Traxan

It's now the paranormal/ghost channel. Nothing but metaphysical/ghost shows. Food shows like Bizarre Foods and Man v Food no longer exist. I just realized this now but it has been going on a while, I take it? Anyone know what got into them to go down this route?

DJariya

Ratings. The Ghost shows get the big ratings. Hence the rebrand to TRVL Scripps used to own Travel, but sold it to Discovery and then Discovery did the revamp.

They officially gave up on producing any travel shows a few years ago.

I believe repeats of Andrew Zimmern's shows air on the Cooking Channel.

fujishig

The fact that they changed and few of us noticed tells you everything you need to know about why they did it...

DJariya

I used to watch the Travel Channel pretty religiously. Samantha Brown, Anthony Bourdain and Zimmern. But like I said, after the rebrand, I gave up.

The funny thing is the international version of Travel Channel still shows actual travel content. When I've watched them on trips to Asia, they still are branded Travel Channel and show the old travel related shows and some new stuff exclusive to that region.

tanman

Youtube took over. Now there a lot of great content some with pretty high production levels available to just about any destination. This channel is one of my favorites for obvious reasons

DJariya

Yes there is some great travel content on YouTube. Steph Tayler ^^^ as he posted is an awesome content creator and stunningly attractive.

Mark Wiens

Kara and Nate

The Best Ever Food Review Show

Davidsbeenhere

Yellow Productions and lots more.

But, right now with travel on hold, a lot of these creators are soon going to run out of content.

JeffTheAlpaca

A Wealth of Entertainment (AEW) or channel 387 on Directv is kind of like what the Travel Channel use to be

Josh-da-man

It's not unusual for channels to drift away from their original mission into a bunch of inspid shit. See: MTV.

The Food Network has been taken over a bunch of stupid competitions like Chopped and Guy's Grocery Games. AMC went from American Movie Classics to a bunch of whatever. VH1 just seems to show old sitcoms. TLC is just a bunch of "reality" crap.

ddrknghtrtns

Cable is dying a slow painful death. Within the next few years, a lot of these channels will start vanishing.

If you like travel programs, diginet channels Create and DABL offer a variety of travel programs.

JeffTheAlpaca

I miss the days when MTV2 and FUSE played music videos and concerts.

Ditto for VH1.

VH1 now airs reality shows geared towards African Americans now and could be a sister station to BET.

Red Hood

Viacom is a big culprit of these brand changes on TV. Not many have noticed, but Comedy Central has slowly but surely been downsizing on their original programming and getting shows like the Office for all day re-runs. It's gotten worse since the merger with CBS.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/17/b...streaming.html

barelypure

If the front looks as good as the back I won't need more things to do in Oahu.

E Unit

Same here. Thankfully there's a decent amount of stuff on Hulu as well, you just have to search for it. But this current Travel Channel programming is shit. I don't plan on traveling to any paranormal place anytime soon.

Screw YouTube. I have no stomach for that ADD programming. Takes more than titties to get me interested in a good travelogue.

MLBFan24

I watch “Paranormal Caught on Camera” and “Ghost Nation“

But Ghost Nation is really bad. I really like Ghost Hunters (old and new versions), but Ghost Nation is just terrible. Editing, episode pacing, lack of evidence in the episodes, narration, etc. It features some of the original Ghost Hunters cast, which is why I’m comparing them.

cultshock

Yeah, this kind of thing is happening with tons of cable "specialty" channels. It's become a joke, cable TV deserves the slow death it is going through, most of the channels are useless as shit and have nothing to do with their originally branding anymore.

ddrknghtrtns

Sort of like they are forcing people to ditch cable and adopt more streaming services.

Obi-Wanma

I have noticed that the office is on pretty much all the time on Comedy Central now. Like so many channels now that basically show 1 show over and over 90% of the time.

cultshock

They forced me to ditch cable nearly 15 years ago.

PhantomStranger

Cable is quickly becoming a wasteland of cheap reality programming and reruns. What's happened is that an entire generation of Millennials and younger basically don't consume cable at all, which has crippled cable ratings across the board.

That new paradigm has forced tv execs to go after the very cheapest contest and hope they remain relevant. We will approach a point in the next five years when traditional cable economics don't make sense for the channels anymore. They will either fold up shop or become low-revenue streaming channels.

JeffTheAlpaca

I don't think MTV Live has shown anything new since 2017. They repeat the same old concerts and Later with Jools Holland.

The music videos are new but there is probably a surplus of live concerts and shows across the globe they could show or televise.

ddrknghtrtns

Same here! Saw the direction they were headed and promptly cancel.

tanman

Ok boomer.

Joking aside, people who say that are thinking about YouTube from 10 years ago. There's a lot of excellent well produced material on YouTube now. Yeah what's popular on YouTube is still crap but maybe just don't watch those videos and find something that interests you.

tanman

It's just shifted. Now the original content is on streaming subscription services because that's where all the money is now. I will shed very few tears for many of those cable channels.

And actually now that I think of it your reasoning doesn't apply to a lot of channels. Why did the history channel switch to 24 hour pawn stars and american pickers? Their previous content wasn't expensive to produce. Same thing with the travel channel and TLC etc. I just think that the general population loves reality TV (unfortunately)

tanman

Oh it is just as good and then some. And she even has a great personality on top of all that. This is the absolute sexiest video she's done:

Traxan

I remember when Bravo was a high brow arthouse movie channel. Now it's the "Real" Housewives channel. What a fall from grace