Remember when MTV and VH1 showed videos? My dad says that way back when MTV was just wall to wall videos? No commentary, not even commercials! You could just turn it on during a party and leave it on. My God, VH1 will not even play the Top 10 videos (one of the few times they have videos anymore) without f’ing commentary over the music!!!
Remember when The Learning Channel used to have interesting documentaries that you could learn from? The day the Universe Changed? The first two Connections series? Now all you see is an endless stream of crap about medical trauma, tornados, or when buildings fall down.
Remember when Comedy Central (it was Eve’s post that reminded me of this) had lots of stand up comedy on it? Instead of endless streams of bad movies and bad syndicated TV shows?
WHY MUST EVERY F’ING CABLE CHANNEL SLOWLY SCREW ITSELF UP!?!??
Even that glorious bastion of the History channel is starting to dumb down just slightly.
It is as if they want to have as little directly to do with what they claim to represent. As if they are ashamed of something.
I have a theory that the entire universe is just going to get progressively worse until it’s a big black pit of misery and the E! network. If anyone has an alternate view, I would like to hear it.
I think it’s the natural regression to the mean. These networks start off with a ‘focus’ to gain a narrow but loyal audience. Then when they become successful, pressure mounts for them to try to broaden their market, which they do by making their programming less speciaized, and more appealing to the general public.
That leaves the people who went there in the first place because didn’t WANT the average out of luck. The tyranny of the masses.
I think Sam Stone hit it dead on. What’s worse is when a cable channel picks up on something another channel has had success with and tries (feebly) to copy it. E! I’m looking at you and your horrendous Anna Nicole Show.
Ugh. Fucking VH-1. I used to be able to count on it for showing some decent videos when MTV was just showing TRL crap. Late night, they even used to show some awesome rare videos, like Dido. Now it should be renamed Sex MTV, to my mind. It’s completely pathetic that all they show now is MTV reruns–and most of them Sex in the 90s.
Even the History Channel has begun to irk me ( :eek: ) . Why, do you ask? World War II, all day, every day.
I suppose It’s because it was a major event of (fairly) recent, which there is a lot a media about and there are still a good deal of people who experinced it with us to tell their story. Don’t get me wrong, WWII is indeed a big deal. But so are the other thousands of years of history. (I would love to see more shows on the 18th century and cultural history from all over the world.)
I still love A&E, although I wish they’d show less Murder She Wrote, Poriot, etc.
And TLC; their are far too many Stories. Dating Story, Baby Story, Wedding Story, Makeover Story…
Not only that, but they’ve begun to use (drumroll) music video editing in some of their specials. (The one I saw was about gladiators, IIRC.) Shameful, just shameful.
Plus, poor A&E lost the older (and still high-quality) L&O episodes, most of which will probably never be aired on TNT. (And while we’re talking about TNT, how the fuck did Stepmom become a new classic?) And what do they put in their place? Third Watch. Just damn shameful.
How about the Travel Channel? Discovery bought them and gutted all their interesting shows, leaving dreck like “Top Ten Beaches with Resorts for Rich Folks Who Don’t Want To See Anything But The Bar And The Stretch of Beach Commandeered For Their Pleasure” or “Top Ten Reasons the Las Vegas Tourism Board Paid Us to Show You This Dreck to Boost Tourism to Their Gauche Shithole”. And oh yeah, what the hell does “Top Ten Natural Disasters” have to do with travel, anyway?
And another goddamn thing, why doesn’t Discovery just create the War Channel, move all those war shows there so all those limp dicked war groupies can slobber over a channel of their very own, leaving the other channels for folks who would like for their children to learn about history, geography, sociology, anthropology, etc.
Sorry for being so caustic, didn’t get enough sleep last night…
Hey…it’s about satisfying a target audience. There’s shows on that channel they’d never have had the opportunity to air if they had to schedule around the non-aviation shows on Discovery.
For the same reason, I’m fond of the Discovery Science Channel (or just “The Science Channel” now, I think…or did they change it back?). “Connections” is the shizz.
TLC used to have some good stuff, but now they’ve adopted the “When The World’s Worst Drivers Are Caught On Tape Attacking Police Chases That Already Appeared On FOX Specials” format. Sad.
I was just about the remark that the History channel is just called the Hitler channel around here, but you beat me to it.
Discovery channel: Ancient Egypt schmaltz with total kooks for “experts”, 24/7. "Could the pyramids have been built by. . " "No. Whatever it was you were about to suggest, no. Change channel.
Travel channel-- either crap on Hawaii, crap on New Orleans, or the 10 best luxury resorts at which I can’t afford to get sunburnt. Change channel.
History channel, Black and white image: “By the spring of 1939, the. . .” change channel.
Food channel: Jamie Oliver making something with a lot of cilantro and riding around on a Vespa to Blur or something. “Now, if you take a crawly pooka and took it into this illsaw-wally, here, it’s tastes a bit teak-knobby. Yer mates’ll think it’s really boffo.” Change channel.
Settle on Animal channel-- geared at 5th graders but at least entertaining. Capybara or hedgehog mating scene begins-- too disturbing. Change channel.
Repeat.
And now there is NOTHING to watch on Fox.
Well, to continue the lovefest, the SciFi channel just axed Farscape. (They didn’t pick up Season 5 – the rest of Season 4 will still air.) Guess they think we’ll be happy with endless repetitions of Tremors 1-3, the Langoliers, and endless thirdrate horror flicks.
Even A&E isn’t what it used to be. The first time I ever turned it on, they were playing Taming of the Shrew with Burton and Taylor. I was stunned. Actual culture on television, plus Liz Taylor’s truly amazing cleavage, circa 1962 or thereabouts.
I just want to know what’s up with Comedy Central and that damn Battlebots show? What on earth does little metal contraptions slamming into each other and Carmen Electra’s cleavage have to do with comedy?
