Troperville
Help us survive. All donations are anonymous on the wiki and unacknowledged, as we don't wish to create a hierarchy among Tropers.
Editing
Tools
Toys
|
"Wow, that was a real moment. That's weird for MTV." Joel McHale: Hey, ya know what else is weird for MTV? Showing a music video.
"It's unbelievable! The Cartoon Network is running live-action sitcoms now! They're the Cartoon Network! They're supposed to run cartoons! How can they get away with this?! It'd be like a news network running stuff besides news!"
Many cable channels are created to fulfill a specific programming niche. The Golf Channel shows golf, The History Channel shows history programs, and so on. Some channels, however, are not as wedded to their original concept as others. Meddling Executives look at the Demographics to whom their channel appeals, and decide that, hey, since the people watching their Speculative Fiction channel are mostly 18- to 31-year-old males, and Professional Wrestling is hot among that demographic, surely no one would mind if we started showing Professional Wrestling!
The fans of the original programming will mind, of course, but the channel tends to keep going regardless. This may show up with only a couple of odd programs in the schedule, but far too often, given enough time, a channel will have pretty much abandoned its original concept. Whether or not the former invariably leads to the latter is a subject for debate.
Part of the cause seems to be the fact that the channel is originally created to air shows that are "in the vault" of the company that creates the channels, but soon, the channel's own executives discover that original programming nets them more money, and the new stuff slowly displaces the old. Reality Shows, as a genre where the cost to produce is especially low, are common here. This may result in a new "vault" channel, which slowly undergoes the same process. (Nicktoons Network from Nickelodeon, for example.)
Note that one way to tell if this is happening is if the name of the network is hidden behind an acronym. For example, The Nashville Network referred to itself more and more as TNN (it eventually even changed what it stood for to "The National Network") before becoming Spike TV; similarly, you'd hardly know that TLC was ever called The Learning Channel.
Some changes can be chalked up to the changing landscape of TV. As the number of channels goes up, networks re-align themselves to try and hold some of their market. That, or the parent companies who might own seven or more cable channels each shuffle stuff for "synergy" or to reduce redundancy. Competition with new media is prevalent as well, as classic reruns give way to DVD box sets, music video channels give way to You Tube and iPods, and info-dumping all-text channels give way to the data display in a digital cable box or some new-fangled webernet site. But most of the time, it's just good old-fashioned selling out for ratings — whether it works or not.
Otherwise known as Viacom Syndrome.
Also, be forewarned, as this page can be pretty depressing.
See Magazine Decay for the print equivalent.
Examples
open/close all folders
Total Abandonment
- The most infamous example is MTV, which will maybe show a music video at 3 AM. If you're lucky. The rest of the time is devoted to reality shows that have nothing to do with music, as well as random programs from other Viacom-owned networks, such as American Gladiators and even Spongebob Squarepants. Music fans are once again left without a channel to call their own. This decay arguably began with the early-1990s addition to MTV's schedule of The Real World and Beavis And Butthead (which featured music videos, albeit with MST 3 K-style commentary by the title characters), two of the most popular programs in the network's history. The MTV executives saw this, and started commissioning more non-music shows, until music had been pushed into late night/early morning and the after-school TRL block (which was often accused of being rigged). Perhaps even more egregiously, MTV is now trying to brand itself as a music network (mostly using its website) even though it is clearly obvious that it isn't one anymore. For example, they have aired ads saying "MTV: Where music isn't dead." Commence laughing now. The final nail in the coffin was probably the cancellation of TRL late last year, although it's still trying to play lip service to its roots with the "FNMTV" block and its new implemented AMTV block of videos on weekday mornings.
- MTV was apparently aware of their hypocrisy. A few years ago, this troper saw a commercial that ended in "MTV: We don't play music."
- MTV2 started out as an actual music channel and, for a while after buying out the competing Box music network, became a true haven for music fans. But its descent, especially since changing its logo to the awful "two-headed dog", can best be described as, well, "MTV 2" (one of its few music-related shows, the indie rock-centric Subterranean, is pushed into an unsatisfactory time slot - 1AM Friday morning). (MTV3, by the way, is merely a renamed MTV S, a Spanish MTV channel.)
- MTV's subscription channels have followed a similar pattern, with the metal-centric MTVX being replaced by the rap-centric MTV Jams. MTV Hits, another channel which is still pretty good about music videos, is still going... for now, although it adopted a "playlistism" gimmick in 2006-07. Ditto VH 1 Soul, CMT Pure, and the aforementioned MTV Jams.
- Another MTV all-video digital cable channel, MTVU (which is essentially programmed like a college radio station) is even safer than MTV Hits for now, up to the point where they currently have only three shows on the channel (and two are essentially names for video blocks).
- In Argentina and some European countries, MTV still primarily shows music videos. American reality TV isn't nearly as popular outside America.
- Thanks to a rebranding effort a couple of years back, MTV UK is now known as MTV One and shows nothing but reality shows and animation. This is treated as a SELLING POINT.
- MTV UK's genre channels (MTV Base plays Urban, MTV Two plays indie rock & alternative, to give two examples) have their own programming, but it's related to the music that the channel plays — interviews, that sort of thing. These have recently been cut back in favour of playing more music videos, thus creating the first known instance of MTV being criticised for playing too many music videos.
- MTV Brazil, while being guilty of shows with border relation to music, such as a soccer championship between musicians, at least tried to fix their decay: in 2006, they killed their TRL equivalent. But then in 2008, the network decided to start another "top 10 most requested" show.
- Memorial Day weekend of 2009, MTV (the original US version, that is) seems to have gone Beyond The Impossible with respect to Network Decay. How so? The network once dedicated to music videos is running a marathon of all six Star Wars movies. I am seriously not making this up.
- MTV finally cemented just how far it's decayed, apparently having deliberately decided to rebrand themselves as targeted to ditzy teenage girls. During their recent Movie Awards, which are voted on by viewers from a set list of nominees, they gave just about everything to... Twilight. Iron Man and Slumdog Millionaire were completely shafted, WALL-E wasn't even nominated for anything, and The Dark Knight took home only a single award, for "Best Villain"... in this case almost certainly due to twisted tween sexual lust and dead actors being better. Plus, the only category Twilight lost in was Best Song — to the Hannah Montana movie. High School Musical 3 won the Best Actor award.
- At least we got to see Bruno put his crotch in Eminem's face, which kept it from being complete crap and moved it up to mediocre crap. Seeing something as bad as Twilight get so many awards makes me feel like Idiocracy is coming true.
- And it took Michael Jackson's death for MTV to finally play music videos again.
- The channel Fuse was created in response to MTV's decay, aimed at a slightly more "hardcore" crowd than MTV's original target audience. Plus, being Canadian, they got wind of some artists before the US did (Avril Lavigne, Sum 41, Choclair, etc.). Soon enough, however, it too began expanding, and now there's maybe two or three hours of music-based programming in any given day. It may be the fastest case of Network Decay ever. This can be arguably traced to when they changed the channel's name to "Fuse" from "Muchmusic USA".
- Also similarly, MTV's sister channel, VH1, turned into a channel celebrating pop culture by getting D-list celebrities to comment on it. After that it became obsessed with D-list celebrity reality shows, showing music videos only for a couple hours on weekday mornings.
- As if anticipating its decay, VH1 launched VH1 Classic, a station devoted purely to music and music videos, particularly from the '70s and '80s. Even the occasional movie shown was music-related (Footloose and The Wall being two examples). Lately, however, it's started to decay. It's still devoted to music, but it's also started airing some of the old VH1 programs featuring D-List celebrities (although they're mostly the music-related ones, and even then, it's only in mornings and late at night). It's only a matter of time before it basically becomes wall-to-wall reality like VH 1 itself.
- VH 1 still shows music videos in Argentina. Of course, it's all 80s/90s music videos.
- It's arguable, especially given the case of Fuse, that most of these music video channels' decay were inevitable once You Tube and iPods became popular. (Besides MTV, which decayed before this.) Suddenly, these channels were less necessary to advertise certain musicians, and people who actually wanted to see music videos could nab them off the Internet, and so didn't care as much if music video channels decayed. The Internet in general and You Tube in particular has actually caused, to some extent or another, quite a bit of network decay in recent years.
- The Nashville Network, a country station, morphed into TNN and ultimately Spike TV, an unabashed attempt to appeal to every stereotypical male interest possible. This is somewhat understandable, due to Viacom owning both TNN and CMT, causing one of the networks to be retooled to avoid redundancy. However, for three years before Viacom bought CBS, the latter company owned both TNN and CMT, and didn't seem concerned about redundancy. And then you have the fact that...
- CMT, or Country Music Television, has in recent years begun adding programming that has little if any connection to country music. In fact, music videos are played almost exclusively on weekdays during the morning and early afternoon hours, with the primetime and weekend slots being filled with reality shows and random movies, only with a "rural lifestyle" theme. In something of a double Network Decay, CMT has in 2007 even begun moving away from this, showing reruns of shows such as Hogan Knows Best and Nanny 911 along with movies like The Negotiator. One wonders if the channel has a theme anymore. In any case, this seems to be quite the trend among Viacom-owned music stations.
- G4, a struggling video game network, bought out Tech TV, a wildly popular computer enthusiast network, and basically turned into a geekier version of Spike TV. Currently, G4's lineup includes Star Trek reruns, Totally Outragious Behavior, Ninja Warrior and COPS (titled "COPS 2.0"). Apparently, based on Star Trek and the "2.0" bit, it would seem that the executives' reasoning is that if it sounds geeky, and/or slackers are sure to watch it, it is therefore relevant to the channel. But then, they even broke that line of reasoning by airing Cheaters, a reality show about people getting caught on tape cheating on their lovers. The only shows left on the network that are relevant to either channel's former demographics are X-Play (the only Tech TV show left, with its hosts being the only Tech TV employees whatsoever still at G4) and Attack Of The Show. Ironically, they're also G4's highest-rated programs. G4 seems to deny all of this.
- G4 is one of the biggest examples of when companies overestimate how effective certain channel plans can be. G4 was made when the Media and the Video Game industry felt that during that console generation to focus on the Teen-to-Thirties Male Demograph. While there are by all means Video game series' that cater to that Demograph such as Grand Theft Auto and Halo that are quite financially successful. Over the course of the 2000's the Media is starting to feel that catering to that demograph might not be a good idea and G4 is one of the biggest reasons why. (Though its debatable on whether if the games industry is following suit, sure Nintendo got big again while not catering to that demograph. But in all honesty Nintendo never really catered to that demograph to begin with.)
- In the UK, similar fates befell Game Network (from games to soft pornography, phone-in quizzes and psychic hotlines) and later XLEAGUE.TV (from eSports, to general games, to games-with-some-odd-niche-US-sports, to not broadcasting at all in the space of about 18 months).
- Fortunately, the Canadian version of the channel, known as G4TechTV, remains games-and-technology orientated.
- Damn you, you lucky Canadian bastards.
- A&E (which stands for Arts & Entertainment) used to show artsy films and documentaries for the over-30 audience. Now, you're lucky if you find a single Columbo episode or film amid the morass of reality shows. Its executive even joked at one point that the channel experienced the fastest drop in average demographic age ever.
- Today A&E should be called the CSI: Miami channel, airing re-runs of the show with frightening regularity, culminating with occasional weekly marathons of the show that last entire days. The worst part is, these 24 hour marathons consist of the same 3 or 4 episodes airing in a loop, all day long. The few times the channel isn't airing CSI Miami, it's airing one of the 5 following shows: The First 48, Crossing Jordan, American Justice, Dog The Bounty Hunter or Cold Case Files.
- Its Biography Channel spin-off hasn't fared much better; about half the programming now consists of true-crime shows and repeats of shows like Airline. At one point, they even showed reruns of Night Court and News Radio! Thankfully, they have long been dropped from the lineup (no offense intended toward fans of either show).
- Its successor, AMC (American Movie Classics), which originally showed commercial-free screenings of films from the black-and-white era, now consists of commercial-laden broadcasts of modern films that are hardly deserving of the adjective "classic". AMC is now suggested as standing for "All Movie Channel", but the channel's even broken that name with the drama series Mad Men and Breaking Bad, which unusually for this trope are actually critically acclaimed original series that just happens to be on the wrong channel. (Reportedly, the producers of Mad Men turned to AMC after HBO turned them down.) One can argue that AMC had already starting breaking its rules when it aired its original series Remember WENN, but at least that show was made to sort of fit in with its movies (premise: life at a 1930s-40s radio station). Also, their annual Monsterfest block, which airs every October, has since been replaced with Fearfest, which basically means "5 days of Jason & Halloween".
- The Learning Channel, originally focusing around science and nature documentaries in the style of the Discovery Channel, now features almost nothing but "home makeover"-style reality shows. In a somewhat confusing (in these days of internet porn) play at grabbing the all important 18-30 male demographic, TLC recently acquired the rights to air the Miss America pageant. Nowadays, one would never guess that TLC used to be called The Learning Channel.
- Court TV: Originally, the channel aired only actual courtroom trials, which included the proceedings along with anchor's analysis. Then the channel began carrying original and acquired shows. It was recently revamped as TruTV, completely dropping the live court footage that defined it originally. Recently, though, Tru TV has started playing court footage once more, for about six hours each weekday.
- E! Entertainment Network is another good example. Originally all about celebrity news and True Hollywood Stories, it's recently begun airing all sorts of non-celebrity-related reality programs. With shows like The Girls Next Door, Paradise City (The Hills with slightly older people), and Sunset Tan (essentially centering on watching blondes in tanning salons), it comes as no surprise that in recent commercials, E! openly acknowledges itself as a Guilty Pleasure channel. And they even have The Soup to make fun of themselves with.
- While Bravo originally focused on independent cinema and the arts, it has switched over to a reality show format, with occasional stragglers like Inside The Actors Studio still inexplicably present.
- Christian Broadcast Network, originally launched by Pat Robertson as the cable TV arm of his ministry, gradually began to add more and more general entertainment and non-religious programming to its lineup throughout the '80s. As the ratio of religious to non-religious programming shifted, it became CBN, then CBN Family, then the Family Channel, before being bought out by Fox and later sold to ABC. When Disney wanted to rename the channel to "XYZ" to remarket it to a different audience, it discovered that the contract with Pat Robertson required that the word "Family" stay in the channel name, making this impossible. Its name may not have changed, but as evidenced by Greek and Slacker Cats, ABC Family isn't really that family oriented anymore. Today, The 700 Club (another thing required in the contract) is the only thing left hinting at ABC Family's roots as a religious channel, and even then, they've buried it at 11 PM and put a disclaimer in front of it to warn people (containing an unequivocal "does not reflect the views of ABC Family" after Robinson made certain statements).
- Several networks over the years have gradually dumped their kids-specific blocks for more dramas, reality shows, and soaps. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, five of the six broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX and The WB, but not UPN) had the entire 6 a.m. to noon block of Saturdays set aside just for children's shows, with Fox and the WB even going so far as to add in an extra two to three hours every weekday morning and afternoon, as well. Now, only The CW maintains a full-length Saturday morning block (and even then, it's made by 4Kids Entertainment, which is almost never a good sign). NBC, CBS and ABC have shortened theirs to the three hour minimum required by federal mandates (and putting little effort into them — ABC's block is all Disney Channel, and Disney XD reruns, while NBC and CBS' blocks are filled with Aesop-heavy shows made by other companies), and Fox (which, like UPN, managed to avoid the federal mandates by exploiting loopholes) has abandoned its Saturday morning kids' block altogether, airing infomercials instead. The decay of Saturday morning blocks was in part due to increasing cable competition (particularly Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network), and partially due to the mandates — since few kids above preschool age watch strictly educational shows, there was little incentive for producers to make them, while entertainment-oriented shows like The Weird Al Show were artistically crippled by constant Executive Meddling to fit the mandates.
- The British satellite station Bravo (unrelated to the American Bravo mentioned above) began as a channel showing black and white TV from the sixties (mostly Lew Grade action shows), dropped this in favour of Speculative Fiction and horror, dumped that for True Crime shows and "adult programming" (If You Know What I Mean), and now shows an eclectic mix of programmes that can best be described as "lad's mag television". In other words, the British version of Spike TV, right down to them both showing TNA Wrestling and UFC as the big draws.
- SBS in Australia was originally created to show foreign language programmes to Australians who spoke languages other than English. Since there are so many of them (at the very least it would need to do Chinese, Italian and Greek), it couldn't dedicate itself to them all, and since pay TV services like RAI and ANT 1 launched later did it much better, it gradually became the mix of documentaries, sex, soccer and South Park that it's known for today.
- In fact here in Australia, "SBS" is generally understood to stand for "Sex Before Soccer".
- Similarly, Imparja was created to service indigenous Australians in Central Australia, but, thanks to network aggregation, it is now essentially Channel Nine from Sydney with a couple of breakaway programmes.
- Australian examples are rare because there are so few networks, most of them are owned by the same companies, and the ratings are too small to quibble about (if the most matched programme in Australian pay TV history got 419,000 viewers, what's the How To Channel supposed to gain any?). The only notable example is Fox Kids, which adopted a programming block called Fox Classics (not entirely unlike Nick At Nite) before the Fox Kids block moved to Fox8, leaving Fox Classics to absorb the entire network.
- British channel "Dave" appears to be going this way. Although it initially seemed to be a channel showing mostly BBC sitcoms and panel-shows that are too recent to be shown on UK Gold. Then someone realised how popular Top Gear has become lately, and now it plays that show all day, with a few other car-based programs, and, inexplicably — a reality TV show set in an airport?
- Top Gear is making jokes about it.
- Speaking of UK Gold, it went from a mix of the BBC and Thames archives, to suffering the same "6 months ago is classic" syndrome the US "classic" TV channels seem to have suffered, with a sprinkling of fairly recent Hollywood films and repeats of Prison Break. It’s now been split into the backronymed G.O.L.D. ("Go On Laugh Daily"), a comedy channel mostly recycling all the same old shows that are always repeated, and Watch, which takes the rest of the "classic" output of UK Gold and mixes it with Richard and Judy.
- In probably the only instance of live action network decay in a TV program, one of the contestants in Tycoon (a business program like The Apprentice) lost the topic of their magazine about students to general gossip just a week in, and promptly got shut down in the second episode of the show.
- BETJ used to be called BET Jazz, and focused on — believe it or not — jazz. Concerts, videos, wonderful old Panoram films, occasional spoken-word programs, and pretty much nothing else, 24/7. The revamped version is mostly talk shows aimed at a relatively mature audience; the little music they play is Caribbean or soul.
- Discovery Health, one of the few Discovery related channels to remain completely true to its concept (medical and health related shows) will be replaced in 2009 with a network devoted entirely to Oprah. Yes, you read that correctly: an entire channel dedicated to Oprah.
- Doesn't she already have Oxygen?
- In Latin America, Infinito was a cable channel that used to show documentaries about conspiracy theories, UF Os, Atlantis, global warming (before it became mainstream), alternative sciences, and related stuff. Suddenly, in the mid 2000s, the channel started to mutate into a really bad Travel Channel wannabe, showcasing documentaries about spas which no one cares about, Feng Shui, and alternative lifestyles, including commercials for conferences on new-age related stuff, but it still passed from time to time those documentaries from the early days. And in January 2009, the channel suddenly changed all of its programming out of the wazoo, now focusing into documentaries about new-age lifestyles, society, art movies and (you guess...) more spas no one cares about, while ditching all of the original concept around alternative sciences.
- On the subject of Latin America, Canal 7 in Argentina. After many years being just Canal 7, it switched its moniker to "ATC" ("Argentina Televisora Color"), which owned its name to being the first channel emitting color TV in Argentina. Then they changed their name back to Canal 7 and started an educational/artsy programming. (It has to be said that Canal 7 is the only national, state-owned channel.
- I vaguely recall Universal Channel being originally a sci-fi channel with a different name.
- AXN was originally meant to be an all-action channel, but now they run movies and TV series in general.
- Space originally showed both subtitled and dubbed movies before it became an all-dubbed channel (like what TNT used to be).
- The Film Zone originally showed both new and old movies before dedicating itself to movies too old for other channels, but not old enough for Retro and TCM.
- As implied above, Sci Fi Channel recently added Professional Wrestling to the schedule, and well before this, it began abandoning actual "sci fi" (even in the looser sense of horror and fantasy) for cheaper-to-produce (you guessed it) reality shows and reruns of Law and Order: SVU. And, of course, said horror and fantasy only came in over time. Probably because NBC owns Sci-Fi.
- And let's not even get into the vaguely-sci-fi-themed porn movies. The Sex Files indeed...
- This troper recalls that World Wrestling Entertainment went to NBC/Universal with ECW, and they looked at all the various options as it pertained to where to place ECW — USA was out because it already had RAW, NBC didn't need it, and almost every other channel they owned was considered a "poor fit" for ECW; Sci-Fi was the only network they had left to put it on. (Apparently, being an entirely different genre doesn't qualify you as "poor fit".)
- Or that Sci-Fi unlike all of NBC Universal's other stations, it actually aims for the same demographic AS Pro Wrestling. I mean there has got to be a reason why Spike TV airs Star Trek in addition to TNA Wrestling and UFC.
- This troper was deeply disapointed. He thought that Sci Fi wrestling (before the ECW name was announced) was going to be a Celebrity Deathmatch-style show. Come on, Darth Vader vs. Boba Fett in a 16 foot high steel cage?
- The demise of Stargate Atlantis against Ghost Hunters International seems to indicate a move in this direction.
- They've also changed their name to "SyFy" recently. Probably because they wanted something that can actually be copyrighted, but plenty are convinced otherwise.
- The fact that the statement which announced this change insulted their primary demographic went a long way toward "convincing" them.
- Link please??
- The problem with the Scifi Channel is summed up with the cancellation of Stargate SG-1. It was a critically acclaimed show that was popular to the point of being a household name, but was canceled because most of its audience was middle-aged women, and the executives saw their network's theme as targeting young men.
- The Spanish cable channel Buzz was once focused on anime, and the only place in Spain to ever show Seinens and subbed anime with the original voices. They started showing more unrelated stuff (Extreme sports? Huh...), and now the only anime-related thing they show is Hentai movies on weekends, according to the cable provider's TV Guide.
Starting To Slip
- The less we speak of Animax's (which is supposed to be a 24 hour anime channel) Latin American side, both Brazilian and Spanish-speaking versions, the better. Just the most egregious example: its cycle of Movies appropriately named "Reciclo", since it recycles all the action flicks already worn by repetition in other channel of the Sony Group, like AXN and TNT. The only remotely anime related movie shown there was Tokyo Godfathers... and they had repeated Hellboy and The Fifth Element each six weeks or so since its inception.
- They now are broadcasting Lost, Blood Ties, and The Middle Man. The Brazilian side also have infomertials at odd hours...
- Accusing the Latin American channel Animax of Network Decay is the pot calling the kettle black, since Animax is what Locomotion mutated into. Locomotion was a channel meant to show adult cartoons AND the occasional anime, before it
changed its name was acquired by Sony and decayed into an all-anime channel due to a franchise-imposing move.
- Toon Disney started out as the Alternate Company Equivalent to Cartoon Network, airing animated shows from the Disney archive (and some that they had acquired, mostly from Dic Entertainment). Then, they started airing a growing number of non-Disney cartoons (including some from their arch-rival, Warner Bros), and the Jetix block, which featured shows like Power Rangers, Digimon, The Tick, and Jackie Chan Adventures, started eating up a growing chunk of the channel's airtime. Live-action shows and movies started appearing on the network, mirroring Cartoon Network's decay. Finally, last year, Toon Disney was renamed Disney XD (which means "eXtreme Digital") and turned into a network aimed at young boys. In other words, it finally became Jetix in all but name.
- In some other countries, Jetix is its own channel. For whatever reason, Disney decided that it would be better to append it as a programming block onto a network it has nothing to do with, and then let it swallow the network whole.
- Funny thing: in Latin America and Brazil, "Jetix" is what Fox Kids mutated into. After Disney bought Fox Kids when Saban went down the toilet, they renamed it Jetix, dumped all of their programming and started from scratch. They still show one of the last shows Fox Kids ever aired, The Fairly OddParents (which can also be seen on the Disney Channel), they show Power Rangers shows (who were on Fox Kids to begin with down here), and the "Super Hora" block rerurns the Marvel Comics cartoon Fox Kids used to show (The Incredible Hulk, X-Men and Spider-Man Unlimited).
- The Fox network would have avoided all this if they hadn't sold their successful "Fox Kids" lineup (which aired Power Rangers, Spider Man The Animated Series, Digimon, and others) to Disney/ABC via the Fox Family network. They then retooled their Saturday morning lineup into "The Fox Box", which consisted almost entirely of 4Kids Macekres. Naturally, they lampshaded this by changing the lineup's name to "4Kids TV". Then, of course, they replaced Saturday morning kids' shows with infomercials.
- TV Land started out as, basically, Nick At Nite 2, focusing on old TV shows not even Nick At Nite showed anymore; Gilligan's Island, Mister Ed, Father Knows Best, etc. Lately, though, it's been following a similar track, airing shows that are either incredibly recent (Extreme Makeover?!) or original reality series that don't have anything to do with classic TV. (One can respect what they're doing with She's Got The Look, but it doesn't belong there.) With the recent additions of Scrubs and a CSI marathon, it'll probably be upgraded to Total Abandonment in the next year or so.
- CNN Headline News was originally 24 hours of just headline news. Recently the channel has been adding talk shows, tabloid material, and Missing White Woman Syndrome coverage. Now it's at least partially changed its on-air branding to "HLN".
- The TV Guide Channel, formerly the Prevue Guide. Originally a nice little channel that gave the local TV listings and the weather, with unobtrusive text ads with Teletext
 style graphics and music from a local radio station. About a year later, it added muzak, dedicated half of the screen to trailers with the rare show/whatever the cable company wanted and since then it was bought by TV Guide, and mutated into the tabloid channel it is today. Now, the listings cover less than half of the total screen so as to make more room to show talking heads blab about American Idol and Dancing With The Stars. And if there's an awards ceremony going on, forget it - the listings are squeezed into two tiny rows of text at the bottom of the screen. It could be argued that this change was made to compete with Internet channel listings and the "program guide" features available with satellite and premium cable packages, which allow viewers to scroll through the listings at will and even select channels from the menu. However, TV Guide Channel started its slide to decay years before this feature became common. Also, people with the rudimentary basic cable package do not have this feature, which means that they are now pretty much out of luck if they just want to see what's on television. You may notice that they're calling themselves the "TV Guide Network" now, further proving that they care more about their shows than about the TV listings that are the main reason people watch the channel.
- The magazine followed a similar path, dropping TV listings entirely and moving to entertainment news, with the physical form of the magazine going from digest to glossy.
- There is also TV Guide on Screen, implemented in certain T Vs, which is pretty close to it's Prevue Guide roots.
- Not a network, but PBS' historical documentary series Secrets of the Dead originally followed investigators using modern-day science to learn about the long-ago dead. Now it just shows any documentary related to history, with the spooky title sequence quickly becoming The Artifact. For example, in their recent "Doping for Gold", about East German authorities drugging their Olympic athletes in the '70s and '80s, pretty much everyone involved in the story was still living and, in fact, interviewed for the show.
- Most of the History Channel's programming now consists of roughneck-focused reality shows (Ice Road Truckers, Ax Men), reruns of JAG and CSI New York, and conspiracy theory "documentaries" about UFOs, the Bible Code, ghosts, Atlantis, and the end of the world. Even before that, most of their history-related programming was related to the American Civil War, World War II and/or the Nazis (the latter often tied to paranormal shows), leading to the network being derisively referred to as the "Hitler Channel."
- The Daily Show did a spoof on this a few years back, with Ed Helms producing a History Channel-style piece where everything was inevitably compared to the American Civil War or Hitler.
- The WWII fixation stretches back to the salad days of A&E, from which History Channel was spun off. In the 1991 Mystery Science Theatre 3000 episode The Amazing Colossal Man, A&E is referenced, and Tom says, "The all-Hitler channel, you mean?"
- Realising its sheer number of military programmes, including a documentary series on modern day Canadian fighter pilots, the UK now has a Military History channel spun off from its History Channel.
- The US also has a Military Channel... which also happens to fit this trope perfectly, because it used to be Discovery Wings, a network dedicated exclusively to aviation. Until the execs caught onto the fact that their most popular shows were about military aviation....
- And don't get this historian troper started on the new show that is apparently showing ancient battles 300-style, complete with ridiculous fighting, bad CGI backgrounds, and spinning arrows. The whole point of fletching is to prevent arrows from spinning!
- Heck, at least the "all-Hitler channel" was actual history. The current UFO/Bible/conspiracy shows are not history. Unless you actually believe that stuff.
- The Finnish Voice initially advertised itself as a 100% music channel. Nowadays half of the screen time is occupied by [[PunnyName Vii5i]], which shows reruns of old TV series. Considering that one of the series is Farscape, This Troper doesn't mind. Yet.
- No mentions of Game Show Network, or now, GSN? The decay started in 1997, when they lost the rights to all shows from the Mark Goodson-Bill Todman library (except The Price Is Right and the one season of the '90s Family Feud when Richard Dawson returned). This time was called the stations Dark Period. Eventually, the Goodson-Todman shows returned, but there was less variety for awhile on the daily schedule, and some programs remained MIA. Then came an onslaught of lame original programming (Extreme Gong, Throut and Neck, D.J. Games). And this is also when credit crunches and editing out fee plugs began, which would go on to continue to plague the network for classic game show fans. The rights to The Price Is Right would be lost for good at this time as well, and vintage black-and-white shows of the '50s and '60s became rarer still. The quality of the network has been fluctuating ever since, up to its name change, which led to not just game shows being seen there (reality, casino, and other "games" would debut on the schedule). There are constant debates on what should and shouldn't be on the schedules, though they seem to be leaning more towards the game show genre again, and in recent years have occasionally brought out some nice surprises.
- The Discovery Channel still shows plenty of actual documentary material, despite having been decaying for almost as long as MTV has. In The Nineties, they showed an obscene amount of home improvement shows and cooking shows aimed at stay-at-home moms, and now, they are being swamped with "guys building and/or blowing things up" shows in the vein of Mythbusters and Monster Garage. Recently, Discovery has also added a game show that takes place in the back of a cab, leaving one unsure whether it even has a theme beyond "non-fiction".
- It gets weird when you realize that they're knocking some of their own shows off, especially Mythbusters into Smash Lab (with a focus on safety measures) and How It's Made into Some Assembly Required. The latter has almost only done products featured in the former (though How It's Made has been on for just about ten years, so it's hard to find something they haven't done).
- And, just to cover all the bases in ripping off their own shows, they've recently started airing reruns of cancelled The Learning Channel show Mostly True Stories: Urban Legends Revealed. The show actually predates Mythbusters, but given their tendencies on programming lately, they probably just picked it up to cover the "testing the validity of urban legends" angle that Smash Lab wasn't covering in its rip-off of Mythbusters.
- It gets worse. The UK version is showing movies.
- The Discovery Channel also used to contain a lot of nature. This is where the now classic Shark Week originated from. But it seems that explosions have taken the place of tigers ripping stuff to pieces.
- The nature stuff went to Animal Planet, of course.
- Animal Planet underwent its own decay, from nature shows about wild animals and general biology/taxonomy/evolution/anatomy information to dog contests and funny domestic animal video clips.
- Don't forget the ASPCA version of COPS, which now shows from New York, Houston, Phoenix, Miami, and I forget where all else. They've even done an overseas one once or twice.
- The Brazilian Discovery Channel is mostly true to its roots, in the sense that the Mythbusters is still the closest thing to a reality show it airs currently (although Monster Garage and the like have already came and gone). Still, and this is probably true in the original, it is deviating a lot from being purely scientific. Lately, lots of religious shows about Jesus or the Bible have came up with absolutely no scientific basis. After watching what I thought was a mockumentary (it wasn't, sadly) about how creationism was certainly real (not "plausible", but real), complete with how "easy" it was to build's Noah's ark, I have refused to watch or rely on any Discovery Channel documentaries since.
- The Dutch Discovery Channel recently aired a soccer match.
- Cartoon Network originally began as a showcase for classic (or at least old) Hanna Barbera and Warner Brothers cartoons. These were eventually replaced by an increasing number of original productions and Anime, with the Boomerang network taking over Cartoon Network's old role. This, however, was largely perceived as a golden age for the network. More recently, though, the network has begun focusing on live-action movies and TV shows; Out Of Jimmys Head (billed as "Cartoon Network's first live-action series"), the live-action Made For TV Movie of Ben 10, reruns of Goosebumps, etc. There were signs of improving, with Out Of Jimmys Head and the Goosebumps reruns being cancelled, but the latter was brought back for Halloween, and then they decided to torture viewers with Batman & Robin. (That's right. Batman & Robin.) And now, they've announced a half dozen ''live-action reality TV shows'', most of them ripoffs of adult reality TV shows like Ghost Hunters, Battlebots, Cash Cab, Mythbusters, and the like — most of them blatantly stolen from the Discovery Channel and its sister networks. This is in addition to two scripted live-action shows (as opposed to four completely new cartoons and spinoff cartoons). But what really takes the cake is that not only is it keeping the live-action programming that has performed badly (no surprise there), but in autumn 2009, it will change its name to something else entirely, which will earn it a spot in the "Total Abandonment" category. In a sense, it's become MTV Junior.
- They have just cancelled Long Runner Toonami, and rarely show anime anymore, with only Bleach and Bakugan getting any love. People can't help feel the reason that Toonami was cancelled was due to its anime past.
- There have been many rumors flying around regarding the massive reduction in anime. Although, considering that most of the programming that's been replacing it has been Western animation, it's not really a case of Network Decay. Quality decay, however...
- Considering that various shows were canceled on flimsy pretenses, when the new CEO came in, it was a matter of time.
- Meanwhile, Boomerang itself has now apparently begun dumping their rules on how old a cartoon has to be in order for them to show it, and have also become rather hypocritical about which ones they show. They're willing to run Baby Looney Tunes and Duck Dodgers, which were made during 2002-05, but not the 1990s Looney Tunes spin-offs Taz-Mania and The Sylvester And Tweety Mysteries; the same unfortunately also goes for other 1990s Warner Bros. Animation fare like Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs, and Histeria, despite this network having previously shown Batman The Animated Series and Superman The Animated Series. Heck, now even they don't show the original Looney Tunes anymore (at least many of them are out on DVDs now).
- The Latin American version of Boomerang currently fills the "live action channel that was once dedicated to cartoons" role Cartoon Network fills in the USA. You can find an occasional cartoon... between midnight and dawn. Argentinian Cartoon Network is still mostly about cartoons, although they now show live action movies.
- This used to be a channel for kid/family shows, now they're airing shows for teens.
- That's not so much as decay as it is for Cartoon Network to finally realize older audiences watch their network. At least they are cartoons.
- Hell, in this troper's opinion, this is a good thing. It's nice to see the Animation Age Ghetto finally breaking down.
- What makes this really sad is if anything Cartoon Network is one of the probably few basic cable channels that could have avoided their decay. Because while in all honesty plenty of cable channels have premises that don't really work as a full channel at all for Mainstream popularity (or at all). But Cartoon Network is a channel about Animation, therefore its a perfectly flexible concept. The fact that CN feels that the channel needs live action shows is proof on how short-sighted they are. You can make animated shows through all sorts of ideas since in all honesty animation is a type of film-making not just a flat out genre. But still if there is any basic cable channel that could have averted this trope CN could.
- Teletoon, in their efforts to be as much like Cartoon Network's Canadian equivalent (well, they do import most of their shows), have as of late added more and more live action movies to their lineup: Their license mandates it has to be 'animated' or 'animation-related' — which apparently includes "based on a comic book" as they've shown various comic book movies. Apparently "has a cartoon based on it" also counts — Spaceballs and The Matrix have also been shown.
- And then they threw out said rules for live-action films with Gremlins.
- Their Retro spinoff channel has been good about remaining animated so far (even the arguable exceptions of Fraggle Rock and The Banana Splits are a puppet show and contain cartoon segments, respectively), but are stretching the definition of "retro" with ReBoot.
Single Anomalies
- TG 4 (originally T na G/Teleifís na Gaeilge) began as a channel devoted to Irish-language shows. Though it still shows many series in Irish, increasing amounts of time are given to American series such as Cold Case and Nip/Tuck, as well as Westerns and French films. Most viewers would not mind so much if these shows at least had Irish subtitles in the same way that most of the shows which do feature Irish dialogue have English subtitles.
- One particularly egregious example was the Hector O'hEochagáin Show, which had dialogue in both Irish and English. The Irish was subtitled, but the English was not.
- Wiki example: TV Tropes Wiki. Despite the name, this site no longer focuses on television. Over the past couple of years, it has added movies, books, board games and video games to its lineup. It's rumored that it'll change its name in the near future, perhaps to something like "Tropes Wiki X-Treme".
- At least we're kind enough to admit it on the front page.
- And at least we still include TV shows.
- Hell, it's been moving away from tropes lately, adding Useful Notes, writer's tools and humor pages. Your Mileage Will Vary on whether these changes make the wiki better or worse.
- "Worse" is if somebody starts quietly eliminating trope entries in favor of the new stuff, then moves it to a new wiki called "Classic Narrative Tropes," where all the links come back to Tropes Wiki X-Treme's miscellaneous junk.
- Studio example: In its later, Weinstein-run years, arthouse distributor Miramax Films began distributing "mainstream" films like She's All That.
Major Shifts That Still Fit The Channel Name
- Nickelodeon. Full stop. Over the years, the network has severely narrowed its demographic by increments. It originally prided itself as being essentially a family network, with an emphasis on programming for children and teens from sunup to sundown. Now, however, most if not all of the teen and adult programming (SNICK, Nick At Nite, and the last vestiges of children's game shows, to name a few) have been dumped in favor for cartoon-y cartoons and tween and preteen "hip" live action series (and about 12 hours of SpongeBob reruns daily). The worst and most obvious example of this is the recent live action show on the so-called "TeeNick" lineup (which retains only one or two shows about/directed towards actual teenagers), The Naked Brothers Band, which essentially is a Hannah Montana ripoff about two 9-year-old boys. Really.
- Interestingly, you can see how Nick was trying so intensely to narrow down the age of people watching the network when you look at the failure of shows like Invader Zim. And by "failure," we really mean "it was being watched primarily by teens and college kids, not the 6-11 year olds that Viacom wanted." In this troper's opinion, Avatar: The Last Airbender would've gone the same way as Zim if it weren't for the fact that it was just as popular with the target age as it was with the teens (and the college kids, and the adults). Even then, the network seemed to resent the attention it got from older viewers, as new episodes came out at a snail's pace and reruns are almost never shown now that the show has ended.
- Nicktoons Network dumped showing of older or cancelled Nicktoons such as Angry Beavers, Doug, Ren And Stimpy, Rugrats, Hey Arnold, etc., in favor of showing reruns of the exact same shows playing on Nickelodeon, just a few channels away. As of 2006, the channel has also abandoned its "commercial-free" notion. What was once its mascot, the Too Good To Last Invader Zim, has been pushed back to 5 AM. This also means the end of slime shows like Super Sloppy Double Dare and the like.
- Another Nick spinoff, Nick GAS (Games and Sports), was formerly a dumping ground for Nick's aforementioned children's game shows and game/sports-themed shows, along with original segments dealing with kids and their games and sports. It slowly lost programs until, at the end of its run, it was only airing reruns of a few old Nick game shows, having lost all of the original segments and programming. It was finally replaced with the teen-oriented "The N", formerly part of the now just-for-preschoolers Noggin, a switch which now leaves millions of college kids without reruns of Legends of the Hidden Temple to sarcastically comment about.
- Naturally, "The N" seems to be in the beginning stages of a decay itself, with a mass-canceling of many of their teen/young adult oriented programming (such as South Of Nowhere), and devoting an increasing amount of airtime to old Nickelodeon shows and other Disney Channel-esque preteen fare. A special mention goes out to the way they treated Degrassi. The N's broadcasts of that show had always been bowdlerized, the most infamous example being when they refused to air an episode about abortion for fear of offending the Moral Guardians. It got worse when the show started becoming really popular in America, putting The N in a position to force creative changes onto the show that served to turn it from a fairly realistic (if hyper-melodramatic) depiction of teenage life into a clone of The OC.
- Also, Nick At Nite in general. It started out as the after-dark portion of Nickelodeon, where they showed decades-old TV shows (The Munsters, I Love Lucy, The Dick Van Dyke Show, and so on). But as time went on, it began adding shows that were ten years old or less (Roseanne, The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air, and most damningly, The George Lopez Show), and eventually, they changed their motto to "The Place for Modern TV Hits". Arguably, the shift began with the addition of Taxi to the line-up in 1995, the most relatively modern and (more importantly) edgy show the network had broadcast up till that point.
- The same could be said for the Disney Channel, which abandoned Vault Disney, The Ink and Paint Club, and most other broadcasts of classic Disney cartoons in order to turn into a preppy, suburban tween-oriented Nickelodeon-wannabe.
- Probably not. They're so much worse than Nickelodeon could ever hope to be. The core of their programing seems to be "promote every last child actor as the next great actor/singer/songwriter/dancer/Idol Singer". Although Nickelodeon seems to be sliding in this same direction, Disney started it.
- Note that, before this period, the Disney Channel was arguably worse, interspersing about three hours of cartoons at 1AM with hours and hours of Shopping Channel-type hawking of Disney merchandise (Minnie Mouse tea set, only three payments of $11.95!). And then there were the Guns N Roses concerts. The worst part? Originally, the Disney Channel was a premium cable service, like HBO or Cinemax, and unlike Nickelodeon, which was basic-cable from its conception. Then, they hit a low point in programming quality just as Nick hit a high point in The Nineties. The only way to stop mass cancellation of subscriptions was to move it to basic-cable. Read that again. Nickelodeon actually forced the Walt Disney Corporation to change a business model. That hardly ever happens...
- In a slightly different vein, CNX began as a channel devoted to shows that appealed to the American equivalent of shonen in the mornings and afternoons, with uncensored anime and kung fu movies later at night. However, its Toonami block, aimed at a younger audience, quickly expanded to take over the entire channel; it has recently mutated into CN Too, which is actually marketed as a second Cartoon Network.
- Adult Swim, Cartoon Network's late night programming block, has also shown signs of decay over the past few years, scheduling an increasing amount of low-budget live-action material of questionable quality. In recent time, the block come to be quite friendly in acknowledging their decay with their sardonic bumps.
- Then there's Boomerang's recent airing of programs that only ended their first runs within the last five years (such as Justice League Unlimited), broadening their spectrum (and demographic) to "good cartoons that they don't show anymore".
- The Latin American version of Boomerang began just as the Spanish version of the American original, but in mid-2006 the channel suddenly changed image, lineup and direction. It's now filled with Mexican and Australian kid and teen soaps and Sit Coms, which also shows kid-related live-action movies and some of the cartoons that Cartoon Network neither broadcasts nor produces, moving its original vintage production to late nights. It has happened that both Boomerang and CN have broadcast the same cartoons, the same day, within hours of difference.
- "Good cartoons that they don't show anymore"... wasn't this supposed to be Cartoon Network in the first place?
- The Weather Channel used to be all-weather all-the-time, but in recent years has added documentary programs such as Storm Stories, It Could Happen Tomorrow, and recently When Weather Changed History, the latter two closer to an un-decayed Discovery or History Channel than Weather. Some of these programs actually feature earthquakes and volcanoes and meteor strikes on Earth, not exactly weather material. In the evening, one may be lucky to get up to two hours of current weather news. In this case, it's a survival mechanism, as the simple, graphic display of the weather they used to capitalize on is available at the press of a button on most digital cable services, the internet (including their own website), cell phones, and even some game consoles — Wii Forecast Channel, for the block.
- Which makes the Bloodhound Gang's line "record the Weather Channel so I can watch it later" almost pathetically prophetic.
- The worst thing about this is that most destructive weather occurs in the evening hours. Need to see if the damaging winds and storms are headed your way? Too bad! Watch this documentary on Peruvian mudslides instead! If anything, they're shooting themselves in the feet in the hoping-to-survive-the-weather demographic.
- The Playboy Channel probably goes here, in that it's still showing naked people. (Or So I Heard would go here, if this troper cared about people knowing they watch naked people.) Originally, the channel showed video Playmate layouts and short, tasteful softcore movies that sometimes actually had well-written, endearing stories. Much like the original's Magazine Decay, the channel's kept the sex and lost the class, and now shows (randomly renamed) hardcore movies and a near-endless barrage of "reality" shows, including more than one that could be described as "Big Brother where they show the sex".
- The homogenization of BET (Black Entertainment Television) led to its decline. They canned their news programs, and started to be more restrictive to what and who they play on their music block. Back in The Nineties, it was easy for you to be seen on BET if you were black and MTV refused to play you. Nowadays, groups like Public Enemy and NWA, or alternative hip hop acts like A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul, wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell of being played on BET if they had gotten started today. Mostly because the network has a policy of not wanting to play music that's deemed too intelligent, irrelevant, or over the head of teenagers (specifically teenage girls).
- There's also the fact it was sold to Viacom. But the production value still looks low compared to its sister network MTV. The mint that was dropped on a single episode of TRL in its prime could have funded BET for a week.
- Then there's the persistent rumors that 106 & Park is rigged.
- Two banned episodes of The Boondocks (you can watch 'em on DVD) bash BET for all it's worth. (Hint: The E stands for EVIL.)
- To watch the Travel Channel, you'd think the only reason to travel would be to try the unusual, sometimes disgusting, local foods. See Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations, Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern, Food Paradise, and Man v. Food.
- One has to wonder if Travel Channel wishes they were Food Network.
- Well, there is one other reason to travel: To gamble. Specifically, to play poker.
- Dude, don't bash No Reservations, that's the best friggin' travel show on the planet right there. Bourdain is HARDCORE, yo!
- Food Network began with cooking shows and has branched out into contests and reality shows... but in a aversion, every single one of these still has to do heavily with food and fits the network. Probably because it would be hard to change the formula with a name like Food Network. (Still, tell that to the Cartoon Network people...)
- Even things online aren't invulnerable to Network Decay: Illumistream used to be a general health channel on You Tube, and they still do some general health advice videos. Then they started introducing a sex health segment. Fair enough. Then they started focusing more and more on sex health, to the point where it seemingly became their main focus. Hey, it's still health related, so it's still fair. Then they started doing more and more videos on steamy sex confessions with little visible or tangential connection to actually health advice or even sex health advice, almost as if their whole intention now is to turn into a softer-than-softcore version of Penthouse or something. Oh-kay....
- The Latin American signal of Discovery Kids is guilty of this. It began broadcasting on the late half of the 1990s with either edutainment shows (like Ghost Writer), ecology shows that didn't fit quite well on Discovery Channel, or science shows mainly geared to early teens and younger (i.e. Popular Mechanics for Kids), until in the early 2000s, it underwent an extreme shift towards toddler and kindergarten demographics, much to the chagrin of older fans. Currently, the channel is a source of both Snark Bait and hate due to the uncalled switch-over by the early fans and a channel where Clifford, Barney and The Backyardigans (Without argument, the only show that can be enjoyed by almost all ages) are repeated ad nauseam. Doki, the channel's pet, doesn't help either on making the channel more palatable for older audiences.
Close Major Shifts That Still Fit The Channel Name
Other
- Reversed (Network Re-cay?) by a recent trend of "vault" cable networks that have actually gone out and defined themselves a niche when before they were just rerun farms. TNT has repurposed itself as being the drama network complete with the slogan, "We Know Drama," TBS wants you to know that everything they show is "Very Funny", and USA has made a point of acquiring shows that showcase quirky characters to fit its "Characters Welcome" campaign (oddly enough, an awful lot of these are genial detectives). This is probably because these networks would be just like the gazillion other generic networks otherwise.
- Yet they frequently show movies that don't fit the theme-this troper has seen comedies like Galaxy Quest and MIB on TNT and dramas like the Lord of the Rings on TBS. The ads, however, present them as the network's genre.
- You know, I preferred it when TBS, TNT and USA were rerun farms. I think they're painfully boring now.. Only thing TNT is good for is basketball nowadays.
- CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) faces a balancing act between popular shows to draw advertisers, and Canadian content, which tends to be less popular. Lately, it's made a larger push to get new Canadian shows on the air (Little Mosque On The Prairie, Being Erica, and so on) but you can still catch re-runs of The Simpsons.
- ZTV, who was originally established as a Swedish alternative of MTV, pretty much went down the same line as MTV. In a brave attempt to counter this, however, in 2006 they decided to split the channel up; ZTV would go back to its musical roots, and the new channel TV 6 would focus on the programs that had made ZTV decay. Both channels still exist to this day, and neither has decayed.
- MSNBC started as a joint venture between NBC and Microsoft to bring a unique syncronicity between online and cable news. Microsoft pulled out, and the channel floundered for years, with its news programming in last place and prime time filled with true-crime and prison "documentaries". In recent years, these have been replaced (at least on weekdays) by left-of-center opinion to counterprogram the Fox News Channel. Thanks to shows hosted by Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann, they became a big player in cable news again. Your Mileage May Vary about the actual opinions, but they're at least behaving like a news network again and not a cheesy ripoff of CourtTV.
Radio
- The WCBS-FM Affair in New York City. For over 30 years, 101.1 CBS-FM was an iconic oldies station in New York, its DJs being local celebrities. Enter Executive Meddling, and in 2005 came JACK-FM, a random music, jockey-less format that focused on the '80s-2000s and punctuated its programming with obnoxious comments by announcer Howard Cogen. To add insult to injury, the former CBS-FM DJs were fired on the day of the flip, without warning. The new station was universally reviled by New Yorkers, with many calling it "Jack Shit FM," and mayor Mike Bloomberg saying he would "never listen to that fucking CBS radio again." It took two years for them to get the message, and in 2007, CBS-FM returned to an oldies format. It can be argued that a bit of decay is still hanging on the station, which had added '80s music to its playlist while cutting back on '50s and some '60s music, but still, this troper is glad to see the station resembling its old self.
- The recent infusion of '80s music on the station, at the expense of '50s music, may be a sign of changing demographics rather than Network Decay. People who grew up in the '80s are now entering middle age, and thus the target audience for an oldies station. Meanwhile, people who grew up in the '50s are now retiring, which means that they no longer have the commute to listen to the radio on. It's the same reason why most music from before The Fifties has been banished to public radio - the target audience got too old to become a reliable market for advertisers.
- TOS was a popular hard/progressive rock station in Maine that was mostly listened to for the variety of entertaining D Js and hosts. After changing hands a few times in the late '00s, in late 2008 it was finally bought by the newly formed Blueberry Broadcasting, which completely changed the format to Top 40 with some 80s and 90s thrown in (originally, the only older music TOS played was by hard rock icons like Black Sabbath and AC/DC). Even worse, they fired all of their radio personalities, retaining only Tom O. and Mr. Mike, their morning show hosts (although their show is now heavily sanitized and word on the street is they're close to quitting). They even fired popular DJ Chris Rush, known for his publicity stunts and willingness to try new things and meet new people (including one stunt that actually resulted in him once having his jaw ripped off by a tow truck's hook by accident at a local fair, requiring him to have extensive reconstructive surgery to build a new one using one of his ribs). All of the fired personalities were quickly picked up by competing station WKIT (which is owned by none other than Stephen King), and as the ratings for TOS have fallen, WKIT's have gone up steadily since acquiring TOS' D Js.
- Another radio example. A mainstay for modern rock in Philadelphia was Y100. Overnight (on a weekend, if this troper remembers correctly), the station was switched, with no warning, to rap and R&B. To make it even worse, it was an existing station, just moving to the more popular frequency... and it kept being simulcast on the old frequency for a few weeks. There was an uproar among the previous listener-ship, but no action ended up occurring. Fortunately, the morning show from Y100 was rescued by WMMR, its former competitor, and arguably the only modern rock station left in Philly.
- Sounds a bit like what happened to 99X in Atlanta, another influential alt-rock station, which one random Friday became the Top 40 station Q100, formerly housed at 100.5. At least that switchover was actually discussed in the paper, though...
- The same thing happened in New York with 92.3 K-Rock... twice. First, at the start of 2006, the station switched from its modern rock format (which it had run since The Eighties) to a talk format, with the new name Free FM. This left the largest radio market in the country without a modern rock station. Free FM, anchored by David Lee Roth's So Bad Its Horrible morning show, was a disaster, and K-Rock was brought back on the air in less than 18 months, with Opie & Anthony replacing Roth as morning hosts. So far so good, right? Well, back in March, the station switched again, this time without warning (Free FM had been announced a month prior to the switch), to "Now FM", a pop station in the vein of Z-100. At least this time, New York has a modern rock station to pick up the slack, 101.9 WRXP... which itself switched from a jazz format in February 2008, leaving jazz fans with only NPR and a single AM radio station to listen to.
- This may be the result of the fact that each part of the New York area has its own rock station, which saps listeners from any station that tries to broadcast across the whole area. Northern New Jersey has WDHA, commonly nicknamed the "Jersey Giant" due to its dominance of the ratings in that area, and WSOU, a popular college radio station. The Hudson Valley, meanwhile, has 107.1 The Peak, while Long Island has WBAB. On top of that, there's Q104.3, the classic rock station, which takes away even more listeners.
Heroic Aversion
- Perhaps as a response to the dearth of older films on television these days, Turner Classic Movies seems intent on fighting Network Decay to the death, wearing their name and intent as a badge of honor and pride. Movies from 1980 onward are rare, and usually shown to fit a theme block with the older movies. The "31 Days of Oscar promotion" in February/early March, where any movie that had at least an Oscar nomination can qualify for an airing, is when they're most likely to truck out newer titles - then stuff most of 'em in a vault until next year. They take old movies seriously; they now have films largely if not completely abandoned by other movie networks, including silents, live-action Disney films from the 1950s through the 70s, all kinds of cult titles for its TCM Underground block, vintage one-reel shorts and old promotional featurettes as interstitial programming, etc. Plus, they're good about letterboxing.
- It has some original shows...all of them documentaries about classic films, from one about the history of early sci-fi films to a long interview with Woody Allen about all of his films.
- Sadly — or maybe ironically — TCM's existence probably contributed to the decay of AMC, as much of AMC's film library used to come from the Turner collection.
- It should also be noted that TCM's birth came about because of TNT's programming shift. TNT was Turner's original classic movie channel. Perhaps there's a lesson here...
- Even more impressive? They're a basic cable channel that doesn't accept outside advertising (the closest they have to commercials are spots for their website, where they sell DVDs and whatnot, and their printed programming guide), runs everything uncut (even R-rated movies, which naturally have to run after the watershed), and has been this way from the beginning. It makes This Troper wish for a Crowning Network of Awesome trope.
- TCM arriving in Argentina arguably caused the Argentinian channel Retro to decay. Because of TCM, Retro now rarely shows old movies, and the only old movies they show are the ones in color.
|
|
