Bang''. Not helping was that what was intended to be their next reality TV hit, ''The World's Best'', got massive amounts of hype from the network, debuted strong with viewers due to airing right after Super Bowl LIII (more on that below), only for ratings to catastrophically collapse within ''days''. Additionally, its long-respected news division (which got out of a dork age of its own following the Killian documents controversy, which saw Dan Rather lose his longtime gig as ''CBS Evening News'' host) is beginning to show strain thanks to Scott Pelley getting replaced as ''CBS Evening News'' anchor by the more-younger Jeff Glor due to sagging ratings. Glor's hiring did almost nothing to reverse the declines, and the network replaced him with Norah O'Donnell after just a year and a half on the job. Further tarnishing the network are exposés, stemming from ''Series/SixtyMinutes'' correspondent Charlie Rose being ousted following sexual harassment allegations in the wake of the #[=MeToo=] movement, alleging years of institutional sexual misconduct at the network, perpetuated by longtime CEO of CBS Corporation Les Moonves, who himself was the target of sexual assault allegations by way of a ''New Yorker'' report from Ronan Farrow, the same journalist who first brought attention to Harvey Weinstein's sexual assault scandal that launched #[=MeToo=], and was later terminated.\\
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The turmoil has also threatened CBS's sports division, with UsefulNotes/SuperBowl LIII[[note]]which featured mediocre performances from both featured teams, the Los Angeles Rams and New England Patriots (the Patriots scored the ''sole touchdown in the whole game'' during the fourth quarter) and a critically-panned halftime show with Music/Maroon5[[/note]] becoming [[https://variety.com/2019/tv/news/super-bowl-liii-ratings-1203127648/ the lowest-rated Super Bowl broadcast since Super Bowl XLII]]; this was not helped at all when the fanbase of the New Orleans Saints called for a boycott of the Super Bowl, following their team's loss to the Rams in the NFC Championship game over what the Saints considered a blown call. Their biggest loss, though, came later that year when CBS opted not to continue its relationship with the [[UsefulNotes/CollegiateAmericanFootballConferences Southeastern Conference]] football division, whose rights had been one of CBS Sports' [[CashCowFranchise golden geese]] for more than 20 years, when their contract ended in 2023, allowing Creator/{{ESPN}}[=/=]Creator/{{ABC}} to scoop up their package and fully consolidate their grasp on the conference's media rights. CBS has attempted to address these concerns by scooping up rights to various worldwide [[UsefulNotes/AssociationFootball soccer]] leagues (a sport CBS hadn't aired in any capacity since ''1990'') as well as the Women's National Basketball Association in order to both bolster youth viewership and to fill the void left by the SEC's exit, notably picking up the UsefulNotes/UEFAChampionsLeague rights after a previous deal with Creator/{{TNT}} quickly went south.\\
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The Dork Age fully began in 2020, right after former parent Creator/{{Viacom}} re-merged with CBS. With the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic resulting in the cancellation of the advertising cash cow March Madness basketball tournament, the postponement of many of their originals and Creator/TomBrady leaving the New England Patriots for the NFC's Tampa Bay Buccaneers causing a viewership drop for AFC football, CBS fell to a horrific [[https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/network-ratings-2020-top-channels-fox-news-cnn-msnbc-cbs-1234866801/ fourth place]] in the 18-49 demographic for the year, a 30% drop from the year prior even as the network was still the most watched overall. An attempt to reverse the decline with Super Bowl LV backfired when the Buccaneers defeated the defending Kansas City Chiefs [[CurbStompBattle in a landslide]], resulting in the viewership drop ''eclipsing'' that of Super Bowl LIII. That, along with the returning March Madness tournament, were the only things keeping them in third place among the demo for the season. Not helping matters were allegations of Creator/ViacomCBS engaging in tax evasion and a muted response to the network's 2021-22 upfronts leading them falling behind its peers in quickly selling its ad inventory.\\
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** The Alphabet Network went through a DorkAge of its own from 2000-2004, when many new shows didn't draw much in the ratings. The beginning of this was when the network gave WolverinePublicity to ''Series/WhoWantsToBeAMillionaire'' for the 2000-01 season, saturating the schedule by airing the game show in prime time as many as ''five nights a week''. In addition, Michael Eisner, then CEO of parent company Creator/{{Disney}}, turned down Creator/JerryBruckheimer's pitch for ''Series/{{CSI}}'', which instead became a hit for Creator/{{CBS}}, and many of the new shows that debuted on ABC in that period were hardly successful in terms of ratings (note that Disney as a whole was in a Dork Age at the time, with traditional 2D animation quickly falling to Creator/{{Pixar}} and Creator/{{DreamWorks|Animation}}, Ride/{{Disneyland}} being turned into what amounted to a shopping mall while maintenance suffered, and a general decline in customer service in favor of profit). The network fell to fourth place and almost went bankrupt in this period (and was part of the reason behind Eisner being replace with Bob Iger), ultimately being spared by the debuts of ''Series/{{LOST}}'', ''Series/DesperateHousewives'', and ''Series/GreysAnatomy'', which boosted the network's ratings to second place for the 2004-05 season. Since then, the network has been a reliable third place finisher, an unspectacular but comfortable position, only falling to fourth place several times (in the 2011-12 season, when Creator/{{NBC}} was beginning to mount its comeback but before Creator/{{Fox}} started to seriously collapse, and during the 2018-19 and 2019-20 seasons, when ABC's schedule consisted mostly of past holdovers and when the network was [[ExecutiveMeddling undergoing management shifts]] following its parent company's buyout of Creator/TwentiethCenturyFox, not to mention the conclusion of network darling ''Series/ModernFamily'', though ''ABC World News'' managed to overtake ''NBC Nightly News'' as the top nightly newscast nationally, so not a complete loss). While it only has a few megahits (and virtually none from people not named Creator/ShondaRhimes), it does have a large stable of fairly modest hits with devoted fanbases.

* Creator/{{Fox}} fell into one during the 2011-12 season. Coming off a long run of success in the '00s, they attempted to juice a fall lineup that was getting fairly long in the tooth with an American version of ''Series/TheXFactor'', which initially provided a solid boost but collapsed spectacularly over the next two seasons before it was canceled in 2013. More distressingly, Creator/SimonCowell's involvement in ''The X Factor'' led to his departure from ''Series/AmericanIdol'', which is often regarded as the [[JumpingTheShark point of no return]] for the latter show after a few years of stagnant, wobbly ratings; by the time ''The X Factor'' was canceled, ''Idol'' had gone from Fox's big tentpole hit and TV's "Death Star" to a marginal player that was overshadowed by Creator/{{NBC}}'s ''Series/TheVoice'', eventually singing its last note in 2016 (though this later proved to be a hiatus, as the series made a ChannelHop to Creator/{{ABC}} in 2018). Fox has also been severely harmed by their inability to develop new major scripted hits, generally putting out either {{Acclaimed Flop}}s like ''Series/{{Enlisted}}'' and ''Series/SurvivingJack'', "limited series" like ''Series/TheFollowing'' and ''Series/SleepyHollow'' that burn bright in season one only to [[SecondSeasonDownfall flame out]] when audiences realize that these aren't MiniSeries but instead multi-season shows with reduced episode orders, cult shows like ''Series/BrooklynNineNine'' and ''Series/TheMindyProject'' that burnish the network's reputation with critics but [[AcclaimedFlop don't bring appreciable ratings boosts]], or reviled duds like ''Series/TheMobDoctor'', ''Series/RedBandSociety'', ''Series/{{Dads}}'', and ''Series/{{Mulaney}}''.\\
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** Their cable sports properties also declined in TheNewTens. Parent company News Corp. bulldozed UsefulNotes/{{motorsports}}-centric niche channel Speed in favor of broad-skewing Fox Sports 1[[note]]their earlier attempt at buying up regional sports networks and putting them all under the Fox Sports banner hadn't gone so well-- nowadays, only half the RSNs or so are owned by Fox, the rest are owned by other companies-- mostly Comcast and AT&T-- and simply take FSN programming[[/note]], only for [=FS1=] to suffer big ratings drops from Speed, with only UFC, baseball, and [[{{Irony}} the remaining motorsports programming]] consistently breaking six figures -- even Big East Basketball, a reliable million-plus breaker for Creator/{{ESPN}}, couldn't do anything for Fox, sometimes going below 10,000 viewers when the telecasts got shunted over to Fox Sports 2. [[note]]To be fair, that isn't entirely Fox's fault. Thanks to several defections and an ultimate split of the conference over its attempts to maintain relevance as a football conference, the Big East is a shell of its former self that's going through a Dork Age of its own, with most of its previous basketball powers like Syracuse, Connecticut, and West Virginia now playing elsewhere.[[/note]] Speaking of [=FS2=], it replaced the even more niche extreme sports-centric Fuel, only to collapse even more dramatically from Fuel's numbers than [=FS1=] has from Speed's. It almost goes without saying that Fox has alienated die-hard motorsports and extreme sports fans with the changes, as well as UsefulNotes/{{NASCAR}} fans (by far the most broad-skewing of any U.S. motorsports association) with things like the LiveButDelayed approach they took to the circuit's new knockout qualifying format in 2014 and the tendency to shunt over inconveniently scheduled practice and even qualifying sessions to [=FS2=], which is located on a higher cable tier than [=FS1=] (if your provider even carries the net). Keep in mind that television ratings have been falling for NASCAR all across the board, not just on Fox, which can be blamed on NASCAR being in its own Dork Age that saw a massive drop in popularity after the death of Dale Earnhardt (who was the most popular NASCAR driver at the time) and the introduction of the Car of Tomorrow (which had little, if any, distinction between manufacturers and was aerodynamically-inferior to the fourth-generation car used between 1992 and 2007), not to mention a wide array of rule changes that made it seem like the sanctioning body was willfully manipulating every aspect of the racing product in favor of whichever driver they wanted to win that week.
** By 2018, many began questioning the future of Fox as the network took a number of dramatic actions to end the Dork Age. The most significant action was the decision to exit television production entirely by including its television production unit with the 21st Century Fox assets purchased by Creator/{{Disney}}, and deciding to focus on ordering shows from studios not attached to a particular network and taking an ownership stake in said shows. In addition, the network is broadening its scale in non-scripted and sports programming, not renewing their contract with UsefulNotes/UltimateFightingChampionship due to poor ratings, acquiring the rights to [[UsefulNotes/NationalFootballLeague NFL]] Thursday Night Football for four years and replacing Creator/USANetwork as the broadcasting home for ''Wrestling/WWESmackDown'' beginning October 2019. One of the first new series in this strategy -- Creator/FoxEntertainment's ''Series/TheMaskedSinger'' -- wound up becoming a surprise hit for the network in early-2019. Beyond that, the network has more or less begun to slowly phase out live-action scripted programming in favor of more animated shows, limited series, reality and sports programs. Even [[WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons their]] [[WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy animated]] [[WesternAnimation/BobsBurgers mainstays]] longevity has been put into question, with Disney now owning most of those shows, meaning they could be moved to ABC or Creator/{{Freeform}} any day.
* Creator/TheCW is a curious example, as it was a network born from a Dork Age that ultimately destroyed one of its parent networks, Creator/TheWB. Starting around 2003, The WB attempted to broaden its base beyond its core market of teenagers and college-age young adults; it was during this time that they retired the Michigan J. Frog mascot (going as far as to "announce" he had passed away) and canceled hit shows like ''Series/{{Angel}}'' and ''Series/DawsonsCreek'', replacing them with programs that crashed and burned in the ratings. The only hits that The WB produced post-2003 were ''Series/BeautyAndTheGeek'', ''Series/OneTreeHill'', and ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'', all of which made the jump to The CW -- and all of which, not coincidentally, were aimed at the 18-24 demographic that The WB was trying to break away from. By the end of 2005, The WB had fallen behind not only Creator/{{UPN}}, but also Creator/{{Univision}}, which is notably a Spanish-language network aimed at only a small subset of the population.\\
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The Dork Age continued after The WB merged with UPN (the result of a corporate shakeup at Viacom) in 2006 to form The CW. For fans of ''Series/GilmoreGirls'', ''Series/VeronicaMars'', ''Series/EverybodyHatesChris'', ''Series/{{Smallville}}''... well, it's easier to list the CW programs that ''weren't'' sidelined as the network focused itself around (often short-lived) {{reality show}}s and vapid 'rich kids living the good life' dramas designed to [[FollowTheLeader cash in]] on ''Series/GossipGirl'' and ''[[Series/BeverlyHills90210 90210]]'', two of the network's breakout hits. More distressingly, The WB's absorption of UPN to create The CW was a short-term GenreKiller for African-American-led programming on network television after ''Everybody Hates Chris'' finished its run, as UPN, ''Chris''[='=] former network, had been one of the main homes for such, and The CW was interested in more lucrative demographics. The network turned itself around starting in 2012, after unpopular network head Dawn Ostroff stepped down, by gunning for the position of 'the geek network'. During this time, they premiered new sci-fi and fantasy shows like ''Series/{{Arrow}}'', ''Series/BeautyAndTheBeast2012'', ''Series/IZombie'', and ''Series/{{The 100}}'' and gave renewed focus to genre hits like ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'' and ''Series/TheVampireDiaries'', and beyond sci-fi and fantasy, they also premiered shows like ''Series/JaneTheVirgin'' and a revival of ''Series/WhoseLineIsItAnyway'' that helped boost their critical reputation. While it's still not a ratings-winner, The CW today has a devoted fanbase, and its embrace of online platforms to a greater degree than its bigger rivals has proven very fruitful.
* A lot of sports fans consider Creator/{{ESPN}} to be in one now, especially with its flagship program ''Series/SportsCenter''. The sports news show rose to great popularity in TheNineties due to its charismatic anchors that could deliver scores and highlights with a touch of witty banter. (It in turn has decimated the various attempts by other networks to have their own flagship highlights/news show, especially the various Fox Sports shows-- ''Fox Sports News''/''National Sports Report'', ''(FSN) Final Score'', and most recently ''Fox Sports Live'', which even recruited the hosts of the Canadian ''[=SportsCentre=]''.) Unfortunately, the rise of social media in the late 2000s allowed sports fans to see the biggest highlights as soon as they happened, making it unnecessary for them to tune into the show to ensure they saw the best plays of the night. Additionally, the network began to focus most of its ''[=SportsCenter=]'' segments and programming around the sports and leagues that they have the rights to air games to (the NFL, NBA, college football, etc) which caused viewers who felt their preferred sport/team was being ignored to tune out. Later still, the show's analysis and discussion segments began to slip away from focusing on strategy and performances to bits focusing on athletes' personal issues and off the field/court/diamond controversies that last way too long for many viewers. What's more, some of the hosts they have now, such as Stephen A. Smith and Max Kellerman, come off as too egotistical and provocative for viewers looking for meaningful sports insights rather than "hot takes".\\
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** The period that lasted from around 2010 to 2015 is generally seen as the channel's lowest point. During this time, half of the channel's timeslots were filled with reruns of ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'', which was widely considered to be in the middle of its own [[SeasonalRot Dork Age]], while their live-action shows were either widely panned, like ''Series/HenryDanger'', or barely got off the ground, like ''Series/SupahNinjas''. They gave ''WebVideo/{{Fred}}'' three poorly-received movies and a show that didn't even get a second season, and gave star Lucas Cruikshank [[Series/MarvinMarvin another show]] that bombed just as badly. They regularly rejected promising pilots from talented creators, including turning down the chance to make, with frequent collaborator Creator/FrederatorStudios, ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'' into a full series, which was later picked up by Creator/CartoonNetwork and went on to become a huge success for them (and help end their own dork age). They gave ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'', one of their biggest hits, a sequel miniseries titled ''WesternAnimation/TheLegendOfKorra'', then expanded it to a full 52 episode series, only to make it online exclusive partway through Book 3, often considered the show's creative high point, no less. It also didn't help that they gained a nasty reputation for [[ScrewedByTheNetwork relegating any new animated shows they received that doesn't become a massive success to low-rated spin-off channel Nicktoons, usually after only a month or two of their premiere on Nickelodeon, virtually guaranteeing their eventual cancellations]]. They repeatedly showed themselves to be out of touch with what audiences were interested at the time (compared to rival networks Disney XD and Cartoon Network), resulting in many of their new shows being criticized for lacking substance in comparison to animated shows on said rival networks. Even their live-action content was, by the middle of the decade, considered vastly inferior to Creator/DisneyChannel's output. During several points in this period, Nickelodeon's ratings plummeted to lows that hadn't been seen on the network since the early 80s. Incidentally, this is also the point where they replaced their traditional iconic orange logo that could take any shape imaginable, with a generic "professional"-looking one as the splat logo apparently doesn't look good on a business card, and lost longtime exec Majorie Cohn, who defected to Creator/DreamWorksAnimation, something that ''really'' hurt the network.
** Whether or not the network is still in a Dork Age is up for debate, as the general consensus is that Nickelodeon has been improving itself since 2016 following the premiere of ''WesternAnimation/HarveyBeaks'' and ''WesternAnimation/TheLoudHouse''. Nevertheless, complaints still remain--and it's still agreed the network has done little to counter its reputation of poorly treating animated shows if they aren't immediate smash hits like ''[=SpongeBob=]'' (or ''The Loud House'', which managed to become a surprising exception). Additionally, nearly half a dozen live-action shows continued to get ScrewedByTheNetwork [[Series/TheOtherKingdom and often receive]] 1 season before prematurely getting shown to the door, or 2 [[Series/IAmFrankie if the series]] [[Series/MakeItPop was fortunate enough.]] ''Harvey Beaks'' was infamously punted around to various timeslots and then barely promoted, due to it not being the instant ratings success Nick wanted it to be in spite of acclaim, and then was ''very'' quietly cancelled, much to the surprise and disappointment of creator C.H. Greenblatt; it didn't help that, when C.H. talked about his disappointment regarding the show's treatment (despite saying he had no issues with the Animation Studio and its personnel there), Nick forced him to apologize and delete his comments. This was later followed by the network heavily delaying two hyped revival specials, ''WesternAnimation/RockosModernLifeStaticCling'' and ''WesternAnimation/InvaderZimEnterTheFlorpus'', and halting production and laying off crew members on ''WesternAnimation/GlitchTechs'' '''before the show even premiered''', before all three (and ''WesternAnimation/PinkyMalinky'') were eventually added to Creator/{{Netflix}}. Thankfully, things seem to have settled with the premiere of ''WesternAnimation/ItsPony'', which has managed to be both well-reviewed and well-promoted in spite of not doing amazingly ratings-wise.
** Depending on whom you ask, Herb Scannell's tenure as President of Nickelodeon from the late '90s to mid 2000s was its own dork age. It was during this period in which Nickelodeon:

** The channel went through one of these during the mid-2000s, generally agreed to have begun with the premiere of ''Series/HannahMontana'' (which coincides with the end of ''WesternAnimation/KimPossible'') and to have concluded with the premiere of ''WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerb''. The animated shows were sidelined in favor of a focus on the teenybopper demographic; even WesternAnimation/MickeyMouse and the gang had a minor presence. This alienated Disney Channel's other demographics. It doesn't help that Creator/{{Disney}} in general was going through some rough times of their own. Fortunately, ''Phineas and Ferb'' helped to broaden the appeal of the channel. Interestingly, the shows such as ''Series/ThatsSoRaven'' and its sequel ''Series/CoryInTheHouse'', ''Series/TheSuiteLifeOfZackAndCody'' and its sequel ''Series/TheSuiteLifeOnDeck'', ''Series/WizardsOfWaverlyPlace'', and ''Series/HannahMontana'' are usually exempt from the DorkAge, with all of the aforementioned shows having large fanbases, especially now due to nostalgia.
** Their next DorkAge began with ''Series/ShakeItUp'' in 2010. Most people believe the sitcoms beforehand, like ''Series/WizardsOfWaverlyPlace'', were well-written {{Guilty Pleasure}}s that were fun to watch. By the time ''Shake It Up!'' premiered, however, the new sitcoms were seen as dumb as opposed to funny with the only general-type sitcoms to near unanimously achieve praise being low-concept shows like ''Series/GirlMeetsWorld'', ''Series/LivAndMaddie'', and ''Series/GoodLuckCharlie''. Pretty soon, the sitcoms began swallowing the lineup, as Creator/{{Disney}} adopted an attitude of "Disney Channel is for girls and Creator/DisneyXD[[note]]a replacement for Creator/ToonDisney[[/note]] is for boys". As another consequence of this, much of their much more acclaimed animated lineup, like ''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls'' and ''WesternAnimation/WanderOverYonder'', wound up being [[ChannelHop shifted over to]] Disney XD. ''Wander Over Yonder'' is an especially sore spot, considering that its move to Disney XD played a part in its cancellation (unlike ''Gravity Falls'' which ended because the creator wanted it to); Disney XD is on fewer cable providers than Disney Channel is, thus dooming the show to lower ratings, hence the show's cancellation before its MythArc could even begin led many fans [[SendingStuffToSaveTheShow to write a petition to continue the series.]] Several other animated shows like ''WesternAnimation/KickButtowskiSuburbanDaredevil'', ''WesternAnimation/{{Motorcity}}'', and ''WesternAnimation/RandyCunninghamNinthGradeNinja'' were exclusive to XD and thus never able to gain any widespread exposure despite getting plenty of acclaim from those who saw it. While Disney Channel's live-action content was being panned (although not as badly is Nickelodeon's), XD's shows, like ''Series/LabRats'' and ''Series/MightyMed'', were getting better reception, but suffered from the same low ratings as other shows on the network. Fortunately, Disney Channel has learned from XD's success and quickly turned around their misfortunes; they have since added more animated series to their lineup, most notably ''WesternAnimation/DuckTales2017'', ''WesternAnimation/TheOwlHouse'' and ''WesternAnimation/{{Amphibia}}'', and have debuted the well-received series ''Series/KCUndercover'', ''Series/StuckInTheMiddle'', and ''Series/AndiMack'', the former of which takes more influence from XD's shows and the latter two of which eschew normal Disney Channel series elements like a LaughTrack. Unfortunately, this period of success may not last long as their parent company have shifted focus on their streaming service Creator/DisneyPlus as since then, several international feeds have been shut down due to the rising popularity of said service with plans to shut down at least '''100 channels''' during 2021.

** Some put the start of the Dork Age as far back as TheNineties, when MTV first began developing original, non-music-related programming. However, fans of animation often consider the '90s to be one of MTV's ''best'' periods, being when they premiered numerous hit animated series as ''WesternAnimation/BeavisAndButtHead'', ''WesternAnimation/LiquidTelevision'', ''WesternAnimation/AeonFlux'', ''WesternAnimation/TheHead'', ''WesternAnimation/{{Daria}}'', and ''WesternAnimation/CelebrityDeathmatch''. Also, while RealityTV is undoubtedly a touchy subject for MTV fans for reasons detailed below, the early seasons of ''Series/TheRealWorld'' and ''Series/RoadRules'' still won genuine acclaim for their looks at the '90s youth counterculture. Plus, the network still regularly aired music videos and performances; during this time, its ''MTV Unplugged'' series of live acoustic shows became a pop culture phenomenon.

* Creator/{{Freeform}} has gone through at least two of these dork ages:

* Ever since the end of the Wrestling/MondayNightWars, Creator/{{TNT}} and Creator/{{TBS}} have suffered a slow, painful decline in relevance that has stretched for nearly ''twenty years''. At the time, both networks were riding high with strong-performing movies and shows, as well as their flagship wrestling programs ''Wrestling/WCWMondayNitro'' and ''WCW Thunder'' becoming two of cable television's highest rated programs of the late 90's. However, a combination of internal troubles at Wrestling/{{WCW}}, the disastrous merger between AOL and [[Creator/WarnerMedia Time Warner]] and the installation of Jamie Kellner as [[UsefulNotes/TedTurner Turner Broadcasting]] head led to the cancellation of both programs, even though they were the networks' highest-rated programs despite continued viewership decline. Kellner decided to give both networks a major overhaul, with TNT invested in original dramas and TBS invested in original comedies. Unfortunately, the overhaul failed to play out as intended thanks to the originals flopping, with ''Series/{{Witchblade}}'' becoming a notorious flop for TNT and TBS deciding to stuff its comedy slate with acquired reruns of older sitcoms, not dipping their toes into original programming until ''10 Items or Less'' in ''2006'', '''three years''' after TBS shifted to comedy. TNT wouldn't be able to find a ratings winner post-''Nitro'' until ''Series/TheCloser'', and even then, most originals from the network failed to make it past two seasons, save for ''Series/{{Leverage}}'', ''Series/RizzoliAndIsles'' and ''Series/{{Southland}}'' which were solid hits. The networks also suffered from Time Warner's notorious anti-synergy stance, meaning that Turner or third parties had to provide the bulk of original content while its sister unit, Creator/WarnerBros, provided only a fraction. Meanwhile, their closest competitors, [[Creator/FXNetworks FX]] and Creator/USANetwork (the latter of which had a brief Dork Age after losing ''[[Wrestling/WWERaw Raw]]''), managed to reinvent themselves by becoming originals-heavy networks, with FX successfully breaking out with prestigious programming in the vein of Creator/{{HBO}} while Creator/{{USA|Network}} became a LighterAndSofter drama network with bits of comedy (largely in the vain of ''Series/{{Monk}}'' and ''Series/{{Psych}}''), strategies that have paid off handsomely for both. Even as cable television has continued to decline in both subscriptions and viewership, FX and USA have managed to adapt with critically-acclaimed or highly-rated programming (with USA managing to reclaim ''Raw'' in 2005), while TBS and TNT have hopelessly suffered double-digit drops in viewership percentages year-after-year, with only [[UsefulNotes/MajorLeagueBaseball MLB]] baseball and [[UsefulNotes/NationalBasketballAssociation NBA]] basketball respectively (plus UsefulNotes/{{NASCAR}}, though those ratings also declined due to NASCAR being in its own Dork Age at the time), along with the Creator/WarnerBros movie library, the annual [[UsefulNotes/{{Basketball}} March Madness]] tournament, and the annual 24-hour marathon of ''Film/AChristmasStory'', keeping the networks afloat.

* Creator/{{ITV}} suffered a major Dork Age in the mid 2000s. After its attempt to launch a over-the-air digital TV broadcasting service collapsed (due to various issues, mostly relating to Creator/{{Sky}} Digital stealing customers and hiring hackers to break [=ONDigital=]/ITV Digital's encryption system) it seemed to completely lose its bottle. Once a channel known for its dramas, gameshows and current events, it slowly decayed into a channel associated with awful reality TV featuring F-list celebrities. It didn't help that corporate consolidation saw local identities and personalities-- for decades the heart of the network-- removed in favor of (mostly) national ITV branding. This killed off its loyal older fans, and some disastrous attempts to capture the youth market showed it up as a poor attempt to imitate the much more successful Channel 4. This peaked when the channel that had once rivaled the BBC was reduced to broadcasting late night phone-in game shows associated with the filler channels. After years of failing, it's only just managed to turn things around. The insanely successful ''X-Factor'' finally caught the younger market, and series of high quality dramas including ''Series/DowntonAbbey'' drew back its older fanbase.
* Creator/TheBBC was not above a Dork Age either. The late 70s to the early 80s were a tough time in Britain, and the BBC suffered too. Its reputation as a trusted news source was shaken with some blatant pandering to the current governments. Its budgets were getting tighter, with ''Series/DoctorWho'' suffering its worst production and ratings in its history. Its output was also seen as stale and safe compared to the edgier ITV. At a time when its directors were seriously concerned that any signs of over spending or not appeasing the highly conservative government might get the channel privatized, it's not that surprising.
* Creator/{{Channel4}} is in the midst of a prolonged Dork Age in the eyes of older viewers. Originally touted as an 'alternative' channel to the more mainstream BBC and ITV, its programming catered to a lot of niche interests, such as animation. Its comedic output from the late 80's to late 90's is particularly well-regarded, featuring a mix of home-grown classics such as ''Series/FatherTed'' and ''Series/{{Spaced}}'' as well as imports of American sitcoms. This halted in 1997 with the appointment of Michael Jackson [[NamesTheSame (no, not]] [[Music/MichaelJackson that one)]] as Controller of Channel 4, which caused the network to rely more on those imports as well as more broadly accessible programming, the crux of which was ''Series/BigBrother''. Nowadays the network draws in viewers with more populist programming such as ''Series/MyBigFatGypsyWedding'' and ''Series/BenefitsStreet'', which keep the network afloat despite criticism from its older fans over what it has become.

* Creator/CartoonNetwork has gone through two distinct ages, depending on who you ask, with the first happening from 2007 to 2010, the second from 2015 to the present:

** When Stuart Snyder left and Christina Miller took over, she was welcomed with open arms... only for fans to soon find that her tenure did not fare any better. First by reportedly [[ExecutiveMeddling forcing some of the]] [[WhatDoYouMeanItsForKids more mature shows]] [[MoralGuardians to tone down their content]], despite Cartoon Network being well-loved for not being afraid for pushing the envelope compared to other kids' channels, and then turning the highly-polarizing [[CriticProof but highly successful]] ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitansGo'' into the flagship show of the channel, while the WesternAnimation/DCNation block it was once a part of was unceremoniously cancelled in 2014 (before Miller took over, mind you) with ''WesternAnimation/BewareTheBatman'', ''WesternAnimation/GreenLanternTheAnimatedSeries'', and ''WesternAnimation/YoungJustice'' joining it. Then in 2015, [[AdoredByTheNetwork their adoration for]] ''AdoredByTheNetwork/TeenTitansGo'' led to the show dominating the airtime, [[ScrewedByTheNetwork brushing other hits to the side like]] ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'', ''WesternAnimation/RegularShow'', and SleeperHit ''WesternAnimation/StevenUniverse''. Advertisements calling it "Your New Favorite Show", and using ''Teen Titans Go!'' as a template for its other reboots, ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls2016'', ''WesternAnimation/Ben102016'', and ''WesternAnimation/ThunderCatsRoar'', only fanned the flames further and led Snyder's tenure of CEO being VindicatedByHistory. By 2018, things were beginning to improve again for the network, as new, and much better-received, series such as ''WesternAnimation/CraigOfTheCreek'', ''WesternAnimation/SummerCampIsland'' and ''WesternAnimation/InfinityTrain'' joined the network, and reruns of ''We Bare Bears'' and even ''Total Drama Island'' became more frequent. Finally, at the end of 2019, [[https://variety.com/2019/tv/news/christina-miller-president-cartoon-network-warnermedia-departure-1203418284/ it was announced that]] Christina Miller would leave Creator/WarnerMedia.

** When Stuart Snyder left and Christina Miller took over, she was welcomed with open arms... only for fans to soon find that her tenure did not fare any better. First by reportedly [[ExecutiveMeddling forcing some of the]] [[WhatDoYouMeanItsForKids more mature shows]] [[MoralGuardians to tone down their content]], despite Cartoon Network being well-loved for not being afraid for pushing the envelope compared to other kids' channels, and then turning the highly-polarizing [[CriticProof but highly successful]] ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitansGo'' into the flagship show of the channel, while the WesternAnimation/DCNation block it was once a part of was unceremoniously cancelled in 2014 (before Miller took over, mind you) with ''WesternAnimation/BewareTheBatman'', ''WesternAnimation/GreenLanternTheAnimatedSeries'', and ''WesternAnimation/YoungJustice'' joining it. Then in 2015, [[AdoredByTheNetwork their adoration for]] ''AdoredByTheNetwork/TeenTitansGo'' led to the show dominating the airtime, [[ScrewedByTheNetwork brushing other hits to the side like]] ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'', ''WesternAnimation/RegularShow'', and SleeperHit ''WesternAnimation/StevenUniverse''. Advertisements calling it "Your New Favorite Show", and using ''Teen Titans Go!'' as a template for its other reboots, ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls2016'', ''WesternAnimation/Ben102016'', and ''WesternAnimation/ThunderCatsRoar'', only fanned the flames further. By 2018, things were beginning to improve again for the network, as new, and much better-received, series such as ''WesternAnimation/CraigOfTheCreek'', ''WesternAnimation/SummerCampIsland'' and ''WesternAnimation/InfinityTrain'' joined the network, and reruns of ''We Bare Bears'' and even ''Total Drama Island'' became more frequent. Finally, at the end of 2019, [[https://variety.com/2019/tv/news/christina-miller-president-cartoon-network-warnermedia-departure-1203418284/ it was announced that]] Christina Miller would leave Creator/WarnerMedia.

* Creator/AdultSwim. The cracks started to show in early 2020, when Creator/{{Toonami}} saw its block reduced to only 3 hours and consisting of mostly reruns due to budget cuts and the COVID-19 Pandemic, which also caused a severe lack of game reviews and speeches. However, it became more noticeable with the cancellation of ''WesternAnimation/TheVentureBros'' in September 2020 despite having previously been renewed for the eighth (and possibly final) season in 2019. Then, in November 2020 Creator/WarnerMedia announced a round of layoffs that caused the end of not only the Adult Swim Games division, but also the beloved Adult Swim Streams, causing ''all'' of the shows to end shortly after and take their hosts from AS in the process. This also killed of AS's last primary source of fan interaction after the Adult Swim Message Boards were shut down in 2014. Jump to September 2021, and Adult Swim has now lost the rights to one of its highest rated shows, ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'', which caused ratings to sink like a rock, and leaving AS with a struggle to fill airtime in the process too. To (possibly) combat this, Adult Swim started adding split-screen credits and [[Creator/{{TBS}} TBS-level]] speed-ups on the first two hours of the block, despite AS having been loved for ''never'' getting into this sort of thing. While Toonami has recovered for the most part, with the rights to ''WesternAnimation/BobsBurgers'' expiring in 2023 and mass cancellations of originals galore, things aren't looking too bright for the rest of the block.

* Creator/CartoonNetwork has gone through two distinct ages, depending on who you ask, with the first happening from 2007 to 2010, the second from 2015 to 2020:

** Around the time Miller left the network, Cartoon Network had its operations restructured into Creator/WarnerBros to provide better organization in the company after its acquisition by AT&T. Many hoped this wouldn't affect the station all that much, but unfortunately the AT&T merger proved to be a complete disaster throughout the company.[[note]]Reasons include multiple instances of culture clashing, the botched launch of Creator/HBOMax in the U.S, an underperforming film slate in 2019, and the COVID-19 Pandemic affecting operations.[[/note]] In Cartoon Network's case, Miller's replacement Tom Ascheim wanted to transition Cartoon Network into something more family-friendly. This resulted in multiple shows like ''Infinity Train'' getting canceled prematurely. Then once the COVID-19 Pandemic hit, multiple budget cuts occurred to the point where many felt the station was running on autopilot. In 2021, Cartoon Network received some drastic changes. One of which was the announcement of a preschool programing block known as Creator/{{Cartoonito}}, which resulted in their schedule being shortened to '''six hours a day'''. [[note]]It didn't really help that the block picked up the rights to some [[WesternAnimation/ThomasAndFriendsAllEnginesGo controversial]] [[WesternAnimation/{{Caillou}} programming]].[[/note]] In addition, the network announced that they'd start airing live-action programming again, which brought back many a painful flashback to the "CN Real" era. Then early in 2021, the already declining ratings from cord-cutting and previous NetworkDecay were affected even more by the announcement that Xfinity[[note]]Itself the most commonplace and successful cable operator[[/note]] would stop carrying Cartoon Network in their ''Basic and Expanded'' package,[[note]]Their most popular subscription package.[[/note]] causing the ratings to plummet throughout the rest of the year.