Traxan

Talk of mission drift in my Travel Channel thread got me to thinking what cable channel's drift from its original mission is most disappointing to an original viewer. Not who drifted the furthest but who let you down the most? The choices are numerous.

* MTV
* VH1
* Bravo
* History
* A&E
* AMC
* TLC

Your choice and why? I definitely think History. There were a lot of nifty shows that don't air any more. I loved "Modern Marvels." And I really would have thought they would re-air "Life After People" since it is happening now with the lockdown. But it's nothing but Oak Island and Ancient Aliens.

Bravo has to be a bitter pill for original fans, though. From class to trash, making celebrities out of plastic surgery disasters.

DJariya

YouTube basically killed the need to watch music videos on television. That's why MTV and VH1 had to change their business model. No one was going to turn on their channel to watch some arbitrary Top 20 countdown show, because honestly who cares? And I assume sponsors probably stopped paying for those kind of shows. I think music video themed shows stopped being relevant in the early 2000s.

fujishig

SyFy changing over to show stuff like Law and Order SVU and wrestling (though I like wrestling, it was the start of drifting off brand).

TechTV merging with G4 and then completely rebranding to showing reruns of COPs seemingly 24/7 then, what, the Esquire network?

Decker

TLC was once an interesting channel with health and nature documentaries. Now it's shitty reality TV.

It's actually comical that Bravo kept their name from the days when they showed classic movies and other fine arts programming as it's now the very bottom of the Reality TV barrel. It's the Utah Jazz of TV channel names.

DJariya

SyFy has changed around a lot in the last decade. But, they still show Science Fiction and Fantasy themed shows and movies. But, most of them are extremely low budget.

Inhumans99

Yeah...Syfy channel belongs on the list because while they have aired shows the past several years that turned out to be good to great (shows like Dark Matter, The Expanse, The Magicians, and I will even include shows like Killjoys on the list) they drifted from the fun channel they were that would air Syfy original movies on a fairly regular basis. Sure, they also aired the new Battlestar Galactica which ran for several years and was a great show, but BG used to be part of a line up that included movies produced by folks like The Asylum, and Cinetel (I think that is the name of another of slightly higher caliber production house, at least special effects wise, of originals).

Now all that they are left with are shows like Vagrant Queen so perhaps we will see them go back to generating fun but cheesy originals. I knew they were moving away from originals when it got to the point where you only saw a handful of original films during Shark Week but the past few years they even gave up on that. I feel this was a missed opportunity and if they had continued building up their library of originals over the past few years imagine how many people would be watching these fun but doofy films cooped up at home due to the pandemic.

Anyway, as folks are well aware on this site I tilt at this windmill a lot and will put a pin in my Syfy channel rants for another long stretch of time

Red Dog

SyFy (originally SciFi) was the first thing that crossed my mind.

Also History Channel.

JeffTheAlpaca

MTV and VH1

They were two of my favorite channels from the 80's to the early 2000's.

Fuse sucks too since they don't play music anymore.

At least MTV Live or channel 572 on Directv plays music videos

tommyp007

History.

Sonny Corinthos

I would still rather watch videos on MTV or VH1 than to see crappy reality shows or old 90's sitcoms.

GoldenJCJ

E! Entertainment Television was, at one time, the channel I’d park on and leave throughout the day. They had informative Hollywood news, in-depth movie programs, funny Talk Soup, and movie trailers. I can’t remember the last time I watched anything on that garbage channel now. TBH, I’m not sure they’re even still around. That’s how little is give a shit about that channel anymore.

DWilson

Oh, they're still around. It was actually the first channel that came to mind, but I'm surprised that someone else actually mentioned it. I was watching the channel when it was Movie Time and it was primarily trailers and EPK videos. I used to watch it all the time but it's been years and years.

Traxan

MTV's decline predates the launch of YouTube by at least a decade.

Barth

TechTV was a good mention. I used to watch that regularly. Then they got rid of a couple shows I liked, then changed names and format. I didn’t watch much after that. I got attached to a lot of hosts on shows on TechTV.

MTV for sure. I loved Dial MTV and headbangers ball growing up in the 80s. It’s sad what it’s become but I understand 24 hours of videos doesn’t make money. Remote Control was my favorite game show during its day.

DWilson

Back around 2006 (I think) when I got my first HD TV I watched a lot of HDNet (and HDNet Movies). This was before streaming became a thing, and they ran a lot of older series in HD. I finally watched the early seasons of "Smallville" , "Dead Like Me" and other genre shows. They eventually became AXS TV and I've only watched their import of "The X Factor" (which is sort of dead right now). HDNet Movies eventually became a costly add-on channel and most of what they provided could be gotten elsewhere.

Eric F

Discovery in the beginning was great, now they suck.

Mondo Kane

MTV was the big obvious choice, but as I got older, The Independent Film Channel sure grabbed my attention (From What I remembered, it was still a cool Indie channel when it first got hyphenated to IFC) So much great stuff like:
Samurai Saturdays
All Access Thursdays (They would play the entire laserdisc of things like El Mariachi,Texas Chainsaw Massacre,Sid & Nancy,Once Were Warriors and Trainspotting)
Documentaries about Kurosawa, John Waters, David Lynch and Dario Argento
Elvis Mitchell’s Show (Forgot what it was called but it was the “Actor’s Studio” with directors instead)

I haven’t visited the channel in years, but among the last movies I remember seeing on there was....Catwoman.

dvd-4-life

Headline News.
It used to be 24 hour news channel and switched to Forensic Files channel.

bluetoast

The joke about MTV not playing videos was going on way before that, even in the late 90s.

My thought is that it’s similar to what Howard Stern said about radio: He said something like “Every random person thinks they can be a DJ, because every stations keep playing the hits, what about the deep cuts?!” Going off the beaten track with your radio playlist only gets you so much, and won’t make you “cooler” or get higher ratings. On top of that, it’s not like the base amount of listeners to the radio is going to magically go up 200% even while playing the hits.

MTV was basically a radio station in that regard. They’re playing the hits, (and years later maybe some controversial videos past 10 p.m.), despite the initial novelty. But even at the beginning, they were stupid enough to not even be playing all the hits (by not featuring black artists). A total format change was bound to happen.

JeffTheAlpaca

I remember the HDNET movie premiere and they showed movies like the Hunted (Dafoe) and Melancholia before they hit the theaters.

DWilson

Which reminds me of American Movie Classics, which was similar to TCM, showing a lot of classic films without edits or commercials. Then it became AMC and showed more general "Pop" movies with commercials, and "time-squeezing" and such. I stopped watching it at that point, but it took another turn, coming up with its own dramas and becoming what it is now.

Josh-da-man

MTV is probably the gold standard there.

They actually started drifting away from all music pretty early on. I think one of their first non-music programs was the game show Remote Control in 1987 or thereabouts. And by the early 90s they were doing other programs like The Real World (which is probably the first true "reality show") and Liquid Television.

I also think that one of the country music channels, CMT maybe?, started showing Dukes of Hazzard reruns in the 90s, and sort of kicked off cable networks flooding their schedules with syndicated tv shows.

Sort of interesting that the music channels are the ones who began these trends.

And it also bugs me to no end that BBC America now, almost exclusively, plays syndicated American programming. Is Doctor Who the only British program they now have in their line-up?

DWilson

I believe BBC America still shows "Graham Norton", and their various co-productions like "Killing Eve".

If I remember correctly, didn't Tru Tv start out as "The Nashville Network"?

flansered

I came here to mention BBC America. But yeah, aside from the occasional Doctor Who, Graham Norton, and the BBC Nature documentary series it's Star Trek all day every day. They also fill up days with American movies, like how they are scheduled to air all four National Lampoon's Vacation movies this Sunday. Movies even air during weeknight prime time slots. At this point they should just rebrand.

Sonny Corinthos

Totally forgot about E! I used to watch a lot of their programming. They should changed the name of the network to K!, because every time I go by their channel, the Kardashians are on.