Network Decay/Major Shifts That Fit
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The channel has been pushing or narrowing the limits on what they can show without leaving their genre entirely and/or are being too over reliant on a Cash Cow Franchise or two, but at least what they are doing still fits the original mission somewhat.
- Discovery HD Theater was rebranded as the auto-focused Velocity Network. It still fits because they show a bunch of car-related programming, like Chasing Classic Cars, Wheeler Dealers, and World Rally Championship coverage, and is a good rebranding now that networks that are just pure demonstrations of HD programming on a constant loop are no longer needed.
- While Nickelodeon has stuck with its original mission better than its competitors, over the years the network has been severely narrowing its demographic by increments. It originally prided itself as being essentially a family network, with an emphasis on programming for children in the daytime (preschoolers in the early morning on weekdays), teens in early evening, and parents at night. Now, however, most (if not all) of the teen and adult programming (Snick, Nick at Nite, and the last vestiges of children's game shows, just to name a few) has been dumped in favor of cartoon-y cartoons and tween/preteen "hip" live action series (and about 12 hours of SpongeBob reruns daily). The worst and most obvious example of this is the recent live action show on the so-called "TEENick" lineup (which retains only one or two shows about/directed towards actual teenagers), The Naked Brothers Band, which essentially is Nick's answer to Hannah Montana with two 9-year-old boys. Really.
- Interestingly, you can see how Nick was trying so intensely to narrow down the age of people watching the network when you look at the failure of shows like Invader Zim. And by "failure", we really mean "it was being watched primarily by teens and college kids, not the 6-11 year olds that Viacom wanted." Avatar: The Last Airbender would've gone the same way as Zim if it weren't for the fact that it was just as popular with the target age as it was with the teens (and the college kids, and the adults). Even then, the network seemed to resent the attention it got from older viewers, as new episodes came out at a snail's pace and reruns are almost never shown now that the show has ended (possibly in part because of having an actual plot, instead of being episodic like most cartoons). (They've shown reruns in recent days, but more to promote the film adaptation than for anything like ratings.)
- Nicktoons Network dumped showing of older or cancelled Nicktoons such as Angry Beavers, Doug, Ren and Stimpy, Rugrats, Hey Arnold!, Invader Zim, etc. in favor of showing reruns of the exact same shows playing on Nickelodeon, just a few channels away. Lately however, it's even been getting rid of more recent Nicktoons and replacing them with standardized superhero adaptations and bizarre Infomercial programming consisting of cheap Flash cartoons for the NFL and a Skechers kid's shoe line...and live-action programming. The "Nicktoons Comedy Breakfast" seems to exist solely to keep reruns of Drake and Josh, The Troop, and Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide on the air technically without dragging down the ratings on the mother channel.
- Another Nick spinoff, Nick GAS (Games and Sports), was formerly a dumping ground for Nick's aforementioned children's game shows and game/sports-themed shows, along with original segments dealing with kids and their games and sports — basically, Viacom's answer to GSN. And like the former Game Show Network, GAS slowly lost programs until, by the end, it was only airing reruns of a few old Nick games, having lost all of the original segments and programming. It was finally replaced with the teen-oriented "The N", formerly part of the now just-for-preschoolers Noggin, a switch which now leaves millions of college kids without reruns of Legends of the Hidden Temple to sarcastically comment about.[1]
- Naturally, "The N" itself quickly decayed, with a mass-canning of much of their teen/young adult oriented programming (such as South of Nowhere and Instant Star), and devoting an increasing amount of airtime to old Nickelodeon shows, other Disney Channel-esque tween fare, and reruns of UPN stalwart One on One because it can be run for pennies per airing. A special mention goes out to the way they treated Degrassi: The Next Generation — The N's broadcasts had always been Bowdlerized, the most infamous example being when they refused to air an episode about abortion for fear of offending the Moral Guardians. It Got Worse when the show started becoming really popular in America, putting The N in a position to force creative changes onto the show that served to turn it from a fairly realistic (if hyper-melodramatic) depiction of teenage life into a clone of The OC.
- Then in a two-for-one decay, the TEENick block got dumped from Nickelodeon proper while The N is being renamed "TeenNick"...and less than two years on the air Teen Nick is already on life support. With only one series showing new episodes, Teen Nick's problem is that they have too little shows they are willing to show and the ones they do show are rerun into the ground, which mainly consists of continuous marathon-like re-runs of a small handful of mid-2000s tween Nickelodeon shows. In particular, Zoey 101, which is shown on the network at least seven times a day, even though only one actress from that show (Victoria Justice) has an actual career these days. The network's other favorites after Degrassi and Zoey tend to change once in a while. As of this writing, Drake and Josh and The Amanda Show seem to be the other favorite children of Teen Nick's shows. It doesn't help that they will re-run the same episodes multiple times over a three-day span. Occasionally, they'll add shows to the schedule and give them big promotion during commercial breaks, but they soon disappear after a month or so. All Teen Nick has going for it is Degrassi and The 90s Are All That, but even then that's completely reruns. Very ironic when you think this channel replaced Nick GAS, Teen Nick took much quicker to decay than Nick GAS did.
- "The N" used to share a programming half with "Noggin", which used to be about education for young people. That demo got younger and younger until now it's for 3-5 year olds (and itself has bitten the bullet and renamed itself Nick Jr.), while others insist Noggin decayed when Sesame Workshop sold their share of the network back to Viacom...a sale which threw The Electric Company, 3-2-1 Contact, Ghostwriter, and pre-1990s episodes of Sesame Street off the air.
- Nick at Nite started out as the after-dark portion of Nickelodeon, where they showed decades-old TV shows (The Munsters, I Love Lucy, The Dick Van Dyke Show)...but as time went on it began adding shows that were ten years old or less (Roseanne, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and The George Lopez Show) and eventually changed their motto to "The Place for Modern TV Hits", airing such shows as Scrubs, Everybody Hates Chris, and Glenn Martin, DDS (and the last isn't even that). Arguably the shift began with the 1995 addition of Taxi, the most relatively modern and, more importantly, edgy show the network had broadcast up to that point. This is mostly due to Nickelodeon fully taking over programming duty for Nick at Nite (now spelled as Nick@Nite) and re-purposing the network as a family block, offloading the classic TV programming to TV Land (see Slipped, above). Of course, the lines are blurring between Nickelodeon and Nick@Nite in terms of promotion and some speculate Nick@Nite might soon disappear.
- One of the key issues is that it always showed reruns. Also, if you look at it from a relative time standpoint, it's not so bad — in the late 1980s, the lineup was dedicated to the 1960s-70s; the 1990s lineup had shows from the 1970s-80s; and the 2000s had mostly shows from the 1990s. Today, it's not that surprising to see shows from the 1990s and 2000s...which would be fine if they showed eight or nine separate shows a night, instead of a one show a night, of a rotating lineup of about four shows. More recently, Nick@Nite is heading towards becoming The George Lopez Show At Nite by giving the show Wolverine Publicity. Nearly every marathon they air now is of George Lopez, and they don't even save marathons for holidays and special occasions anymore. First they would look for any excuse they could find to show a George Lopez marathon, until they recently stopped bothering to come up with an excuse. Lopez reruns probably even did in George Lopez's TBS talk show eventually in August 2011, as the sitcom often outrated the talk show.
- The Latin American version of Nick@Nite suffered this as well, originally aired shows old shows like Get Smart, Bewitched, and I Dream Of Jeannie, then it added newer shows like Fresh Prince than Kenan And Kel and finally Zoey 101 (Which still aired in ""regular" Nick) God knows why. However when it started airing fresh Prince a new block called Nick Hits debuted on the Nick@Nite timeslot during weekends which contained old Nicktoons like Rocko's and Rocket Power. So finally Nick hits became Nick@Nite and all the old shows stopped airing
- Cuatro TV in Spain once prided themselves in that they were "the only pure TV channel in Spain", offering "just TV series and made-for TV shows, no movies, no reality shows, no celebrity gossip shows." Now they have movies, reality shows, and celebrity gossip shows. Welp. Since their name is so generic (it means "The Fourth", like Das Vierte below) they got away with a major shift without invalidating their name.
- The Playboy Channel probably goes here, in that it's still showing naked people. Originally, the channel showed video Playmate layouts and short, tasteful softcore movies that sometimes actually had well-written, endearing stories. Much like the original's Magazine Decay, the channel's kept the sex and lost the class, and now shows (randomly renamed) hardcore movies and a near-endless barrage of "reality" shows, including more than one that could be described as "Big Brother where they show the sex".
- The homogenization of BET (Black Entertainment Television) following its sale to Viacom (which didn't correspond to an increase in production values) led to its decline. They canned their news programs, and started to be more restrictive as to what and who they play on their music block. Back in The Nineties, it was easy for you to be seen on BET if you were black and MTV refused to play you. Nowadays, groups like Public Enemy and NWA (to say nothing of Alternative Hip Hop acts like A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul, or black rock acts like Bad Brains and Living Colour) wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell of being played on BET if they had gotten started today. Mostly because the network has a policy of not wanting to play music that's deemed too intelligent, relevant, creative, or over the heads of teenagers (specifically teenage girls). It's become a perfect representation of the modern, hyper-commercialized rap scene, which is more interested in selling ringtones than actually creating art.
- Recently,[when?] BET has stopped playing videos that were made prior to 2005 (before that it was 2001!). They used to play old-school vids from The Eighties and The Nineties on 106 & Park's Old School Jam of the Day, but this has since been turned into the Flashback of the Day, showing vids that were only a couple of years old. 106 & Park's VJs (Free and AJ) even lampshaded this, and their vocal criticism of BET's direction is believed to be part of the reason why they were let go. The more conspiratorial-minded feel that BET is trying to bury old-school hip-hop.
- As of 2010, BET started airing re-runs of many black sitcoms of the past decade like Smart Guy, The Bernie Mac Show, and Everybody Hates Chris to follow the mini-marathon formats most current cable networks utilize. BET also started producing series of their own, like Let's Stay Together and more seasons of The Game after its cancellation from the CW, and even its own late-night talk show block with The Monique Show and Wendy Williams Show. The music has mostly been eliminated outside of 106 and Park, but with the increased focus on the internet and their site being a jumping point for music, at least they have a good reason.
- To watch the Travel Channel, you'd think the only reason to travel would be to play poker, to find ghosts, or most importantly, to try the unusual, sometimes disgusting, local foods. See Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations, Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern, Food Paradise, and Man v. Food. One has to wonder if Travel Channel wishes they were Food Network for gluttons. No doubt a program of the most haunted restaurants with the best/strangest cuisine would be the ultimate fusion for both. Eventually they were bought by Food Network's parent company in 2010.
- Food Network began with cooking shows and has branched out into contests and reality shows...but every single one of these still has to do heavily with food and fits the network and every new personality has a background in the culinary arts.
- Lifetime Television used to be the health/medical channel, or at least on Sundays. A third-party company bought the entire Sunday schedule to air shows they produced about such things as open-heart surgery, not just for educating the public but intended for medical professionals. There was plenty of stuff for women (nutrition, childbirth, etc.), but then the deal expired and the shows were simply dropped as the network moved to being "television for women" all the time and kind of a joke in the industry — all its shows seemed to revolve around women becoming independent, not because it's cool but because men are brutal and have Testosterone Poisoning. This decay has been on so long that most people forget it wasn't always the home of execrable made-for-TV movies that prey on the fears of middle-aged suburban housewives.
- The Latin American version of Discovery Kids began broadcasting in the late 1990s with either edutainment shows (like Ghostwriter), ecology shows that didn't quite fit on Discovery Channel, or science shows mainly geared to early teens and adolescents (i.e., Popular Mechanics for Kids)...however, the number of older fans was dwindling and unable to support the channel. Then, in the early 2000s, somebody noticed a market gap with preschooler shows being limited to the mornings and it underwent an extreme shift towards the toddler and kindergarten demographics, much to the chagrin of older fans. Currently, the channel airs preschool fare like LazyTown, Hi-5, Backyardigans, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Barney, Pocoyo, Curious George, and some of the Nick Jr. shows from before the latter channel got its own Latinamerican feed.
- In Mexico, the children's channel ZAZ is a case of "bad for some, good for others". The channel was launched on 1991 as a children's showcase station, even airing shows from Nickelodeon when that channel was still unknown on the region. On 1996 the channel was expanded into all of Latin America, and was refocused into a "non-violent" channel with shows like Arthur, Muppet Babies, Fraggle Rock, etc. staying with that format for over a decade. Somewhere in 2003 they started to focus in showcasing family movies, but in 2008 it was decided that the "non-violent" purpose of the channel was "out" so they trashed it. First they started airing an Argentinian teen soap opera called Rebelde Way, which clearly is not for young kids. In 2009, the channel began airing anime, but since kids' networks generally won't air that, it was welcomed with all the love in the world by anime fans who had no interest in the channel and prior to this change considered ZAZ a stupid channel with bad shows aimed at idiots. Rebelde Way has since been dropped from the channel, and, in a twist of irony, the channel hasn't premiered any new anime series since January 2010, and has actually cancelled some of them, so the programming is becoming repetitive, much to the chagrin of those who welcomed the channel's new concept in 2009, until the channel went off the air (this time for good) in February 2012. The channel also made commercials mocking its old "non-violent" profile, stating that they were more cool, less geeky.
- HGTV (Home and Garden Television) has a fairly broad umbrella of topics. It still features seasonal specials about over-the-top Christmas and Halloween decoration, but for the most part it's dropped most of its quirkier programming, shows such as "What's With That House?" about odd houses and the eccentrics who built them, "If Walls Could Talk," featuring unusual stories about old homes people have renovated, or "House Detective" where a home inspector visits a home people bought without an inspection and tells them what idiots they are. They've also discontinued most of their gardening, DIY, and specialist design shows ("Spice Up My Kitchen," "Mission:Organization") in favor of more general shows which focus on a designer rather than a specific space. The station devotes increasingly large blocks of time to what could as easily be called Real Estate TV, shows which follow a format where potential home buyers see three or four homes and then buy one. But technically even those shows still deal with the H in HGTV, so as homogenized as the network has become, it still hasn't gone completely off the rails.
- As of March 2012, main Italian network RAI is currently the biggest offender of this trope, with special thanks to the Animation Age Ghetto. To clarify, while animation on RAI used to be far more prominent throughout The Nineties, after the Turn of the Millennium animated shows started to appear at a progressively smaller rate, until they were completely confined within an early morning timeslot. Then, in the mid-2000s, the RaiGulp channel, aimed at a younger demographic, rose to fame as the "safe place" for animation in general, and most arrows were pointing to a fairly brighter future: Avatar: The Last Airbender, Code Lyoko, Ruby Gloom, Iron Man: Armored Adventures, Wolverine and the X-Men, The Spectacular Spider-Man, any good show, you name it. Then, however, things went downhill at the beginning of The New Tens, where "kid [soap] operas" like Grachi[2] and the same Rebelde Way mentioned elsewhere in this page - joining the ranks of other networks invaded by south-american kid operas - started overshadowing animation at an alarming rate, culminating in live action series getting the spotlight and nearly all animated shows being confined to an after-midnight timeslot. With Avatar TLA among them.
- RAI then subverts this trope only around Christmas, where it becomes the equivalent of the Golden Age Disney Channel on steroids. Yeah, the same network that nearly denies the existence of animation as a medium, does the complete opposite in mid-December by nearly running a marathon of the entire Disney Animated Canon.
- Ovation [dead link] launched in 1996 as an arts-specific channel similar to the pre-Network Decay Bravo, and its addition to the DirecTV lineup in 2007 may have been a response to Bravo's decay and the demise of Trio. But while documentaries and specials relating to visual arts (i.e. painting), ballet and modern dance, filmmaking, theater, and jazz and world music still air, they've also added less highbrow fare: Antiques Roadshow, So You Think You Can Dance and Fame reruns along with tribute specials about performers like Madonna and Michael Jackson. This is all interspersed with movies and miniseries that share little in common (The Wiz, Mommie Dearest, Cool as Ice, Basquiat, The Game, the Gulliver's Travels miniseries, Boys Don't Cry, Millennium Actress, Brokeback Mountain, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, etc.) aside from presumably being cheap to air and having either a tangential relationship to literature, fine arts, etc. or a So Bad It's Good / Guilty Pleasure reputation. (If it's the latter case, it will be advertised as such.) By comparison, it used to feature foreign classics like Grand Illusion, Beauty and The Beast, and Jules and Jim.
- Animal Planet still plays entirely animal-related programming, but in an attempt to gear the station toward the 18-34 crowd, they have been playing more reality shows similar to the kinds played on TLC. It still fits, since the shows are at least about people in animal-related fields. There are fewer documentaries and educational shows, the ones that are still around are mostly about cats and dogs. (with some exceptions) Animal Planet has even started airing shows like Finding Bigfoot. A lot of the shows about wild animals that do get aired a lot tend to focus on how dangerous the animal can be, leading to a joke among animal lovers that the new Animal Planet hates animals. The decision to change the network's slogan to "Surprisingly Human" certainly does not help.
- Latin American viewers are somewhat bemused at the fact that Animal Planet shows movies.
- Really, the only show that would fit the old Animal Planet is the surprisingly good River Monsters.
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