Network Decay / Slipped

The channel still shows programming related to its original concept, although it is significantly showing programming not related to their genre in some way.

Bell Media examples

• In Atlantic Canada, there was ASN (Atlantic Satellite Network). Upon its launch, it was a sister channel to the ATV system of CTV affiliates in the Maritime provinces, now known as CTV Atlantic. In the early days, ASN was generally a local version of Citytv in Toronto, but carried some educational shows either produced by universities across Atlantic Canada or sourced from TVOntario, such as The Polka Dot Door or Today's Special, which themselves then disappeared, replaced by an Atlantic Canada version of Citytv's Breakfast Television. ^note Similar to Citytv, ASN carried newscasts, various syndicated shows, "Great Movies" in prime time, and even some cartoons. By 1997, after it was traded from CHUM to Baton Broadcasting/CTV, ASN generally remained the de facto Atlantic Canada version of Citytv, until the mid-2000s, when a large supply of programming sourced from CHUM declined, with more of its content supplied in-house by CTV, including Canadian Idol and some sports coverage, partially to compensate for the loss of a CTV affiliate on basic cable in Newfoundland and Labrador in 2002. ^note Its CTV affiliate, CJON-TV in St. John's (branded as NTV), lost its CTV affiliation due to a dispute over fee payments. In 2008, after CTVglobemedia (now Bell Media) bought out ASN's former parent CHUM, it became an affiliate of the revamped A-Channel (later A) system, becoming A Atlantic, but continued to air Breakfast Television under license from the new owner of Citytv, Rogers. ^note As a condition of acquiring CHUM, CTVglobemedia sold Citytv to Rogers Communications. However, this is no longer the case, as the A system was renamed CTV Two in 2011, and the ASN/A Atlantic version of Breakfast Television was rebranded as CTV Morning Live (as part of a new franchise of local morning newscasts on CTV's stations on the west coast and on CTV Two Ottawa, which replaced the national Canada AM).
• In Alberta, there is the Access Network, established as an educational cable channel in the 1970s by the government of Alberta ^note although it added terrestrial transmitters in Calgary and Edmonton in the mid-1980s. However, by the mid-1990s, funding was cut for the channel, which was then privatized, sold to a consortium led by CHUM, and renamed Access. Though Access generally remained educational, it carried some general entertainment shows. When CTVglobemedia acquired CHUM, Access was rebranded in 2008 to be more of a semi-affiliate of the A system in the sense that it carried prime time shows from A, but was still otherwise an "educational independent". This changed in 2011, when Access and A Atlantic (the channel formerly known as ASN) were integrated into the renamed CTV Two system. As a result of this change, Access became "CTV Two Alberta". However, it still technically carries educational programming throughout the day.
• In 2016, Bell acquired the channel Gusto and relaunched it over the space of M3 (the former MuchMoreMusic). Bell's version was mostly devoted to the same programming as Food Network and Cooking Channel, with a mix of instructional shows (including library shows from its former owner, and some imports from the UK such as Jamie Oliver), reruns of MasterChef (including the Australian version, aired in marathon blocks to suit its weekday format) as well as some HGTV-esque fare from Britain as a side dish. Yet the channel would also lean into M3's general entertainment format, either through Bones reruns (in the afternoon and late night) or the occasional film. In September 2019, the network rebranded as CTV Life Channel.
• In Canada, CTV Sci-Fi Channel (known as Space until 2019) — which is Syfy's de facto Canadian counterpart — emulated much of its slippage (barring professional wrestling) due to the Sci Fi Ghetto and having depended on importing and/or co-producing programming with them. The channel, despite having an on-air presentation that was quite intergalactic, was airing more paranormal and fantasy-oriented series (such as Supernatural, Merlin, and The Almighty Johnsons), horror films, some of Syfy's reality shows, and even crime dramas (Castle and Elementary, although the former's recurring themes and Genre-Busting, and the mere presence of Nathan Fillion, did make it fit the scope)
  • This shift was lampshaded by a re-brand in March 2013, which downplayed astronomical motifs (portraying the new circular logo in various materials, objects, and themes in promos) to reflect the concept of "space" as referring to the world "around you". The re-branding coincided with the premiere of its original co-production Orphan Black—which, however, managed to be a very successful series. This was followed up with co-productions such as Dark Matter (2015) and Killjoys, which represented a shift for both Space and Syfy back towards traditional space operas. Re-runs of the various Stargate-verse and Star Trek shows are still present in its regular weekday lineup, with the channel also being the Canadian linear television home of the Paramount+ Star Trek series such as Star Trek: Discovery. Even Space has, in the past, poked fun at the amount of Star Trek it has aired.
• French-Canadian channel Ztélé (now just "Z", and now owned by Bell as a sister to the aforementioned CTV Sci-Fi) advertised itself as "TV Of The Future" — i.e., a channel dedicated to all things technological and sci-fi (with some supernatural thrown in) — at its debut in 2000. Recently however, the sci-fi part of the channel has been getting the shaft, with an increased emphasis on heavy machinery and cars and most fiction series are nearer to fantasy than sci-fi. While the former still first the network name, the latter has fans really concerned.

Blue Ant Media examples

• In general, networks owned by Blue Ant Media are guilty of airing programming that have absolutely nothing to do with the niche they're based upon. The few shows that are related to their genre are horribly overexposed across their sibling channels. T+E (the former CTV Travel and Travel + Escape) and HIFI's (the former Treasure HD) decay were so bad, they were moved to Total Abandonment.
• Once a programming block on BiteTV focusing on upcoming artists, Aux became its own channel in 2009 and grew to become an alternative to MuchMusic, as well as one of the only channels in Canada that actually focused on music. However, when Bite was transformed into Makeful, Aux inherited some of Bite's programming slate, including Brickleberry, Party Down South and original shows that have nothing to do with music. In fairness, Aux has also aired unrelated movies long before then and, unlike its rivals, the channel was still very much focused on music.
  • In 2017, Aux rebranded as A.Side TV as part of a joint venture with Shed Creative Agency. Aside from Rock This Boat: New Kids on the Block and Mary Mary, music programming had been further cut back for unrelated lifestyle and reality shows. It has been announced that the channel will shut down on January 15, 2023.
• The aforementioned Makeful has encountered slippage of its own; it is supposedly a network devoted to the maker culture (i.e. DIY crafts, cooking, etc.), but also airs the The CW version of Whose Line Is It Anyway? (a leftover from Bite), and reruns of New Girl and CSI: Miami.

Corus Entertainment examples

• ABC Spark, the Canadian version of Freeform (named to avoid confusion with Family Channel when its U.S. counterpart was still called ABC Family), has seen a large shift in programming since it became wholly owned by Corus Entertainment and refreshed its on-air look to match Freeform. Previously, ABC Spark aired reruns of family-oriented YTV and CMT Canada programming to fulfill CanCon requirements. Not long after Corus took over, ABC Spark began airing crime dramas in the mornings and evenings and also became yet another dumping ground for reruns of lifestyle shows seen on Corus' women's networks as well the former Shaw Media networks. That ABC Spark also airs up to two hours of Just for Laughs: Gags reruns, a show that has become overexposed thanks to Corus airing reruns on their other family networks, doesn't help.
  • As of Summer 2017, Spark changed course and returned to airing more suitable fare. While crime dramas such as Private Eyes and reruns of Rookie Blue maintain a limited presence on the schedule, Spark has added more classic teen sitcom reruns, including golden era Disney Channel sitcoms Lizzie McGuire and That's So Raven.
• Teletoon, in their efforts to be more like Cartoon Network, aired more live-action movies in their later years. 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 by airing Gremlins, which might explain shows like Majority Rules! (which moved to Family Channel later on).
  • Their Retro spinoff channel was good about remaining animated (even the arguable exceptions of Fraggle Rock and The Banana Splits are a puppet^note Well, technically speaking, Muppet show and contain cartoon segments, respectively) in its 8-year run, but stretched the definition of "retro" with fifteen-year-old shows like ReBoot and King of the Hill. The channel's license required it to predominantly air programming that was at least ten years old, and both shows were old enough by then to suit the nostalgic vibe.
  • Their late-night block, under "The Detour" name, used to be fairer about airing live-action movies related to animation or comics and also aired anime films and OVAs. After changing their name to "Teletoon at Night", the only animated films they still aired until its closure in 2019 are either DC Universe Animated Original Movies on Fridays (following Teletoon's "Superfan Friday" block), South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, Beavis and Butt-Head Do America, or Eight Crazy Nights. Their weekend movies ended up being all unrelated live-action films that cater to the core demographic that watches the animated comedies that air on Mondays through Thursdays. The closest you'd get to anything related to animation or even comic books are films like Cowboys & Aliens and documentaries.
• The Canadian channel Showcase Television once billed itself as "Television Without Borders" - an accurate description. Created by a coalition of burgeoning producers and production companies, Showcase truly broke new ground in Canadian specialty television - this is a channel that played mature-rated television series and films in pre-watershed hours, devoted an entire Friday block of programming to HBO series and risque material (including an original series focusing on fetishes) and generally had a devil-may-care attitude when it came to what was and wasn't acceptable for Canadian broadcast standards. The channel carried a mix of well-known Canadian series (Da Vinci's Inquest, Due South), American dramas (Oz, The L Word, Six Feet Under), erotica from foreign countries, British imports like Cracker, original series — such as cult hit Trailer Park Boys, and much more. In time for the 2009-10 season, the channel's owner (Canwest, who was bankrupt, had just spun out its newspapers, and was about to sell its television properties to Shaw in early 2010) decided that being basic cable's Refuge in Audacity was unattractive to viewers and advertisers. With a new imaging campaign and lineup, Showcase refocused itself as a clone of U.S. channels such as TNT and USA Network, becoming a dumping ground for American drama imports (mostly NCIS) and Hollywood blockbusters. The channel would recover somewhat in later years. Showcase had success with original series and co-productions such as Lost Girl, Continuum, Copper, and Haven.
  • In commemoration of its 20th anniversary, Showcase switched to a modernized version of their iconic 2000's logo. Yet since then, the channel's only original program to date, Travelers, went from being a co-production with Netflix in its first two seasons, to being solely produced by Netflix and cancelled after the third. By 2021, enabled mainly by changes in CRTC policy that now prioritize investments in Canadian productions across entire companies rather than on a per-channel basis, its primetime lineup is now occupied by either U.S. series imports (often from The CW, or Peacock and Sky as part of an output agreement with NBCUniversal) or movies, with NCIS and/or FBI reruns filling the rest of the schedule.
  • Showcase Action (later known as just Action) started as a channel for action-oriented series and films. Fast forward to 2018, and the majority of its lineup was occupied by a mix of TruTV shows (the Canadian version of Court TV ended up becoming Investigation Discovery instead) and Cancon filler. In March 2019, it was announced that Action would become the first 24-hour [adult swim] channel.
• W Network used to be one of Canada's premiere Women's entertainment networks, with a mix of original and acquired lifestyle and entertainment programs covering a wide range of topics and genres. Sometime after Corus gained ownership of the defunct Shaw Media's networks, W's lifestyle shows, including Property Bothers and Love it or List it, moved to other networks such as HGTV. While new episodes would premiere on some of these networks, W's original programming was ultimately recycled for CanCon filler. In direct correlation with CMT Canada abandoning country music videos, W Network would all but abandon lifestyle programming and become a Spear Counterpart to Showcase (exemplified by the Channel Hop of Outlander from Showcase to W for its second season), with an adoration of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit that even outmatched that of Showcase's fondness for NCIS. W's shift in programming did lead the network to surpass Showcase in the ratings, and Corus would also acquire library rights to Hallmark Channel content for W in 2018 (as a side note, Hallmark often relies on Canadian productions for its original movies). The aforementioned deal for Peacock and Sky Studios has also brought programming to W.
• There was once a time when YTV's mandate was "programming for the whole family", but they have largely abandoned that mantra in favor of "programming for kids aged 13 and under". Throughout the '90s, the station, buoyed by its original programming and "The Zone" afternoon block, was a household name. The station flourished with programming aimed towards 16-20 year-olds, as well as mature content in pre-watershed hours (including uncut airings of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Farscape, and anime on Friday nights). In time, YTV would phase out mature programming and become focused solely on children with a reliance on Nickelodeon programming, at the expense of its older viewers.

Disney networks examples

• The Classic Sports Network was originally designed to re-air vintage games from the 1950s through 1970s. After ESPN bought the channel and redubbed it ESPN Classic, they began to shift more and more toward games of more recent vintage, and in the last few years have dropped most of the old game broadcasts altogether in favor of documentaries, sports-themed movies, American Gladiators, boxing, plenty of old bowling tournaments, and lots and lots of poker tournaments. Overshown games and matches from lower-tier conferences air have also aired on the channel, just in case ESPNU isn't enough to contain a busy day of sports action across the regular ESPNs and ESPN Deportes. This is justified, however. As the leagues, college conferences, and individual teams have started their own cable networks, they've subsequently needed the channel's classic programming to fill plenty of time for their own networks since you can only analyze your own current teams so much. Since they own the footage and need a lure for viewers to tune in when teams aren't playing, they've pulled it off ESPN Classic. Since there's virtually no demand for a boxing network due to the sport's current low popularity, that stays on ESPN Classic while the bowling and poker programs are in-house productions which can be reran ad nauseum.
  • Now that ESPN Classic is on a sports tier on most systems, the overflow programming has moved to ESPNEWS. And then ESPN allowed providers to drop the channel entirely, which practiacally all major American cable and satellite providers did. By the time ESPN pulls the plug on the channel at the end of 2021, only 12 providers nationwide were carrying ESPN Classic, for a total of 2 million subscribers.^note For comparison, the flagship ESPN channel has a total of 85 million subscribers.
  • Arguably, ESPN itself may be slipping too for much of the same reasons, and other factors. Since it was among the first national sports channels in the country, it originally had a wide array of sports programming to choose from. But nowadays, it isn't the only player in town, given that all four major U.S. networks have at least one or more sports-oriented cable network in their portfolios, not to mention all the league-, sport-, and even college conference-specific networks out there too. On weekdays, unless there is a major event happening, much of ESPN's lineup consists of talking head shows, and television simulcasts of talking head shows on ESPN Radio.
    • Cord cutting has contributed to fewer people subscribing to the network (though it's almost entirely against their will, given that ESPN's main channels all but demand basic cable carriage), reducing a key source of revenue. Critics have argued that ESPN has ultimately been overspending on rights to its key properties, not foreseeing that changes in viewing habits would directly impact their business model. Realizing it had to do something to counteract these losses, ESPN laid off at least 100 employees in April 2017, including a number of anchors, analysts, and beat reporters (their most egregious cut? Laying off most of their NHL reporters during the playoffs. However, the network subsequently hired well-known NHL writer Greg Wyshynski away from Yahoo Sports, and would later reacquire rights to the NHL in 2021 along with TNT). At the same time, due to the proliferation of digital platforms, the idea of a straight sports highlight show has become extinct; the weeknight version of Baseball Tonight was also canned at this time ^note arguably MLB Network's MLB Tonight had been eating its dogfood and then some. Ironically, ESPN 2 ended up adding MLBN's Intentional Talk at around the same time. But given MLBN still produces it, it just means one less fish for ESPN to have to fry on its own. The arrangement has since ended, but the new ESPN president as of 2018, Jimmy Pitaro, is an avid baseball fan — so there have been rumors that he may reverse the cuts in some way., and ESPN attempted to re-launch selected editions of SportsCenter as personality-based shows to try and set them apart (while SC 6 with Michael Smith and Jemele Hill was a flop, the newer late-night edition with Scott Van Pelt has been more successful and still airs to this day). While live sports still remain an aspect of ESPN's overall strategy, the overall value of the channel may be decreasing.
  • In 2018, ESPN began to paywall some of the content that was previously available to subscribers at no-additional-cost online (ESPN3) under a new service known as ESPN+ (although it's an OTT service and available to non-subscribers, and is involved in some newer content deals that ESPN had established, including Top Rank boxing and UFC).
• The Lifetime Movie Network (now known more by their catchy initials, LMN) used to exist to air nothing but Lifetime Movies of the Week, which also included TV movies that aired on the Big Three networks. With the broadcast networks completely ditching TV movies outside of Jesse Stone, the Hallmark Hall of Fame and the Walmart/Proctor & Gamble films which have to get on TV as if they were paying for an Infomercial, and their mother channel's new A&E ownership deciding to invest more in reality shows and Ripped from the Headlines TV movies which will age horribly in only a couple years, LMN began to air Hollywood films that fit the channel's focus group, shifting away from the Damsel in Distress rut it was in for many years. However, in line with the speedier Hollywood release cycles, even this move didn't help maintain the ratings.
  • In the summer of 2013 LMN began a quick slide towards decay from their format; Sunday nights were filled with 'dramatized murder' programming, in an attempt to be more like Investigation Discovery. and a Saturday block of repurposed Bio ghost story shows.The murder doc programming is cheaper to make, doesn't involve writers or celebrities or unions, and is certainly faster to watch.
  • Lifetime Original Movies produced for the network, while still being fairly diverse fare aimed primarily at housewives, have let their thriller series fall into a very tight formula. For a good while, every movie was called The Perfect ______, where the blank is either the victim if the antagonist is obvious or the villain if they can pretend to be normal for the first 15 or so minutes. The stories always played out the same way, ending with the antagonist threatening to kill themselves, the object of their obsession, the "competition", or some combination. The predictability of it was a selling point to some, though.
• fXM: Movies from Fox (renamed Fox Movie Channel in 2000) was created in 1994 as a pay cable network that aired films from the 20th Century Fox library commercial-free and uncut. It featured lots of vintage and/or obscure titles, plus movies that weren't appropriate for traditional commercial syndication (i.e. The Fly (1986) and other horror films; in fact an annual Halloween promotion was solely devoted to horror/sci-fi films for 13 nights in a row). This format stuck with little change (aside from adding commercials to the downtime between films to round off timeslots) until 2012, when the channel introduced the "FX Movie Channel" branding for prime viewing hours (3PM to 3AM Eastern). A complete 180 of the channel's original concept, FX Movie Channel aired more recent films — including those from third-party studios — edits and all. By June 2014, Fox Movie Channel was relegated to being a programming block on the fully re-named FXM under the "FXM Retro" branding. The digital broadcast network Movies! (partly owned by Fox Corporation) picked up most of Fox's classic films...until January 2020 when Disney pulled all the Fox titles upon the expiration of their output agreement (Disney had separately licensed most of ABC Motion Pictures' catalog to the channel until the merger with 20th). Fox's classic titles are now split on cable between the FXM Retro block and Turner Classic Movies.

NBC-owned examples

• The Sci-Fi Channel started out as a network devoted to Science Fiction shows and movies. Branching out into fantasy and horror barely even qualifies for this trope, as the three genres overlap frequently and it's rare to find someone who likes SF but not the other two. Technology and computing news shows like "CNET Central" might have arguably been going a bit outside the channel's brand, but it was at least a topic that their core demographic were usually quite interested in so they passed without major complaint. Viewers were even broadly accepting when it became the "Paranormal Channel", with shows like Ghost Hunters, Destination Truth and their numerous clones and spinoffs: Even if many fans would rather that sort of thing be presented as fiction, there was still a certain level of crossover appeal. But it didn't stop there. It was when the channel started adding non-genre programming that ranged from reality shows, to reruns of crime dramas like Law & Order: SVU, to a cooking show, and at the boiling point, Professional Wrestling from the WWE that fans made their displeasure known. Their name change to "Syfy" cast further doubt on their commitment, as the executives claimed they wanted a name that could be trademarked, but their explanation for the name change (in which they referred to sci-fi fans as basement dwellers and insinuated that they repulse women), steered many the wrong way and went a long way toward tarnishing the network's reputation with sci-fi fans. The network slipped fully into Total Abandonment territory between 2010 and 2012 when it canceled Stargate Atlantis, Caprica, Stargate Universe, Eureka, and their "Ani-Mondays" anime block in rapid succession.
  • A number of new shows premiering in January 2014 and 2013 brought a significant focus on Speculative Fiction back to the channel; particularly during Monday and Friday night programming. While Syfy confirmed in 2014 that they were making a serious drive to return to space operas, it was the last of WWE's programming moving to USA Network that marked the end of what many had called a long Audience-Alienating Era. Despite this, non-genre movies and reruns of CSI can be regularly seen on the schedule, even after the network "rebooted" themselves with a rebrand in June 2017 and later added reruns of Futurama.
• Sprout was originally known as PBS Kids Sprout, and the "PBS" name in the network had guaranteed that the network was about education and fun first, selling toys second. The network's steady cast of humans (only one left so far because of an Old Shame college comedy film in 2005, and another moved to behind-the-scenes puppetry), Sesame Workshop backing, chicken puppet mascot Chica, shows from all over the world aired in their original format, and a schedule usually not filled with much change made it a safe haven while Nick and Disney marketed everything about their preschool characters. The network even made a habit of acquiring properties once aired by those two and building programming blocks around them for a while (though the practice stopped in recent years), and took over the responsibility of NBC's children's block in mid-2012. Comcast bought out PBS and Sesame Workshop's interests in Sprout in 2014, but did not make any immediate changes besides ramping up the original programming. As time went on, though, more movies began to be played (particularly during the summer), the NBC block was dropped, and the contract with PBS expired, taking all but two PBS Kids shows with it.^note Those being Caillou and The Berenstain Bears respectively. Ironically, Barney & Friends would wind up returning to the channel in 2018. Furthermore, NBCU began to use the network to cross-promote its product, as well as the reverse, such as giving the network's Sunny Side Up Show a float at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade^note NBC has aired the parade for decades. Eventually, in 2017, following NBCU's purchase of DreamWorks Animation, it was announced that Sprout would rebrand into Universal Kids to appeal to a wider kid audience with live-action series, reruns of DWA's Netflix series, and animated series from other countries such as Masha and the Bear and the Wallace & Gromit shorts.
  • Even though preschool programming still continues to take the lion's share of the network's airtime, running 15 hours between 3 a.m. and 6 p.m, there have been many changes that happened during the transition compared to the minimal changes to the lineup during the Comcast takeover. Popular shows on the network such as The Berenstain Bears, Nina's World, The Furchester Hotel, Ruff Ruff, Tweet and Dave and Noddy, Toyland Detective ^note  Oddly enough, Noddy is owned by Dreamworks, who created most of the shows broadcast during the primetime block. either got pulled off the schedule entirely or reduced to one airing a week. The channel also runs ad breaks longer than the average kids' channel, with six and a half minutes of ads played in the middle of every show on the network.
  • In June 2019, Universal Kids announced that they would no longer produce new original content, opting to air acquired content instead. So the channel is now a rerun farm.

Public networks examples

• 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, which aren't exactly weather material. In the evening, one may be lucky to get up to two hours of current weather news; which, unfortunately, is when much of the bad stuff happens. Fortunately, they do suspend said documentary programs whenever particularly dangerous weather situations develop like tornado outbreaks and hurricanes. The network also seems particularly interested in airing live coverage of satellite launches (as well as Exploration Flight Test-1, the first unmanned launch of NASA's new Orion spacecraft), often simulcasting NASA TV footage; often, Weather Channel provides the only live television coverage if local community access channels are not showing NASA TV footage, or CNN deems the launch not important enough.
  • 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 (TWC owns Weather.com), cell phones, and even some game consoles.^note But not the Wii. Its Forecast Channel was run by Weathernews Inc. Ironically, it got so bad in early 2010 when they announced that they decided to air movies that are "weather-related" (Including Misery, which despite a bad snowstorm starting off the chain of events, has nothing to do with weather whatsoever), that Dish Network threatened to drop the channel. As a result, they've adopted a Bloomberg-style information frame with local weather info during the entertainment content. Still, this makes the Bloodhound Gang's line "gonna tape The Weather Channel so that I can watch it later" almost pathetically prophetic.
  • Their programming has had an even more tenuous connection to weather as of late, with shows such as Pyros and Ice Pilots that often focus more on the characters and drama with the weather seemingly a footnote. At least they announced that they won't be showing movies anymore.
  • Averted with The Weather Network/MétéoMédia, its Canadian equivalent, which thankfully stays true to its name and only airs weather news and local forecasts, along with some short feature segments about extreme weather, lawn & gardening, vacation spots, fishing, etc. sprinkled here and there. However, it has had a history of being criticized for showing too much advertising and focusing a bit too much on Ontario.
  • Also averted with The Weather Channel's sister network Weatherscan, which more or less fits the original channel's mantra of all weather, all the time.
  • After DirecTV actually did drop the Weather Channel in favor of rival WeatherNation, the Weather Channel agreed to tone down the reality shows some.
• Not a network, but PBS's 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 1970s and 1980s, pretty much everyone involved in the story was still living and, in fact, interviewed for the show.

Regional networks examples

• Bally Sports Southeast originally launched as the niche channel Turner South, part of Time-Warner owned Turner Broadcasting, and aired a more diverse array of programming for much of its life. The network aired game telecasts of the local Atlanta professional sports teams (the Atlanta Hawks, Atlanta Braves, and Atlanta Thrashers, all Turner-owned at the time), but also carried movies, reruns of Southern-oriented shows, Southern cooking and gardening programs and a simulcast of the Rick and Bubba radio show. Despite only being available in around 9 million homes, all exclusively in the Southeast, it was one of the region's highest-rated cable networks in the area, even surpassing the network's Spiritual Antithesis, the Fox Sports Net affiliate FSN South (formerly known as SportSouth under Turner ownership; Turner sold the network to News Corporation after the Time Warner merger; they would end up sharing the cable rights to both the Braves and Hawks as part of a settlement over Turner South's launch).
  
  In May 2006, after having already sold off the Hawks and Thrashers two years prior (and preparing to sell the Braves, which they finally did the following summer), Time Warner sold Turner South to Fox^note Well, not quite; Fox actually just bought the channel space and the network's sports contracts, and Turner kept the network originals. However, Fox reran the originals in a mid-afternoon block before the Turner South name was dropped, and it soon became apparent that Fox was positioning it as FSN South 2.0. All of the network's reruns, movies and non-sports programming were dropped immediately, and in October the network was relaunched as....SportSouth.^note The Other Wiki claims Fox executives went through 60 different name suggestions before settling on SportSouth. Take that as you may. Despite the new name, the programming no longer had anything to do with Southern culture, consisting primarily of FSN programs that otherwise couldn't air on FSN South due to pre-emptions by Braves/Hawks/Thrashers telecasts. The network has been stuck with this format ever since; even after Fox re-branded the network as Fox Sports Southeast (done entirely to avoid confusion with Fox Sports South), and after Sinclair bought Fox's regional sports business and rebranded them under the Bally Sports name, the Braves and Hawks telecasts are the only holdovers from the Turner South years.

Warner Bros. Discovery-owned examples

• Arguably, HBO fits here. With its initials standing for "Home Box Office", one would expect it to show movies, and one would be right some of the time. But originally the name referred to other kinds of entertainment that would sell tickets at a box office, too — standup comedy specials, sporting events, concerts, and theatrical performances. Alongside theatrical movies, there's always been a great deal of original programming on the network. But over the decades even the movies have been de-emphasized in favor of focusing on original scripted series, with the network eventually becoming the poster boy of Tropes Are Not Bad due to many of those shows being wildly popular and acclaimed.
  • Its first spinoff, Cinemax, is a similar case. It was launched in 1980 as a rival to The Movie Channel with an identical "hook" — only uncut theatrical movies 24/7 at a time when most pay cable services only programmed late afternoons through midnight. With HBO moving to 24/7 scheduling by the end of 1981, Cinemax came to focus on back catalog titles and new movies seen as too niche for HBO premieres (independent, B-Movie, foreign, adults-only, etc.), as well as "overflow" airings of said premieres. Come 1983 it added a few music and comedy specials and series (the final season of SCTV, for instance) to its lineup, but by the 1990s those were dropped in favor of more movies. From the 1990s onward they've offered up a handful of "After Dark" series and starting in The New '10s dramas such as The Knick, but Cinemax remains focused on films as a counterpart to HBO's focus on original content.
• [adult swim], Cartoon Network's late night block, served as an example within an example. The roots of the block had been the originally admitted truth at least a third of Cartoon Network's audience were adults. Many of its original series were started before the block's existence for that part of the audience. However as mentioned in Cartoon Network's main example, things changed a lot in Adult Swim's birth year. The branding of the block was one of the items President Betty Cohen clashed with her boss Jamie Kellner on. Many of the channel's blocks had been designed to appeal to a demographic or type of fan, but none had ever been exclusionary. Kellner's decision to want every part of the channel tailored to one demographic and dismiss the Periphery Demographic did not sit well with Cohen. Cohen survived long enough to announce the official arrival of the block, but left the channel not long after. The block debuted with that gimmick of being an Adult Swim period with no one over 18 allowed to watch, which every kid totally listened to. The line up originally consisted of adult-oriented animation including seinen anime and black comedies, as well as unedited versions of titles from the original Toonami block. Adult Swim also helped fuel the anime boom at the turn of the century with titles such as Cowboy Bebop, FLCL, The Big O and Inuyasha, as well as being a haven for shows that were previously Screwed by the Network such as Family Guy, Futurama, Home Movies, and Mission Hill and even helped boost their popularity to the point that they were now beloved by their parent companies again. Adult Swim was well received, but the fighting on the main network actually impacted it in a good way. As Mike Lazzo continued to conflict with Cohen's replacement Jim Samples, he was Kicked Upstairs to only running Adult Swim in comparison to when he was still programming the whole network. This split put a lot of CN's old guard only working on the Adult Swim block, and in truth was a major factor in the block avoiding Network Decay for as long as they did.^note Like some other examples where this has gotten confused, Adult Swim is only recognized as a separate channel for getting around certain US laws. In practice it is still a part of Cartoon Network and is subject to their control. Lazzo's promotion in this regard gave him nearly perfect creative autonomy but at no point has Adult Swim ever been allowed to pick what hours it airs and couldn't air regular CN or Boomerang shows without expressed permission.
  
  Unfortunately, these days were not to last. When Cartoon Network continued to change and sister block Toonami was canceled as a result, it was inevitable that Adult Swim was going to decay with it. In an odd way Adult Swim served as an Unwitting Instigator of Doom for the next chapter of the whole network's history. The Boston Bomb Scare started out as an Adult Swim ad campaign for Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters, which was normal for the Trolling Creator division but as noted above, because it is still under CN, it ended up with the Cartoon Network president Jim Samples taking the bullet for the team and stepping down. In the fallout of this, Adult Swim began experiencing some of the same criticisms as the main channel. One of the earliest instances of the decay was when Adult Swim ran Saved by the Bell for a week as a joke, inspired by complaints about their cheesier retro programming at the time, as well as about live-action movies on the regular Cartoon Network. Fans hoped it was just another one of Adult Swim's jokes as Adult Swim has been a notorious Trolling Creator. Unfortunately for them, Adult Swim began to increasingly move into live-action programing, from original series made by internally successful creators, such as Childrens Hospital, Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, Delocated, to imported programming like The Office (UK). While the live-action shows on Adult Swim have better critical reception than their Cartoon Network counterparts, these works have also divided or enraged much of the fandom.
  
  The main concern is that Adult Swim's live action programming came at the expense of a number of animated shows being pushed out, with a lack of animated originals being produced in comparison to the growing number of live-action originals, in addition to an increasing over-reliance on FOX acquisitions for viewership and filling timeslots, with nearly half of its 10 hour airtime made up of them every night except Saturdays. Mirroring Cartoon Network's decision of ending Toonami, the most glaring example of the decay has been the block's move away from anime. Once one of the main reasons to watch the block—also one of the main reasons why blocks like Adult Swim and Toonami Midnight Run were created— anime would since be relegated to the Saturday night-Sunday morning graveyard timeslots only^note Before the switch to the all-night replay block, this had been a dumping space for anime that CN had wanted to finish out but didn't want in more prominent hours. In the present they compromised with more accessible anime having earlier time slots with weirder and repeats often shoved back in those slots. This has been considered to be an almost legendary example of not just the decay of Adult Swim, but Cartoon Network as a whole. Suddenly, the block that saved shows from being Screwed by the Network was now screwing other shows over.
  
  The "live-action instead of animation" slope, combined with their increasingly vocal disdain towards anime, as well as their insults to their fans about the decay in their ad bumpers, have been enough to push many of its fans away. Later on, part of this became more explained in that Mike Lazzo felt anime didn't rate high enough often for replays. In hindsight a lot of the times Adult Swim shifted away or sniped anime made more sense. Adult Swim always watched the ratings more closely than its main counterpart, given that Adult Swim never has had control of which hours it airs. Lazzo generally preferred to program comedy repeats because they picked up higher numbers. This even dated back to the old Toonami days where, of many shows Lazzo tried to give rerun slots to, only a few managed to bring in ratings good enough for the Kellner and Samples expectations. There had always been worry if Adult Swim didn't provide high enough numbers, CN would yank more hours away from them. Some anime fans would still cry foul at this and hold him accountable for not fighting hard enough. In fairness, Adult Swim and Toonami still have put a lot of anime on television over the years that otherwise might never have gotten such a chance without Lazzo keeping part of the old CN spirit in his network philosophy.
  
  As a whole, Adult Swim's portion of the network is nowhere near as bad as a lot of the networks listed on Network Decay, as the presence of strong anime and animated comedies have managed to keep the block out of Total Abandonment and their fans clamoring for more. Adult Swim has often been called the soul of the original Cartoon Network, after most of the older Turner people stayed on their side of the divide, and in some cases it still shows today. One part of that is they have also called Cartoon Network's decay out in the past, and even lampshade their own strange programming choices at times, so they're at the very least aware of their own "decay". But of course poking fun at themselves was always a CN trademark.
  • Adult Swim has made one significant contribution to the recovery of CN as a whole. On April Fools' Day 2012, Adult Swim briefly replaced their normal Saturday night block with Toonami to rave reception, and after a huge fan campaign, brought back Toonami on a regular basis on May 26, 2012. Not only was Toonami once again the network's dominant action-animation brand, it essentially became the Midnight Run, the direct predecessor of Adult Swim, in the process. Meanwhile, Adult Swim was free to focus exclusively on adult comedy, though original adult animation is still not as prominent as it used to be, despite TBS and even TruTV (both sibling networks) now producing live-action comedies of their own. While segregating anime and comedy into different blocks could be considered as Network Decay to some, ^note (Though Toonami is still technically bundled with Adult Swim as a "network", since CN separated Adult Swim in the Nielsens in a similar fashion to Nick at Nite to enable them to show more mature programming, and left Toonami with Adult Swim for that same reason, alongside that Toonami at the moment, airing only one night a week, doesn’t have enough programming hours to get the "sub-network" status as of yet. the transition was already happening during the channel’s Audience-Alienating Era, and Toonami’s formula is more suited for showcasing non-comedic programming. One enduring problem, though, is a limited budget for licensing anime to air, meaning that titles like Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and season 2 of The Big O (both of which [adult swim] owns permanent rights to since they helped fund those anime back in the pre-decay days) are frequently inserted as timeslot filler. As the block regained its notoriety during the years, Toonami managed to get more recent and popular anime titles, subsequently moving filler programming to the dead of the night. However, the increased focus on popular Shonen Jump properties and original productions at the expense of more niche and eclectic shows in the vein of the [as] Action days and the earlier years of the revival has been somewhat polarizing.
  • 2023 brought one of the largest shake-ups for Adult Swim yet. Due to a study finding that almost 70% of the people watching Cartoon Network after 6 p.m. EST were 18 or older, the block was extended backward by three hours to reflect this. This put it well within the network's daytime programming block (with Adult Swim now starting as early as 3 p.m. in some parts of the US), which has to remain appropriate for all ages... resulting in the very same block that once proudly dedicated itself to adult animation airing what are, for all intents and purposes, kids' shows (albeit ones with heavy Multiple Demographic Appeal) — both cartoons that used to air on daytime Cartoon Network in the past, and new action series like My Adventures with Superman. While the majority of the block remains adult-focused, the inherent absurdity of Adult Swim airing family programming was not lost on many internet commentators.
• The international pay channel Warner Channel \ Warner TV had shows from The WB (its American version) and movies from Warner Bros.. And Warner Television productions are still very present (the channel even had the company's shows which in the US aired elsewhere, such as Friends and Full House), but at a certain point, the channel started getting a huge amount of movies from other studios - it's ironic that the channel airs Arrowverse shows alongside Marvel Cinematic Universe movies! And Kids' WB! shows lost their space in lieu of Cartoon Network (animation only returned in 2020 with an [adult swim] block).
• The slippage of Discovery Travel & Adventure in Latin America has been relatively benign. Beginning as a dumping ground for Discovery's travel-related documentaries, the channel became Discovery Travel & Living in 2006, force-feeding cuisine-related shows like No Reservations, Cake Boss, Bar Rescue, and Hell's Kitchen into the mix. But the bigger problem? In 2011, Discovery chose to rebrand the channel with the logo of TLC, with the subtitle "Travel & Living Channel" — a justified retronym that was later replaced in the logo by a Discovery wordmark. Shows like Breaking Amish and Here Comes Honey Boo Boo could count as "lifestyle" only in a very loose sense.
• Subjective example — Investigation Discovery was a spinoff of Discovery Channel, and it mostly ran stuff like 48 Hours: Hard Evidence and Dateline (recently adding I (Almost) Got Away With It, detailing criminals who, well, did just that) which were basically news reports on real-life crimes, legal dramas (sometimes bringing in controversial subjects like falling asleep at the wheel being considered as a capital offense), and forensic science shows detailing the processes and how they were important in either convicting the criminal(s) or figuring out what went wrong. Occasionally, stuff like Dr. G: Medical Examiner or shows about disaster investigation show up on that channel. Dr. G is after all about autopsies (a pretty big part of murder investigations), and shows about disaster investigation are, after all, investigations. They're just not entirely crime or are related to crime in most ways (Dr. G often has people who died of drug overdoses, accidents, stupidity, or diseases they didn't know about).
  • More recently as of January 2011, Dr. G moved over to Discovery Health and Fitness channel. That move brought Investigation Discovery back to mostly crime shows and perhaps back to recovery. However, some fans are complaining that the network is airing the same cases over several different shows.
• The Discovery Channel still shows plenty of documentaries and factual programming, despite having been decaying for almost as long as MTV has. In the late 80s, Discovery Channel's programming was mostly documentaries, the most famous of which was Wings, but also classy repackaged BBC imports like Making of a Continent, and of course, the now-classic Shark Week, which was just what you'd expect. By the mid-1990s, they showed an obscene amount of home improvement shows and cooking shows aimed at stay-at-home moms (enough to spawn the spin-off channel Discovery Travel & Living, now Destination America) and Wings had proven so popular it had been farmed out to its own spin-off, Discovery Wings Channel (now American Heroes Channel). Discovery also used to air some nature shows, which is where Shark Week originated from. Most of the nature shows have since been relegated to Animal Planet. To fill the void left by the departure of all the above programming, Discovery would lean towards "guys building and/or blowing things up" shows in the vein of MythBusters and Monster Garage, and docu-dramas focusing on dangerous occupations in locations around the world. Yet Discovery Channel would also debut totally unrelated shows like Cash Cab, leaving one unsure whether it even has a theme beyond "non-fiction". Amusingly enough, despite the slippage over the years, it remains the sole survivor of the educational channels on American cable television.
  • Driven by ratings, Discovery would end up making derivative shows based of their own longer-running programs, such as Smash Lab (with a focus on safety measures) and Some Assembly Required. The latter has almost only done products featured in How It's Made which, to be fair, has been on the air for so long, it's hard to find something they haven't done.
  • 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. However, much like the History Channel in the United States, it has recently been airing subject matter that can be charitably described as pseudoscience. After watching what some thought was a mockumentary about how creationism was certainly real, complete with instructions on how to build Noah's Ark, several viewers have refused to watch or trust any Discovery Channel documentaries since.
  • The Dutch Discovery Channel has recently been airing soccer matches.
  • In some Middle European countries like the Czech Republic and Hungary, most of the "regular" Discovery Channel programming (like Mythbusters or How It's Made) has been relegated to a morning timeslot, with the rest being made up mostly of shows based around the concept of "people finding interesting loot", tons of other scripted series, and over-dramatized reality shows. On any given day, these series take up more than half of the channel's programming.
  • The Canadian version tried to counter-balance the slippage of its parent by still producing more serious fare; it had produced the science and technology newsmagazine Daily Planet (which dated back to the channel's original launch in 1995), and other more documentary-like series such as the aforementioned How It's Made, Mayday, Mighty [x] (a franchise of series focusing on the operations of notable planes, boats, cruise ships, trains, etc.). However, it has also played along with the U.S. version's slippage with reality shows and docusoaps of their own, such as Canada's Worst Driver, Highway Thru Hell (a show following towing companies who operate along a B.C. stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway in the Rocky Mountains), Heavy Rescue 401, and Jade Fever. In 2018, Bell cancelled Daily Planet, capping off a broadcast season where the channel had also begun to add more entertainment programming, such as The Big Bang Theory (already a staple of The Comedy Network) CSI: NY, and films on Friday nights. The network had already begun to dabble in scripted series with its Netflix co-production Frontier (2016).
  • Over the years, Discovery Channel's Shark Week went from airing educational features about sharks, to cashing in on the post-Jaws image of sharks as dangerous, violent beasts — an approach that has been criticized as irresponsible by many in the scientific community, who often point out that this monstrous image has led to several species of shark (most notably the great white) being threatened with extinction due to overhunting. One of the most controversial examples of this shift is Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives, a mockumentary in the vein of Mermaids: The Body Found based around the idea that Megalodons are still alive.

Paramount Global examples

• The New TNN was the product of total abandonment by Viacom. When they acquired the country and bluegrass-flavored The Nashville Network, they tested the waters with younger-skewing programming such as RollerJam (basically Roller Derby but with Professional Wrestling tropes and Kayfabe) and later ECW on Friday nights (using them as a tentpole around motorsports and bull riding under the guide of extreme sports). Soon afterward, TNN started adding more films and off-network reruns too.
  • In September 2000, after acquiring WWF Raw, TNN rebranded as The National Network (later as "The New TNN") and became a general entertainment network (akin to USA Network, which Viacom had once owned part of via Paramount), albeit with a "middle America" flavor, according to executives. Then in 2003, TNN relaunched as SpikeTV, the "First Network for Men", with a new lineup hailed by an increase in low-brow "adult" series (some of the new programs launched in June, but the new name was delayed to August due to a lawsuit by Spike Lee) and other series of male interest. In 2005, after losing WWE Raw to USA Network, Spike picked up TNA iMPACT and began airing a reality show about a little mixed martial arts promotion known as the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
  • In 2006, after noticing that viewers only really noticed the "low-brow" side of Spike, the channel refocused on the action genre. Award shows dedicated to the horror genre and video games would be launched, the latter of which resulted in other gaming-oriented programs joining the network. Decay followed decay, however, as Spike all but morphed into the CSI and Star Trek repeat network until it lost the rights to those shows.
  • Beginning in 2011, Spike would pivot towards reality shows aimed at a more mainstream audience, at the expense of the more original guy-centric fare it used to focus on. The only scripted programming to be found on the network were movies such as the Star Wars franchise, which Spike used any and every excuse to air. The UFC ended up becoming a Cash-Cow Franchise for the network, but nonetheless, Spike would lose the cable rights to Fox in 2013. Despite the later loss of TNA Wrestling in 2014, Spike has continued to ride on sports to attract viewers, with Viacom having acquired a stake in the competing MMA promotion Bellator, and picking up other assorted boxing (particularly Al Haymon's "Premier Boxing Champions" series) and kickboxing events.
  • In 2015, in addition to another re-branding effort, Spike announced that it would bring back scripted programming, yet also announced several new reality-oriented programs meant to attract females such as Sweat Inc. and Lip Sync Battle. While Lip Sync Battle became a Sleeper Hit, the network has still carried a male skew, thanks to shows like Bar Rescue, Ink Master, and COPS. Meanwhile, the first of the newly rebranded Spike's scripted offering's, the 3-part miniseries Tut, received mostly negative reviews.
  • Spike would eventually be relaunched as the Paramount Network in January 2018, as part of Viacom's 2017 turnaround plan which positions the Paramount film studio as one of its six core brands. The new network was the culmination of the shifts that Spike had been undergoing since 2015, but instead of another makeshift answer to USA Network and TNT, Paramount Network is positioned as a home for premium scripted and unscripted programming a la AMC or FX. The new network would stumble out of the gate when its first scripted premiere, the mini-series Waco, received mixed reviews. A month after the February launch of their next series, Heathers (2018), on top of early critical buzz being negative, the series television premiere was pulled after the Parkland shooting took place. Then the Santa Fe, Texas shooting occurred and Viacom ended up dumping the series at the start of June to allow anyone else to take it off their hands. The pulling of Heathers also affected the second season of Nobodies, as described below. The one break Paramount Network got so far was that its flagship drama Yellowstone was successful enough to be renewed for a second season, while the channel and Paramount+ has also picked up further spin-offs and other series by co-creator Taylor Sheridan. Currently the Paramount Network schedule is filled with reruns of shows like Friends and Mom and original programming is non-existent, and with Viacom current in a state of turmoil (as Shari Redstone was busy trying to re-merge the company with CBS while at the same time trying to right the floundering Paramount film studio) things weren't likely to get much better.
  • And in a case of supreme irony, the Spike brand has been brought back as a channel on Pluto TV, a free, ad-supported streaming service that works like cable (you get a guide with channels plus an on-demand section, but most of the channels are based around web or cult content, or are streaming-only) that Viacom recently purchased.
  • Then, in 2020, Viacom and CBS successfully re-merged, and one of the first moves post-merger was moving Bellator telecasts to the more-established CBS Sports Network in a test run before a permanent move to Showtime, and then it was decided that the network would be relaunched once more, this time as Paramount Movie Network. As the name implied, it would have emphasized primarily on movies from the Paramount library as well as original telefilms, with the stated goal to air 52 of these original telefilms per year. Limited series like Yellowstone were to survive the transition, while almost all of the network's unscripted programming was axed (besides Bar Rescue and Lip Sync Battle, which were to move to another ViacomCBS channel, and Ink Master, which eventually got Un-Cancelled by Paramount+). However, this planned rebrand was eventually axed, due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic making that goal unrealistic, as well as the continued success of Bar Rescue and Yellowstone (now in its fifth season).
• TV Land started out as basically Nick at Nite 2, focusing on old TV shows that not even Nick At Nite showed anymore — Gilligan's Island, Mister Ed, Father Knows Best, etc. It would soon follow a similar track as other "retro" networks: acquiring shows that are either incredibly recent (Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, for instance) or have already been reran to death on other networks. TV Land would also begin airing original reality shows that have nothing to do with retro television on top of all this, though one can respect what they've done with She's Got the Look. The focus of the network's original programming ultimately shifted away from realty shows and towards traditional sitcoms, like Hot in Cleveland. In the summer of 2015, TV Land deliberately invoked this trope, with a new logo and more edgier comedies aimed at Gen-X audiences. While the network continued to air retro shows outside of prime time, they de-emphasized their original format in promotional materials in favor of advertising the newer programming.
  • The problem that TV Land faces is the ever-shifting definition of what's considered "old" as the viewing audience, or specifically the advertiser-friendly demographic within that audience, ages and is replaced by younger generations (similar to what's happening with oldies radio). There's also the difficulty in finding shows they can afford the rights to. Shows that enter or are produced in syndication are easier to afford and come by, while many older shows are ceasing to exist at all. Fortunately for retro fanatics, free digital broadcast networks such as MeTV, Antenna TV, and Retro TV have picked up most of those shows, meaning you don't even need cable to watch them.
  • Another reason for decay; ten minute blocks of advertising. An average viewer might look at the network's staggered scheduling (often putting shows in 36-40 minute timeslots) which might suggest they'll see every minute of a show as it originally aired, only to have it be the same syndicated cut buttressed by an amazing amount of ads. Most Viacom networks carry a heavy commercial load, but TV Land is by far the most apparent example of this. What makes it worse is that Viacom networks will sometimes cut to commercial in the middle of a scene, which can look very awkward, especially if you know when the episode should usually cut to commercial.
  • As of 2017, TV Land's recent efforts seem to have been for naught. Outside of Teachers and Younger (which has become the network's breakout series), all of TV Land's Gen-X programming have been short-lived. Nobodies., one of the series moved to Paramount Network, not only lasted two weeks before moving back, but ended up getting cancelled at the of the season. ^note  The show has a very niche 'Hollywood insider' audience that even Paramount couldn't justify. There was also no promotional steam from the pulled Heathers. Since the network isn't a part of Viacom's restructuring plan, programs in-development that were meant for TV Land have instead been shifted to other networks; it's unlikely that TV Land will premiere any new originals once their current shows come to an end. Even LOGO, which has its own decay problems to deal with, managed to pick up the retro programming slack. At the very least, though, TV Land is still in far more households than Logo. In 2020, ViacomCBS moved Younger (by that point the last remaining original series on TV Land) to CBS All Access (later renamed Paramount+) for what would become that show's final season, and with that, TV Land was revamped yet again to a schedule primarily focused on sitcoms past and present.

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Other "Slipped" examples:

• For nearly 40 years, City TV was the Canadian broadcast equivalent of the "quirky young upstart". Combining rich multicultural programming with plenty of highly-regarded local shows (Fashion Television, The New Music, Speakers Corner), the ground-breaking local newscast CityPulse (which pioneered such now-common elements like open newsroom sets and standing while delivering stories), Great Movies in primetime and overnights, syndicated fare like Star Trek: The Next Generation, plus oddball cult shows like Lexx, The Collector and Relic Hunter, the station flourished under creator Moses Znaimer's playful and daring philosophy. It was a station that pushed the boundaries by being the first Canadian cable station to air softcore erotic films (Baby Blue), aired a show that focused on frank discussions of sex and sexuality at 4 p.m. every afternoon (Life on Venus Ave.) and (like Showcase Television) didn't really care about adherence to other Canadian channel formats. With CHUM's purchase of CKVU in Vancouver, and later Craig Media, Citytv expanded into a network covering much of central and western Canada as well.
  • In 2007, CTVglobemedia bought out CHUM Limited. As CTV could not own the Citytv stations due to ownership caps (the CRTC only allows duopolies in the same city if each station broadcasts in a different language. All same-language duopolies in Canada have involved rimshot stations, hence the A-Channel stations in proximity to major CTV stations were okay), CTV sold them to Rogers Media. Under Rogers, City's primetime lineup became flooded with U.S. imports (and, eventually, leftovers shows that CTV or Global weren't interested in), while more layoffs and cuts followed over the next few years (particularly at the stations' news operations), along with experiments that went nowhere (such as the Citynews Channel, which died after a year). In December 2013, the network awkwardly re-named itself "City" (and dumped its annual New Year's Eve special from Toronto in favor of just simulcasting ABC's New Year's Rockin' Eve instead).
  • As of late, there are signs that Rogers is trying to reverse the damage. The network began greenlighting more original scripted shows, and added Hockey Night In Canada and a new Sunday night NHL game as part of its new contract (though the latter moved to Sportsnet the following year). The current strategy of relying more on U.S. imports has continued — although its made increasingly notable coups, such as Fox's flagship animated comedies (including Family Guy and Bob's Burgers, and later The Simpsons — a long-time fixture of Global). In 2018, the network finally changed its name back to Citytv.
• Gospel Music Channel started out in 2004 airing exactly that; gospel music videos and programming around it. However, the channel's title made sure it was stuck in the religious tier where they had to deal the same dichotomy the Faith & Values Channel had for years before their rebrand as Odyssey Network, then the Hallmark Channel; a good and kind view of religion stuck in a channel tier where the apocalyptic ramblings of TBN and Daystar personalities scared anyone from watching anything near it. In February 2010, the network rebranded solely by their initials, GMC, to get away from that image, and seemingly picked up every original show ever produced by PAX, along with Amen, Sister, Sister, 7th Heaven and any sitcom or drama which has a somewhat spiritual bent like Promised Land and Touched by an Angel. The gospel music was pushed to mornings, Sundays, and special events. As the channel got better funding, and other 'religious family channel' competitors such as FamilyNet, iLifeTV and ALN were purchased by other parties and converted to more secular formats, GMC picked up those programming rights (mainly old sitcom reruns from the 80's and 90's), along with creating more original movies and airing performances of African-American stage dramas. By 2013, it was clear that gospel music was a minority of the network's schedule, and because of that and the confusion with the truck brand, GMC was rebranded to the more neutral "Up" at the start of June 2013.
• BYU TV still deals mainly with Mormonism, but has opened up their schedule a little more to carry the sports of Brigham Young University, along with some acquired dramas and documentaries to add some variety of the schedule, creating the odd mix of a university sports network mixed with a religious network with some secular programming (including, among other things, reruns of Wind at My Back and Sue Thomas: F.B.Eye), and a cooking/crafting network.
• Retro Television Network (also known as RTV, formerly RTN), a network of classic TV programming seen on the digital subchannels of local television stations, has faced some struggles mainly related to their former ownership under Equity Broadcasting. The network was in danger of fading away after Equity didn't pay the bill to the rights for CBS/Paramount shows, and again after the network owner decided to air something that totally makes sense between reruns of The Incredible Hulk (1977) and Knight Rider — a political talk show called Unreliable Sources. Then in January 2009, Equity fell completely apart, declaring bankruptcy, which ended up throwing several of their stations off the air because they couldn't afford the digital upgrade later in the year. RTV had been taken over by another entity (Luken Communications) who leased Equity's master control distribution system (apparently a system so complicated it was a copyrighted concept, and also involved Equity-owned stations such as Fox affiliates from as far as Montana and Michigan's Upper Peninsula being ran completely from Little Rock). But then Equity issued a Take That! and tried to pull the plug on their own creation by throwing out the new RTV owners and forcing viewers through a month-long process that involved a complete rebuilding of RTV's infrastructure in Chattanooga, Tennessee by Luken. Unreliable Sources was canned immediately and the network resumed an almost all-classic TV lineup (besides a light morning talk show, Daytime, from one of their affiliates ^note NBC affiliate WFLA in Tampa, also carried on RTV subchannels of stations owned by WFLA parent company Media General, which has since been cancelled).
  • In 2011 the network lost NBCUniversal's library and Sony's library to competitors MeTV and Antenna TV respectively. This has lost them many affiliates to Antenna TV; Me-TV; the lifestyle-oriented Live Well Network (owned by Disney/ABC), and Scripps-owned channels Laff (comedy), Escape (true crime and women's programming), Grit (westerns), Bounce TV (African American programming). Retro attempted a rebound by picking up Mystery Science Theater 3000 and the original run of Doctor Who, but lost all of their carriage by stations associated with the Big Four networks by April 2017, when their Santa Barbara station dumped them in fear of the network struggling to remain 'a going concern', along with a strict carriage contract which disallowed even the move of main network programming to RTV temporarily for severe weather coverage. This ultimately forced RTV to affiliate with mostly low-power stations, as well as a few religious stations and affiliates of other specialty channels.
• TG4 (originally T na G, aka "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 wouldn't mind so much if these shows at least had Irish subtitles in the same way that most of the shows which feature Irish dialogue have English subtitles. One egregious example was the Hector O'hEochagáin Show, which had dialogue in both Irish and English. The Irish was subtitled, but the English wasn't.
• New Zealand's equivalent of the above, Māori Television, started out as that, but with requirements for English-language programming in order to allow everyone to watch the channel. A few years into the channel's existence (and partly because the launch of their 100% Māori channel Te Reo was a success), they decided to become what TVNZ refused to be. In terms of movies, they originally showed Pacific-centric movies, but then started airing movies from all over the world, a bit like the SBS channels of Australia. Plusthe addition of national and international documentaries, unrelated in most part to the channel's culture, was also another factor in order to boost ratings.
• There's this channel in Peru called La Tele. It started out airing mostly just telenovelas and movies aimed at female audiences. As the years progressed, Grupo ATV didn't know about the channel's purpose and started to become gender-neutral. In April 2015 it got to air the cartoons that used to air on Global TV (now RED TV) and the daytime schedule was retooled to feature some Disney shows, a couple of anime titles, telenovelas aimed at teenagers and three hours of Disney Channel's live-action shows in the afternoon. At night it started to show American shows that either ATV or RED weren't interested in airing anymore. It still shows some telenovelas, though.
• IFC, which used to stand for Independent Film Channel, was originally devoted to showing independent and foreign films commercial-free and uncut (many titles in The Criterion Collection turned up). It always had original programming, but in 2010 they acquired the rights to many cult classics admired television shows, like Monty Python's Flying Circus, Arrested Development, and Undeclared. They also began to show mainstream-but-independently-financed films films such as A Fish Called Wanda in addition to their regular fare. By year's end, they started to show commercials during their programming instead of just between them — including their films (still uncut for content and time, but with two minutes of commercials inserted in random places) — while announcing a half-dozen more shows they'd acquired. This switch from being an indie film channel to cult show central wasn't necessarily a bad thing, especially since the company that owns IFC (AMC Networks) bought Sundance Channel in 2008 and both channels pretty much did the same thing.
  • Years later, however, IFC's lineup began to consist only of mainstream films and the above TV shows with only a few hours devoted to airing actual independent films. By the time they legally retired the channel's full name in 2014, the channel had been morphed into a horror and comedy-oriented AMC. Outside of film broadcasts, IFC has become an alt-comedy network, much in the vein of [adult swim], emphasizing original series like Comedy Bang! Bang! (which is popular as filler programming in the early morning hours). Though as far as alternative comedy goes, it's hard to justify a typical day of the channel's programming being nothing but Two and a Half Men repeats.
  • While Sundance Channel picked up some of IFC's indie slack, even they aren't immune to decay. On one hand, Sundance's original programming seems to be taking the HBO/Showtime approach, while their acquired slate is mainly composed of both independent and critically-acclaimed films and classic TV shows such as The Andy Griffith Show and M*A*S*H. On the other hand, particularly in the latter years since rebranding as Sundance TV, the channel has caught flack for airing "not-so-great" films and, along with sibling WE TV, has become the new home for Criminal Minds reruns.
• Reelz Channel (now Reelz) bills itself as "TV about movies", and began with a format which consisted of six movie news-related programs airing in a loop throughout the day back in 2006. However, this quickly proved to be monotonous and low-rated (E! also started with a channel format like this but also eventually changed in 1990), not to mention that the Internet has proven to be a better way to find out about entertainment news and criticism than watching a traditional 'junkets and press releases' program on ReelzChannel, along with the studios holding back publicity material for film's website and/or their DVDs.
  
  Thus, the channel still had some of those movie news shows (as well as movie shows hosted by Leonard Maltin and Richard Roeper), but because of forced decay also airs sitcom reruns like Becker, 3rd Rock from the Sun, and Ally McBeal that few watch these days, along with Johnny Carson's Comedy Classics. The network also killed their "talk about movies but never show them" format by picking up a few '80s and '90s films to air. The turning point came when Reelz picked up The Kennedys, a heavily-criticized bio film disowned by the History Channel, to try to gain some publicity and carriage for the channel, no matter how negative it would be. Airing The Kennedys may have been a good move for them. Reviews weren't bad, the ratings were decent (but high for the channel), and it won Greg Kinnear an Emmy.
  
  As of 2018 however, it's taken the Style Network template of decay. The network carries reality series about "real" Hollywood Hillbillies, the distantly related-twice removed cousins of Al Capone getting into Duck Dynasty-esque antics (except with "the Mob"), and endless repeats of Snapped from Oxygen (Which Oxygen itself is prone to overabuse). Their news division is reduced to producing America's sixth-rated entertainment magazine show, Celebrity Page (which, until March 2016, was associated with America's sixth-rated entertainment magazine, OK!), featuring fluff content that makes Extra seem like the BBC covering the Ukraine in comparison. Outside of those hours, the network has begun to pick up crass Hollywood Babylon-esque outside programming about the last hours of celebrities, their scandals, autopsies, and a lot of serial killer documentaries rejected by ID, Oxygen and streaming providers for being completely crass and insensitive. In 2022, after it was cancelled by A&E in 2020 out of sensitivity and other internal issues regarding its production, Reelz also picked up a Spiritual Successor to Live PD titled On Patrol: Live.
• Def II was BBC2's strand for "youth" programming in the late 80s/early 90s, broadcasting for a couple of hours in early evenings most days. They started off with fairly decent documentaries/current affairs, credible music shows, and some quirky reruns. But by the time it was cancelled its reduced running time comprised repeats of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Series/Buck Rogers In The Twenty Fifth Century along with the music program Dance Energy. Eventually they dropped the branding and absorbed what was left into the main schedules.
  • BBC2 itself seems to have been undergoing some slippage in recent years. Meant to be the more "highbrow" or minority-interest channel, of late much of this role has been taken over by BBC4 and BBC2 is becoming somewhat more mainstream.
• In Australia, ONE HD was established as a sports channel before beginning to play movies and now drama series such as Sons of Anarchy and COPS. This change was arguably inevitable, due to the parent Ten Network deciding to establish a sports channel when it didn't really have the rights to any sports that Australians might actually want to watch, certainly not enough to enable 24/7 sports programming. This led a rival network executive to deride the channel as being about "truck racing from Idaho".
• Animal Planet has been slipping some lately. In 2008, the channel was revamped and many new programs were added in an attempt to attract the adult, more mainstream audience. Fewer documentaries are being shown, and the currently running shows (such as Tanked And Hillybilly Handfishing) focus more on people than on animals. One show, Haunting, is basically a generic ghost/paranormal show with a passing mention of the dog barking at nothing. Two other paranormal shows on the network, Lost Tapes and Freak Encounters, are mostly about people finding or encountering things of cryptozoology and myth, though primary animals and others have slipped in. The shows that actually focus on animals (such as Fatal Attractions, and Infested!) generally portray them in a negative light.
  • The network's new slogan, "surprisingly human", pretty much sums up their current state; most of the time, the animals are now simply used as an excuse to air a show that actually focuses on the people. The channel has harnessed the general public's fascination with watching adorable animals doing adorable things with its annual Puppy Bowl (basically puppies on a football field on the day of the Super Bowl, complete with Harry Kalas commentating prior to his death), and Too Cute. Yet in the past few years, they've rapidly accumulated new programs that don't even try to pretend that they have anything to do with animals. Dirty Jobs seems to try and focus more on episodes with segments involving animals, but often slips into non-animal stuff. In 2018, the network underwent a rebranding (alongside the premiere of a new series following the Irwin family): the new logo and a stated mission to "keeping the childhood joy and wonder of animals alive" seems to be an effort to undo its Darker and Edgier phase.
  • Nat Geo Wild seems to be a rip-off of Animal Planet's current state: shows about people that do something to animals with some hold-out all-nature shows. Although Animal Planet's "It's Me or the Dog" was probably based off of Dog Whisperer, Nat Geo Wild has plenty of copied series. When Animal Planet made a show about fish tank manufacturers, it got copied immediately. NG Wild even had a "Fish Bowl" on the day of the Puppy/Super Bowl (though it was even more of a No-Hoper Repeat, consisting entirely of goldfish swimming in a bowl with various background gags.)
• The Canadian channel The Score had historically been a quirky sports news channel, spending much of its day airing informally-toned, pre-recorded blocks of sports news and highlights, a la ESPNEWS and CNN Headline News (in fact, it was originally called Headline Sports, though the similar name may have influenced its rename). While it had always aired "leftover" sports not picked up by other networks in primetime (i.e. WWE, U.S. college sports), its afternoon programming (which was populated primarily by more in-depth shows such as Live @ theScore, The Footy Show) slipped on April 30, 2013, when the CRTC officially approved Rogers' purchase of the channel. Promptly, the afternoon programs were all thrown out and the lineup focused solely on TV simulcasts of radio shows from sister station The Fan 590, including Tim & Sid(ironically hosted by two former Score personalities) and the long-running Prime Time Sports (moving from the main Sportnet channels).
  • The Score was rebranded as "Sportsnet 360" on July 1, 2013; aside from the aforementioned programming changes, Rogers did not mess it up too much off the bat; in fact, the quality and accessibility of its own sports output (mostly Canadian university sports) improved with access to Sportsnet's production resources and promotion. Rogers also got a more accessible outlet for secondary national programming (Sportsnet One is a digital cable channel, while 360 is a historically basic cable channel with better carriage), Sportsnet's UFC rights were moved almost-exclusively to the channel, and it began to air NHL games in the 2014-15 season under Rogers' new contract.
  • In 2014 it was speculated that, especially given how much it paid for the rights, Rogers was planning to cut back some of its other niche programming rights, particularly the UFC, to focus more on the NHL. Sportsnet also cancelled almost all of its university football coverage in the 2014 season (basically, everything but the national semi-final games and the Vanier Cup), citing low viewership ^note  This is a problem affecting all Canadian university sports; collegiate sports do not have the same following in Canada they do in the U.S. In fact, American collegiate sports have a better following in Canada than the domestic equivalent. They didn't explicitly blame the NHL, but the timing of that change couldn't be more symbolic. TSN has since nabbed quite a few of Sportsnet's previous staples, including UFC, UEFA's Champions League and Europa League, as well as ATP tennis events.
  • Brady and Walker, which replaced Tim & Sid, got pulled from the channel after one of its hosts got fired. Meanwhile, Tim & Sid would be promoted to Sportsnet proper, upgraded from a simple radio simulcast to a full-on studio show. With these changes, the channel is now largely back to how it was before its attempts at studio programming, with more of its off-peak hours still filled mainly by automated highlights and news segments.
• Viceland has slipped from its original format as a result of low ratings internationally.
  • The U.S version, which replaced H2, brought in repeats of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Later on, the network decided to pivot towards airing more current affairs and news programming, integrating Vice News after its exclusivity deal with HBO expired, and rebranding as "Vice on TV" (after the UK version adopted the branding earier).
  • The U.K version, owned by Sky, one-upped the U.S by not only joining Philadelphia with fellow FX series Archer, but by bringing back anime to British television, with such shows as Cowboy Bebop, Tokyo Ghoul, Samurai Champloo, and even the English premiere of Seraph of the End. As of 2018, the channel has even dropped the Viceland branding and changed its name to Vice on TV.
  • In Canada, Rogers decided to cut their losses and shut down the domestic Viceland channel in March 2018. Ironically, Rogers also owns the Canadian FX Networks.
• Escape started out as a network focusing on true crime programming, with the only deviation from the format being feature films and documentaries focusing primarily on mystery and crime (with some exceptions, like the 1992 ABC movie The Great Los Angeles Earthquake). In January 2018, the network added reruns of Without a Trace to its prime time lineup, while largely retaining true crime shows for most of its weekday, Saturday and Sunday night schedules. The network shifted away from true crime shows in January 2019, shifting its schedule towards scripted dramas such as Law & Order, Boston Legal and Scandal. This change was made as Escape parent Katz Broadcasting^note (which was purchased by the E. W. Scripps Company in the fall of 2017) announced plans to relaunch Court TV as a multicast network in May 2019, featuring much of the true crime shows that populated Escape's schedule previously along with other series snagged away from rival crime-focused multicaster Justice Network as a result of Katz/Scripps acquiring the Court TV program library. The network later rebranded as Court TV Mystery in 2019, and again as Ion Mystery in 2022.
• Escape's sister network, Grit, began as an action-oriented network featuring programming from various action and adventure genres. Presumably, to reduce competition with Sinclair Broadcast Group and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's action network Charge!, Grit shifted course towards focusing exclusively on classic western series and films (which had been part of the network's lineup in a reduced capacity since it debuted in August 2014) and ridding itself of non-western action programming.
• TBD began in February 2017 with a focus on original web content culled from YouTube and other video sharing sites (including scattered multi-hour blocks of programming from international curated content network The QYou), mixed with independent films and documentaries; TBD became the OTA subchannel home of parent company Sinclair Broadcast Group’s short-lived KidsClick animation block in May 2018 (remaining until the block was discontinued in March 2019), and removed the QYou blocks from its lineup that September (initially replacing them with films and additional runs of its curated shows). Sinclair ceded operational control of TBD to Jukin Media (owner of Fail Army, The Pet Collective and other curated short-form content channels) in October 2018, resulting in the network gradually cutting shows from Fine Brothers Entertainment, Nerdist/Geek & Sundry, and other initial content partners in favor of more Jukin-sourced shows. Then in November 2021, TBD shifted to a split-format schedule of curated web content shows during the day and reruns of reality/competition series like Fear Factor and Wipeout (2008) at night. 2023 saw a shift towards comedy programming, with the Jukin-produced viral video shows increasingly being minimized as TBD added shows like World's Dumbest..., Punk'd, Whose Line Is It Anyway? and Key & Peele as well as the original America's Funniest Home Videos clone The Laugh List to its lineup.
• Z Living (formerly Veria) used to be focused exclusively on programs related to health and wellness, such as fitness programs, cooking shows, and reruns of programs like The Doctors and The Dr. Oz Show. Gradually, however, the network has become a sitcom/oldies rerun farm in the vein of TV Land and Me TV, with the only known wellness series still airing (Namaste Yoga) being punted to an early morning timeslot.
• Polis TV was a Greek local station in Athens which was rebranded as Channel 9 in December 2005. Despite broadcasting kids' shows and other programs such as Village Roadshow films and a poker game show, it would retain its background as a news station; some of its former staples include financial and medical newscasts and localized Al Jazeera programming. However, since the mid-2010's, almost all of the station's schedule in the daytime is filled with infomercials, with a few failed attempts at new programs here and there.^note It doesn't help that its sister channel, Alpha TV, is now bought off by the Vardinogiannis family, meaning that it can no longer air original shows from Alpha's library. Brief news bulletins still air; repeats of previous shows are broadcast after night and in the morning.
• The influential Catholic news network EWTN. Founded in the early-80's by Rita Antoinette Rizzo (ie. Mother Angelica), EWTN was the media outlet for the American Catholic Church - offering daily mass broadcasts, interviews with highly influential Catholic leaders and clergy, etc. The network mostly stayed away from American politics, choosing to instead focus on matters of faith.... but all that started to gradually change in the early-90's. At the 1993 World Youth Day conference, Mother Angelica was outraged by what she saw as the "liberalization" of Catholicism in America - particularly, the role of Jesus being played by a woman rather than a man. Three years later, EWTN took a stab at its own news program called "The World Over", featuring Mother Angelica's understudy Raymond Arroyo. Yet, despite these changes and incidents, the network still mostly stayed away from partisan politics for the next decade-and-a-half or so.
  
  But then, in the 2010's, two big things happened that would change the course of the network arguably for the worse. The first was the appointment of Pope Francis in 2013. In comparison with the staunchly traditional/conservative Catholic views of his two predecessors, Francis' more nuanced and decidedly more progressive views didn't sit well with some conservative Catholics - including those at EWTN. Thus, the network became notorious for its anti-Francis stance, particularly among Raymond Arroyo who, after Mother Angelica died in 2016, became the new face of the network. The second big event that changed EWTN's focus was the election of Donald Trump that same year. Towards the end of his campaign trail, he gave an infamous interview with Arroyo, which many saw as being both hyper-partisan and alarmingly permissive of a lot of Trump's behavior. Nevertheless, it proved to be a big ratings draw. So, from then on out, the network continued focusing heavily on right-wing republican politics. Including hosting friendly interviews with hugely controversial republican figures like Steve Bannon and Marjorie Taylor Greene. While, in 2020, they made the controversial choice to cancel long-time host Gloria Purvis' morning show after her comments on the George Floyd murder didn't sit will with their largely conservative base^note though, to be fair, EWTN has said that this wasn't the reason for the show's cancellation. Meanwhile, as the network focused more on pro-republican politics, they focused less on Catholicism itself (although the network did continue to air its daily masses and devotionals)^note it didn't help that much of the network's funding came from right-wing organizations, including Fox News itself. Today, it is seen by many as being little more than the Catholic version of Fox News, rather than the dedicated Catholic media outlet it once was.