By the 2000s videos were limited to specific shows that had a purpose to play videos, like TRL. By then it wasn’t playing music just to play music. You could probably find complaints on this very board from, say, 2002 that MTV doesn’t play music anymore. Even further back than that probably.
Yeah, the joke about The History Channel was always that because its logo was a capital ‘H’ it got called The Hitler Channel.
I used to love Rugrats and Ahhhhh! Real Monsters. Some of the best and most creative animated kid’s shows ever. Rugrats succumbed to its own success. After a year or two on the air it suddenly got really popular and sold its soul for mainstream commercial mediocrity (lame movies, spin-offs, retooling them as teenagers etc.) Real Monsters suffered the same fate as a lot of Nick shows, in that it was never officially cancelled but put on hiatus (essentially forever). They did this with Angry Beavers too. The creators said that Nick did this deliberately in that once they had enough episodes in rotation they would cease production but never officially cancel it so that people would continue watching, expecting to see new ones someday (even though they had no intention of ever ordering any).
I Tivo’d LFMG. I have heard that it was never released on any home video format, and the book it’s based on was one of the fastest #1 best-sellers to go out of print.
Regarding LOGO: I’ve never seen it, but I do know that it’s GLBT programming, which can have a very wide berth, as we can see. I used to get the Starz channels, which included “Starz In Black”, and the only requirement to be aired on there was to have ONE black actor or actress in the cast. :dubious:
p.s. MTV debuted on August 1st, 1981 - 35 years ago today. I had just graduated from high school.
MTV2, which I don’t get, was planning to air the first hour exactly as it was broadcasted then. That would have been cool to see (and will probably wind up on You Tube in time).
ETA: Just checked my local listings. At 5am central time, MTV is going to air something called “MTV Hour One”. My Tivo is set in the event that it’s what I think it is. 
They still air uncut movies, at least, unlike Sundance Channel. But yes, the commercials and sitcoms are super annoying.
Not sure that IFC airs big budget studio films. I think the closest they come to that is airing films from the “independent” properties of big studios. For example, Fox Searchlight Pictures is the “independent film” branch of 20th Century Fox. (Apparently renamed to 21st Century Fox?)
Not to say that IFC has a deal in place with Fox Searchlight Pictures, but pretty much all the big studios have their own independent film branches.
I assume they think they can get decent ratings for those 2 shows. They are so old they rights to show them are likely cheap.
Trivia: There was a well known All in the Family episode where Archie finds out his big macho friend is gay. Back then not many shows had gay characters. the show Soap had a gay character as a regular and it created a pretty big controversy.
After reading your post I was curious, so I checked IFC’s schedule this week:
MON: 6PM - 12 Midnight - 12 episodes of That 70’s Show
TUE: 6PM - 12 Midnight - 12 episodes of That 70’s Show
WED: Starting at 5:45 PM three films:
American History X
The Patriot
True Lies
THU Starting at 6:00 PM four films:
The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!
The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear
The Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult
The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (again)
FRI: Starting at 5:00 PM three films:
Blow
Mission Impossible
Mission Impossible (again)
SAT: Starting at 6:00 PM three films:
Reno 911!: Miami
Rush Hour 3
Speed
FRI: Starting at 5:30 PM three films:
Mission Impossible
Training Day
Mission Impossible (again)
Mission Impossible, (4 times!) Speed, Rush Hour 3, True Lies, The Patriot… sound like big budget films to me.
Court TV became TruTV. It was pretty good for awhile, but now it’s just programs about people competing to see who can be the most annoying. The Biography Channel is now FYI which seems to be about houses.
All in the Family was created by Norman Lear who is very liberal and the show was popular with liberals. A big part of the show was making fun of the dumb, bigoted Archie.
They sound like big budget studio productions to me too, but maybe they were independent arms? Looking closer:
Mission Impossible: Cruise/Wagner Productions (This was the very first project Tom Cruise made with his production company. All the money came from Paramount.)
Speed: Mark Gordon Productions (All the money came from 20th Century Fox)
Rush Hour 3: Roger Birnbaum Productions, Arthur Sarkissian Productions, Unlike Film Productions (Distributed by New Line Cinema, itself an independent studio at the time. This appears to be a legit independent film, no rationalization required.)
True Lies: Lightstorm Entertainment (Go to that link and expand the blue “Film Studios in the United States and Canada” footer to see a list of film studios, segregated by “major studios” and “independents.” Technically, Lightstorm is a “Producer-owned independent,” but Jesus Christ, everything James Cameron makes sure as hell feels like a major studio picture.)
The Patriot: Centropolis Entertainment, Mutual Film Company
This is really only just barely skating by with the flimsiest of technicalities, in that strictly speaking the production companies that produced these films weren’t literally one of the “big six.” (Compared to, say, a Disney production like John Carter. Which bombed, of course.) And in many of these cases, the independent producer got all the financing for the film from a single major studio.
Even worse, if you look at lists of films by the “big six”, like for instance this list of Columbia films, you can see The Patriot listed there, plain as day.
So while technically, I suppose IFC can claim “independent studios” made the films they’re showing, I think calling shenanigans is justified.
FX was really interesting when it started in 1993 or 1994. The daytime programs were all broadcast live from a Manhattan Apartment, with nighttime showing reruns. Then it turned into another version of the USA Network.
comedy central was formed by the merger of 2 comedy channels. Comedy and Ha.
I remember that. My cable had Comedy not HA.
I used to watch Mystery Science Theater 3000 and The Higgins Boys & Gruber, two Comedy network shows.
Ha! was reruns of sitcoms.
Comedy Channel was mostly clip shows. I think Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Higgins Boys and Gruber were its first original programming, but most of their content was not original (old movies and old cartoons, respectively). Sports Monster was a parody sports news show with Allan Havey’s sidekick Nick Bakay.
There was an eight-hour block of programs that was repeated three times. It included a set rotation of a handful of hosts that did a bit of chatting and introduced standup clips—Allan Havey/Nick Bakay, Rachel Sweet, Rich Hall, Jon Stewart/Patty Rosborough, Higgins Boys/Gruber.
It would be nice to put together the full lineup.
I found this site listing several of the Comedy Channel and HA! shows along with clips
http://splitsider.com/2012/01/the-origin-and-early-programs-of-comedy-central/
Cool! I wish someone had full schedules.
Fans of true-crime TV now have Discovery I.D., and Headline News plays “Forensic Files” almost every night through the overnight hours.
That’s the one channel I’d say hasn’t decayed. Maybe the quality of shows has gone down–though many kids disagree–but it’s still doing what it was doing before. It’s live action and cartoon shows for kids.
Even Cartoon Network decayed a bit, with having some live action bits (and not just as an April Fools joke).
It’s weird to me. In the real world, picking a specialty and doing it well tends to work better. There may be limited expansion, but you stay good at what you do–at least, until people no longer want what you do.
But the audience for the specialty channels is no smaller than it was in the past. People had to go start making YouTube channels and stuff to find that audience.
The only thing I can think of is that it’s the ad-based model. Ads give you money by views, rather than letting a core audience spend more for stuff that appeals to them. The Internet, luckily, has Patreon to try and fix that. Those who love a specialty channel can voluntarily pay more to keep it afloat, while getting some minor perks.
The Koch brothers own PBS? Never heard that before.
Of course it is. To think anything else is to have not thought through the evident truth right in front of you.
TV channels (of all media, pretty much) exist to generate revenue through ads - so ads, and ad bookings, and ad rates drive absolutely everything else (barring the very rare and minor rebellion by someone who tries to show something of importance or interest but little revenue).
You see what you see on the screen because it’s drawing viewers and selling ads. Period. /stop.
Channels stop showing things because they don’t sell ads or at high enough rates. /stop.
Very few channels are charity or nonprofit, PBS included. So they go where the money is, which is which is where the eyeballs are, and most of them will run any damned thing that gets them two more eyeballs, even if it’s complete pandering shit they would have spit on in their early, idealistic phase.
/full stop.