johnnysd

HDNET was my choice as well. It was a fun channel. In addition to the movies they had a couple topless shows on Fridays, a GGW show and Deadline: Unrated with Katie Daryl (?) They weren't porn but fun, they'd show Unrated Bikini Destinations sometimes. There was a lot of good stuff. Then they became AXS which I found completely uninteresting but I guess it is still slogging along.

Josh-da-man

Yeah, they still make tons of music videos. I think that a couple of the MTV channels still air an hour or two of music videos in the early morning, but the way most people see them now is on youtube.

DWilson

I didn't watch "Arrested Development" for one reason or another, but AXS got the rights to the series after it's network run and I was able to watch the whole thing in HD (which was back when many systems were only showing a select tier of HD channels).

GoldenJCJ

I guess just to prove the point of how far The History Channel has fallen: I tuned in yesterday in the hopes of watching some D-Day documentaries, which I assumed they would have been running and was met with an Ancient Aliens marathon.

Their primetime line up for June 6th, was a freaking Ancient Aliens marathon!

Gizmo

HDNET was awesome, along with UniversalHD in the early days of HD TV. I remember watching the entire run of LIFE ON A STICK in HD, along with other hard to find shows.

JeffTheAlpaca

Katie Daryl hosts the Top Ten Revealed now on AXS TV


I remembet they had this trailer show with this bald guy as the host

Norm de Plume

A&E still has a few good shows, though most of its content is exploitative. TLC is just pure shit; redneck reality shows from morning to night. Up here in Canada, Showcase and Bravo used to be high-quality channels that aired obscure cinema, among other things. Now both are just rubbish.

Traxan

There's always American Heroes Channel (AHC)

Michael Corvin

My gut reaction answer was Mtv, but TechTV would actually get my vote. What a damn shame.

wendersfan

Bravo used to show operas and the like. Now they show spoiled rich women yelling at each other.

Alan Smithee

MTV was once the reason I wanted cable (and begged my parents for it constantly to no avail). What it is now is one of the main reasons why I DON'T have cable. They need to put it out of its misery or at least change its name. Even if they only played music I hated, that would still be preferable to the absolute shit they show in its place (and could also be viewed just as easily on YouTube and quality would matter a lot less.)

AMC was one of the last channels that had respect for presentation- no logo bugs, no editing, no commercials, and most movies letterboxed. I was getting cable for free when they started using a bug, then added commercials and started showing less "classic" movies.

I always wanted to start the "What the hell is THIS?" channel, and show old educational films, training videos, home movies and that kind of stuff. The Found Footage Festival kind of stole that idea (they can riff on it much better than I can) and there's tons of that on YouTube. I'd still like to be able to just turn on something and have random crap play all day and discover something I wouldn't have clicked on otherwise.

Do they still have public access? That concept might be a bit outdated now.

JeffTheAlpaca

Reelz was a good channel and they had shows on movies and their own entertainment news show.

Now they show true crime docs and autopsy shows.

DWilson

[QUOTE=Alan Smithee;13754971
AMC was one of the last channels that had respect for presentation- no logo bugs, no editing, no commercials, and most movies letterboxed. I was getting cable for free when they started using a bug, then added commercials and started showing less "classic" movies.I always wanted to start the "What the hell is THIS?" channel, and show old educational films, training videos, home movies and that kind of stuff. The Found Footage Festival kind of stole that idea (they can riff on it much better than I can) and there's tons of that on YouTube. I'd

Do they still have public access? That concept might be a bit outdated now.[/QUOTE]
I happened to catch a few minutes of "Ocean's Twelve" on AMC in the wee small ones, and they had so tinkered with the speed that every non-dialogue scene looked like it was in "stop-motion".
Re: Public Access I remember the days when the local cable operation let the community college Broadcasting classes produce programming for the channel.

Red Hood

Most of the ones I'm disappointed have been mentioned here before:
MTV
MTV2
VH1
E!
Bravo
TLC
Headline News
TechTV/G4
SciFi

The 2 that I don't think have been mentioned and I'm extremely disappointed to this day of how they changed are Reelz Channel and WGN America. Reelz took over the spot of E! once they became the Kardashian network. Reelz had some very good programming early on, including movie reviews including Maltin on Movies, upcoming movie trailers, DVD release shows, re-runs of the Critic, Larry Sanders Show, Cheers, Carson's Comedy Classics, Newsradio, and then boom, it became a channel where Oxygen programming re-runs and shitty documentaries come to die. WGN was great when they had Bulls, Cubs, White Sox and Blackhawk games. Then it became a mess with the Tribune management bankruptcy and after it was sold last year to Nextstar, it simply doesn't have a direction of what type of channel it wants to be.

writer106

I agree with others who have mentioned Bravo, E! and TLC. Another network that has sort of disappointed me is Game Show Network, they use to show a great variety of reruns from various game shows and good original game shows, but now it's just Family Feud most of the day.

DWilson

There were several originals I watched, -hell, I even watched that two-hour nightly block hosted by Shandi Finessey.

Michael Corvin

I watch Deal or No Deal and Match Game during lunch at work from time to time.

Decker

And at cats!

JeffTheAlpaca

VH1 had Behind the Music, Storytellers, Top 20 Countdown, Rock Show, Pop Up Video, and Jump Start where they played blocks of music videos late at night

Now they have Love and Hip and some other stupid reality shows along with repeats of Martin and the Fresh Prince.

I want to cry

Alan Smithee

It seems like EVERY channel shows Law and Order reruns also. Was just thinking about the Sundance Channel- sounded like a good idea, a channel with indie films? Well, first they ruined those with a logo bug, then they started showing movies that didn't fit that category in any shape or form (James Bond for instance) and then they added TV reruns including Law and Fucking Order. What's indie or artistic about that?

Also love how MTV2 was started to address the issue of fewer music videos on the original channel, and now they just show more random shit having nothing to do with music on that. Kind of appropriate they have a show called Ridiculousness, as that word sums up MTV in general.

GoldenJCJ

After reading through this thread it’s no wonder that Cable tv is dying.

PhantomStranger

VH1 these days constantly reruns old episodes of Cheaters. It's like half of their schedule.

JeffTheAlpaca

They should call VH1 BET 2

Josh-da-man

Food Network.

When I first started watching it, you could watch chefs like Emeril Lagasse, Wolfgang Puck, and Mario Batali ply their craft, and maybe get some recipes and pick up a few skills.

Now it's just a bunch of stupid cooking competitions like Chopped, Guy's Grocery Games, Worst Cooks in America, and Supermarket Stakeout.

DWilson

They still do their share of these shows during the day, though they're primarily Female-driven (who needs Wolfgang Puck when you've got Valerie Bertinelli). They also started The Cooking Channel years ago, but it has become more about food, than making food.