Two words:
Potato Judge.
How about a channel dedicated to music and music videos. That would be a cool idea. :rolleyes:
More international channels, with optional English language CC translations, if necessary. I want to watch all the current popular shows everyone else is watching in other countries.
A gay men’s channel and a gay women’s channel that come with the extended basic channel package and not just pay channel adult porn.
I’d love an Asian Cinema Channel that played films from Hong Kong, China, Japan, Korea… the latest movies you always hear awesome things about, as well as classic martial arts movies, samurai epics, chanbara, and even better anime films. I’m a big fan of Asian cinema, but it’s so hard to see anything but the few biggest and most mainstream films over here, unless you want to buy DVDs sight-unseen over the internet.
Who am I kidding? Even if they offered such a neat channel, it probably wouldn’t be included in my crummy basic cable package.
The “One and Out” channel, only showing shows that lasted for one season or less.
Mainstays could be Gidget, Bridget Loves Bernie, the Honeymooners…
They could also have programming featured around actors - the McLean Stevenson timeslot, the Ted McGinley timeslot…
And, of course, every Friday night they could have the ‘pilots that never got picked up marathon’ with a different theme each week (e.g., people that could transform into animals; fish-out-of-water shows, “She’s the <blank>, He’s the <blank>”…
THe International Channel has a lot of this stuff but it doesn’t seem to widely available. I wish my cable company (Time-Warner) would pick it up, I’d break down and get digital if they did. Time-Warner only has a gazillion Sapnish language channels despite Austin being a university town with lots of Asian students and residents…
The Cat Channel. Just cats. Big cats, little cats, tame cats, wild cats, purebred and alley cats. I can look at cats all day. There could be a hunting hour, a napping show, and a run-madly-all-over time, just like in real life. You could show cats in history (but not the parts where they were cruel to the cats). Oh, and of course a kitten hour.
The gaming channel.
Video games, collectible card games, board games, etc.
The recent poker-on-TV craze might be a step in this direction.
The NFl channel(s). Or at least pay-per-view. I hate missing Eagles games here in Baltimore and there’s no way I’m paying for the Dish whe I alreadsy have cable for high-speed internet. They could take the rest of the channels away and just give me Eagles games for 6 months out of the year and I’d be happy.
I’d thought of this idea the other month, and then forgot about it, and then you mention the idea and I remember it again. This would be a great way to relive failed spin-offs, like Three’s A Crowd, Flo, Enos, etc. And great shows that didn’t make it, like Andy Richter Controls the Universe, The Tick, Keen Eddie, etc. And weird shows that everyone just assumed might last, like Models Inc. And of course, bad shows like Cop Rock and shows so bad that they only aired like 1-3 times.
The International Soap Opera channel.
Soaps are cheap to produce and seem to be universally popular. I’m sure it would be easy enough to buy up enough content to fill a 24-hour cable channel.
Whenever I travel overseas I always try to watch a few of the locally produced soaps, even when I don’t speak a word of the language. I find them fascinating. Every country seems to have its own twist. Not a whole lot of infidelity in East Asian soaps, for example, but, boy, do they have a lot of problems with the in-laws…
Actually, there already is a Science Channel: http://science.discovery.com (yes, it’s owned by the same people that run The Discovery Channel). It shows a lot of what you suggest. It even shows reruns of the very old “Mr. Wizard” shows.
The cable channel I’d really like to see is one that does not show a stupid bug in the corner all the time, telling me what channel I’m watching, and that does not show those damned animated promos during the shows, telling me what’s coming later. I don’t really care what it shows, just that it lets me watch the show undisturbed!
Can we just generalize this to a channel with all the good British programs and none of the crappy ones? Red Dwarf, Whose Line, Ab Fab, and Junkyard Wars. Of course they’d run out of programming after a few weeks, but still…
Keep an eye on GSN. They seem to be leaning very strongly in this direction. They have shows dedicated to blackjack, poker, pool, and horse racing.
I’m amazed there has not been a Talk Show Network. There are hundreds of hours of old talk shows available. I wonder if the networks would lease the reairing rights to some of the old Tonight Show episodes? I also wonder if a talk show network would have to get permission from the celebs. who appeared on older talk shows to reair their appearances. They’d also perhaps have to edit out some of the movie plugs, musical performances, and other stuff that might demand royalties. Still, if someone could put it together, this network would have a chance at success.
I’d like to see a left-leaning news and politics channel that doesn’t pretend to be unbiased. Kinda like Pacifica Radio, but for TV.
Robin
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The Simpsons Channel. All Homer, all the time. Mmmmmmh.
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The “European” movie version channel. Movies from the 50s and early 60s that had “The Good Stuff” in them for the European market but were sliced up for the American.
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The 1968-1988 movie channel. Lots of great movies from that era. Hardly ever shown at all on commericial TV, which mean cut up, ads, etc.
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Ditto the Music Video, Science and SciFi channels ideas. Comedy Central is on the verge of needing a suitable replacement too.
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A News channel that’s not 100% extreme right-wing nutjob propaganda and actually has news. (E.g., the Lacy Peterson story is not news.)
A premium channel devoted exclusively to features, trailers, and shorts from the Something Weird library. I’ve even got a name for it: the Something Weird Channel. Eh? Eh? Eh?