Network Decay/Total Abandonment

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The channel, with the exception of perhaps a few shows, has long abandoned its original concept.

MTV Networks / Viacom Examples

• If a Trope Codifier could be named for this, that dubious honor would most likely belong to MTV, which began in 1981 as an all-Music Video station. Now it might play a video at 3:00 AM if you're lucky -- the rest of the time is devoted to reality shows that have nothing to do with music (or often, for that matter, reality). Or programs from other Viacom-owned networks, such as American Gladiators and even SpongeBob SquarePants.

The decay arguably began in the early 1990s with The Real World and Beavis and Butthead (the latter of which featured music videos, albeit with Mystery Science Theater 3000-style commentary by the title characters), two of the most popular programs in the network's history. The MTV executives saw this, and started commissioning more non-music shows, until music had been pushed into late night/early morning and the after-school Total Request Live (TRL) block. At one point, they even ran commercials with the tagline "MTV: We Don't Play Music." Since the cancellation of TRL in 2008, it's still trying to play lip service to its roots with the "FNMTV" and "AMTV" blocks of videos. In 2010, MTV's logo was changed to omit the words "Music Television" completely.

• • In some European countries, MTV still primarily shows music videos. American reality TV isn't nearly as popular outside America. That also used to be true for Latin American MTV, but now it devotes about 70% of its schedule to non-music shows.
  • In the United Kingdom, MTV UK was re-branded as MTV One (now just plain MTV) and shows nothing but reality shows, animation, and live-action scripted shows such as Pretty Little Liars and Blue Mountain State. MTV UK's genre channels (MTV Base plays Urban, MTV Rocks plays indie rock and alternative, to give two examples) have their own programming related to the music they play, such as interviews. These have been cut back in favour of playing more music videos, leading to perhaps the first known instance of MTV being criticised for playing too many music videos. In 2011, MTV UK more or less stopped pretending to be a music channel, moving alongside the entertainment channels on Sky's EPG and launching a new channel called MTV Music to fill in the missing gap.
  • The French and Walloon (southern Belgium) MTV used to be an English-language channel (weirdly enough). They added subtitles and later dubbing to some of their shows (mostly animated shows and live broadcasts) before adding original French-language shows. This only made sense, considering the market, and they still aired plenty of music videos. However, like its foreign equivalents, it drifted toward reality shows (both original French shows and imported ones). It still airs some music (predominantly hip hop), but late at night.
  • At one time, there were three music channels in the Netherlands — MTV, The Music Factory (TMF), and The Box. MTV followed the all too familiar pattern with programming first shifting into the mainly R&B/Hip Hop/Rap genre, eventually phasing out to "reality" TV (although nothing Dutch; just stuff from the U.S.). TMF, the first true Dutch music channel, was soon bought out by MTV's parent company and changed from a channel with VJ's and life shows to a SMS-your-thoughts channel in addition to a radical music style change.
  • The Italian MTV is also taking this route. Until the late 1990s/early 2000s, most of the schedule was composed of blocks of music videos and the occasional anime or South Park episode. Now it airs at least five or six episodes of American reality shows every day, and only two blocks of music — one early in the morning and one late at night. There still is the occasional horror movie or anime, but those can be found only after midnight and change timeslots frequently.
  • In Australia, pay TV company Foxtel, who has channel numbers ordered by categories, acknowledged this in November 2009, when they moved MTV from channel 808 (8xx being Music Channels) to 124 (1xx being General Entertainment Channels).
  • New Zealand had C4, which was essentially MTV, up until the first quarter of 2011 when the channel as it was being renamed to 'Four' and another channel being set up to play music videos full-on (now called C4 in the old channel's stead). It remains to be seen whether the cycle will repeat.
  • This trope is Enforced Trope by law for MTV Canada, whose broadcast license specifically prohibits it from airing music videos in order to protect MuchMusic, the Canadian music video network, from foreign competition. (MuchMusic itself is listed under "Slipped".) MTV2 Canada, on the other hand, is permitted to air music videos.
• MTV2 US started out as an actual music channel and, for a while after buying out the competing Box music network, became a true haven for music fans with its innovative and bizarre themed video blocks. But its drift, especially since changing its logo to the "two-headed dog", can best be described as, well, MTV, too. (One of its few music-related shows, the indie rock-centric Subterranean, is pushed into the unsatisfactory timeslot of 1:00 AM on Friday mornings.)
  • MTV2 Europe didn't stop playing music videos, but Totally Abandoned its mission to play obscure music (especially 120 Minutes). It was an unpredictable channel that could play any genre the other channels weren't playing, commercial-free all day, starting out as "M2" in 1998. Then commercial interests came calling, and the alternative music ended: Zane Lowe stopped hosting Gonzo for good, MTV2 became MTV Two and focused on playing well-known guitar pop bands. The name was mercifully changed to "MTV Rocks" in 2010. Now a typical (predictable) evening schedule consists of two hours of "Kasabian vs. The Killers vs. Kings Of Leon", bands that were all promoted in 2002-04 by MTV2 before they were famous -- but crucially they weren't the only thing it played.
• MTV3, by the way, is merely a renamed MTV Tr3s, a Spanish MTV channel which is just MTV's regular schedule with Gratuitous Spanish, subtitles, and some more music videos, though not alot.
• MTV's subscription channels have followed a similar pattern, with the metal-centric MTVX being replaced by the rap-centric MTV Jams. MTV Hits, another channel which is still pretty good about music videos, is still going...for now, although it adopted a "playlistism" gimmick in 2006-07. Ditto VH-1 Soul, CMT Pure, and the aforementioned MTV Jams.
• MTV's sister channel, VH-1, was launched to stave off competition from Ted Turner's Cable Music Channel (it worked) and originally targeted the demographic that had grown out of MTV with videos by "adult contemporary" artists (Phil Collins, et al.). From there it added shows themed around music from the 1960s and '70s, plus some stand-up comedy programs to vary the lineup, and by the end of The Nineties it found a niche in music-related films (Footloose, The Wall, etc.) and documentary and trivia shows like Behind the Music and Pop-Up Video, essentially becoming "MTV Classic".

Starting at the Turn of the Millennium, however, it turned into a channel celebrating pop culture in general by getting D-list celebrities to comment on it. From there it moved to D-list celebrity reality shows, and currently^[when?] shows music videos only for a few hours on weekday mornings. As if anticipating its decay, VH-1 launched VH-1 Classic, a station devoted purely to music and music videos, particularly from the 1970s and 1980s, and the occasional music movie. It briefly decayed when it started airing some of the old VH-1 D-list celebrity shows in the off-hours, but reversed it by airing music festivals like Download and creating music-oriented talk shows like That Metal Show, which received positive reviews. Tellingly, they were the only MTV channel to acknowledge the original's 30th anniversary in 2011, via a whole weekend of classic segments and promos!

• The Nashville Network, a country music and culture-oriented channel, morphed into the genreless TNN (The National Network) and ultimately Spike TV. (In a case of decay following decay however, Spike TV: "Television for Guys" all but morphed into the CSI repeat network.) This is somewhat understandable — Viacom owned both TNN and CMT, forcing one of the networks to be retooled to avoid redundancy. However, for three years before Viacom bought CBS, the latter company owned both TNN and CMT, and didn't seem concerned about redundancy. In fact...
• CMT, or Country Music Television, drifted towards programming with little if any connection to country music. In something of a double decay, CMT in 2007 began drifting away from that, showing reruns of shows such as Hogan Knows Best and Nanny 911 along with movies like The Negotiator. Even Time Warner Cable noticed, suing Viacom for not airing a network consisting of mainly country programming. Viacom responded with corporate buzzspeak about how country fans prefer "a greater variety of programming" with "the same types of values and stories embodied by country music". They've since slid back though -- in addition to still showing more videos than any other basic-cable music channel, they found something of a niche with Deep South-flavored programming -- The Dukes of Hazzard reruns, a country-specific reboot of The Singing Bee, etc. Meanwhile, sister channel CMT Pure Country (originally VH-1 Country) is almost entirely video-focused, even showing videos from the '80's and '90's.

Disney Examples

• Christian Broadcasting Network, originally launched by Pat Robertson as the cable TV arm of his ministry, gradually began to add more and more Sitcom reruns, general entertainment, and other non-religious programming to its lineup throughout The Eighties in a bid to make it onto basic cable lineups outside of the Bible Belt. As the ratio of religious to non-religious programming shifted, it became CBN, then CBN Family, then the Family Channel, before being bought out by FOX. Fox Family floundered and was sold to Disney, which wanted to rename the channel to "XYZ" to remarket it to a different audience by repurposing ABC shows. But the contracts with the cable companies required that the word "Family" stay in the channel name, making this impossible.

Its name may not have changed, but as evidenced by shows like Greek, Make It or Break It, Kyle XY, and The Secret Life of the American Teenager, the station now known as ABC Family isn't really that family-oriented anymore. Aside from its weekend movie blocks, it's now a basic cable version of the former WB network. The 700 Club (required in the original contract with Pat Robertson) and a Sunday morning/late night Infomercial block filled with megachurch pastors are the only things left hinting at ABC Family's roots as a religious channel, and even then they're buried at 11:00 PM with a disclaimer in front warning people, containing an unequivocal "does not reflect the views of ABC Family" due to Robertson's laundry list of controversial statements and positions.

• • The ultimate Irony is that Pat Robertson is one of the Moral Guardians who objects to the Harry Potter series, yet ABC Family owns the US broadcasting rights to the Harry Potter films and airs Potter marathons constantly.
• Disney Channel originally had a lineup of vintage Disney movies, cartoons, and TV shows, combined with original documentaries about the company's various projects, a lot of interesting imported shows (especially from Canada), and such programming for adults as A Prairie Home Companion. But as it lost ground to Nickelodeon in The Nineties, it started to focus more and more on kids. It shoved most of the vintage programs aside, interspersing about three hours of cartoons at 1:00 AM with hours and hours of tween-centered programs and...BoyBand concerts...on Disney Channel? It abandoned Vault Disney, The Ink and Paint Club, and most other broadcasts of classic Disney cartoons and shows in order to turn into a preppy, suburban tween-oriented network whose M.O. seems to be "promote every last one of our child stars as the next great actor/singer/songwriter/dancer/idol singer".

Worse, Disney Channel's tween pop focus, which began with the then-popular Hannah Montana and High School Musical franchises, seemed to have overrun The Walt Disney Company as a whole throughout the mid-to-late 2000s, and the future of the company's reputation was in doubt, despite their acquisition of Pixar in 2006. Luckily, there was the release of The Princess and the Frog in 2009, and now (almost) everything in the company is going back to its "magical" roots. Unfortunately, some may say it's too late to save the Disney Channel now that they have two channels that are (despite using the Disney name) only catering to tween girls and/or boys. As of 2012, Disney Junior is the only Disney-owned television network that actually lives up to its name.

• • Toon Disney started out as the Alternate Company Equivalent to Cartoon Network, airing animated shows from the Disney archive (and some that they had acquired, mostly from DiC Entertainment). Then, they started airing a growing number of non-Disney cartoons (including some from their arch-rival, Warner Bros), and the Jetix block, which featured shows like Power Rangers, Digimon, The Tick (animation), and Jackie Chan Adventures, started eating up a growing chunk of the channel's airtime. Live-action shows and movies started appearing on the network, mirroring Cartoon Network's decay. Finally, in 2009, Toon Disney was renamed Disney XD (which means "eXtreme Digital") and turned into a network aimed at young boys -- the Spear Counterpart to the increasingly female-focused Disney Channel. In other words, it finally became Jetix in all but name — in the process, dropping a significant portion of its remaining animated content to cram in episodes of The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, Even Stevens, and Zeke and Luther.

The rebranding does have positive aspects though. Disney XD has the rights to both The Spectacular Spider-Man and Naruto Shippuden, two shows that were abandoned by decaying networks and might have been lost forever. Other shows with similar Periphery Demographics are rumored to follow. Then there's rumors of a new vault Toon Disney in the works with the hope that three kids channels will be enough to spread the love.

• • • FOX would've avoided all this if they hadn't sold their successful "Fox Kids" lineup (which aired Power Rangers, Spider-Man: The Animated Series, Digimon, and others) to Disney/ABC via the Fox Family network. They then retooled their Saturday-morning lineup into the "Fox Box", which consisted almost entirely of 4Kids Macekres. Naturally, they lampshaded this by changing the lineup's name to "4Kids TV"...then, of course, replacing Saturday-morning kids' shows with infomercials.
    • In some other countries, Jetix is its own channel. For whatever reason, Disney decided that it would be better to append it as a programming block onto a network it has nothing to do with, and then let it swallow the network whole.
    • Funny thing — in Latin America, "Jetix" is what Fox Kids (down here its own channel) mutated into. After Disney bought Fox Kids when Saban went down the toilet, they renamed it Jetix, dumped all of their programming, and started from scratch. However, they still showed The Fairly OddParents (one of the last shows Fox Kids ever aired, and which was also seen on Disney Channel until mid-2009), various Power Rangers shows (who were on Fox Kids to begin with down here), and the "Super Hora" block of Marvel Comics cartoons (The Incredible Hulk, X-Men, and Spider-Man Unlimited). For the time they did were rebranded as Disney XD, they only has to insert the new shows to replace the worn out or the cancelled, without really change the channel line.
    • In Eastern Europe, Fox Kids became Jetix, dumping most of the Fox Original cartoons, but retaining Disney originals and anime adaptations, like Shaman King, eventually airing a few original shows, such as Galactik Football and Oban Star Racers. By late 2009, it mutated again into a straight-up Disney Channel, dumping the old Jetix shows and replacing them with regular Disney Channel broadcast.
    • Australia had the Jetix programming block on the Seven Network for a short time, vanishing just as quietly as it emerged.
  • The Southeast Asian feed is a bit worse... The channel was free of any Malaysian-made shows until the mid-2000's... but it got worse when the feed was overtaken by Malaysians and Singaporeans and at that point, the Southeast Asian feed doesn't care about the rest of the region as the channel, aside from the usual Disney fare and imports, aired Malaysian animation. Even the show "Waktu Rehat" (Which by the way was made by Disney originally for the Malaysian feed) doesn't air dubbed but "subbed" in English (WTH?). And not to mention some Disney sitcoms have missing scenes that got censored for no reason (maybe this has something to do with the feed using the Disney Channel UK edits of the shows). At this point, the feed is beyond hopes of being like the old feed.
• ESPNEWS was created specifically so you could get scores and highlights in a half-hour (or much less if you just looked at the much more detailed ticker) without any Sports Center gimmickry and annoying segments like "Play of the Day", (Sliver-Canned National Light Beer Manufactured in the Rocky Mountain Region of Colorado) Cold Hard Facts which pretty much existed to give short shrift to lower-tier teams who didn't have any highlights in their games, at least according to those in Bristol, Connecticut. Now that the ticker was replaced with the glacial regular flavor ESPN "bottom line" ticker and the regular Sports Center gimmicks have moved over to ESPNEWS, not to mention that Sports Center is now being used as the network's primetime branding, it's pretty much "Sports Center 24/7 but with the network's F-team anchors.
  • A similar channel in Canada, The Score (originally Sport Scope), was created with the same intent as ESPNEWS, subsequently began carring regular coverage of sporting events and is currently^[when?] the Canadian home of WWE Raw and WWE Smackdown, except in Quebec, where it is carried on the Global affiliate (CKMI) and the Montreal independent TV station CJNT "Metro 14", respectively.
• You have to give it to Disney — they're at least honest about knowing when an entire genre is decaying, and have announced that because of both the fading influence of Soap Operas and the fact you can now click over to a network website or flip on your cable on demand service to catch up on a soap anytime rather than waiting to record it Sunday morning at 4:00 AM, SOAP Net was replaced with Disney Junior, the new name for Disney's preschool shows (now Playhouse Disney) in March 2012. Better that they announce the decay now and get everyone prepared than just letting it wither on the vine.

Unfortunately however, it led to the shocking cancellation of both All My Children and One Life to Live under the Brian Frons excuse that without SOAP Net airings, the shows would be too expensive to produce without a cable channel component, a theory which quickly held no water with the soap community and just sounded like a way of saying 'airing talk shows is cheaper than running a year-long soap'.

Admittedly, though, the network has always been a tenuous project, as anything except Being Erica that isn't soap or Gilmore Girls-marathon related has never done well at all for the channel, since it's usually treated as the Island of Misfit Reality Programs that both ABC and ABC Family rejected and only picked up to make existing producers happy or stop a format that might do well in another iteration from escaping to another network. Also, it's been proven over time that there's only a limited amount of interest in old soap episodes from canceled programs — nobody's willing to catch up on Ryan's Hope episodes from April 1975, except for unexpected Period Piece curiosity.

Despite the discontinuation announcement and Disney Junior launching in March however, SOAP Net continues to run now on many cable systems, with only a few national systems currently^[when?] carrying Disney Junior because of some factors, including cost for the channel, forced HD carriage, and systems like Dish and Direc TV objecting to carrying a channel which won't have much of an audience past 10pm (Unlike Nick Jr., Disney Junior has few programs with Periphery Demographic appeal, and there's no way Disney takes the Adult Swim direction with one of their networks for late night). SOAP Net is currently^[when?] programmed by ABC Family and retains much of its programming, along with ABC Family content like Make It or Break It and and the first ever run in syndication of Veronica Mars (for awhile it was carrying viewership taunting weekend marathons of The Chew early in the winter until Brian Frons finally got his desk cleaned out). Ever so slightly, SOAP Net is currently^[when?] in a vindication stage until the last cable system finally picks up Disney Junior.

NBC Universial / Comcast Examples

• Bravo originally focused on independent cinema and the arts; for example, it was the U.S. outlet for Cirque Du Soleil specials/shows for years. They also featured what they termed "TV too good for TV", reruns of past artsy cult-favorite shows like Twin Peaks and Max Headroom shown unedited and free of commercial interruption. Original owners Rainbow Media (also the owner of AMC and IFC, which is a spin-off of Bravo) sold the channel to minority partner NBC in 2002, who originally intended to retool it into a no-genre entertainment channel not unlike TBS, TNT, and eventual corporate sibling USA Network. Around 2004, it began a switch over to a pop-culture/occupational reality show format in the wake of hits like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, with occasional stragglers like Inside the Actors' Studio still inexplicably present. They also show Law and Order: Criminal Intent and House MD reruns, which are contrary to both their arts and reality programming.
• E! Entertainment Television originally showed movie previews, soap opera and talk show recap programs, and many making-of documentaries and specials that covered everything from theater to animation, serving as a sort of MTV for movie and TV buffs. It eventually became all about celebrity news (i.e. gossip) and True Hollywood Stories. Then it started airing all sorts of non-celebrity-related reality programs. With shows like The Girls Next Door, Keeping Up With the Kardashians (and its many spinoffs) and two shows by bawdy comic Chelsea Handler, it comes as no surprise that in some commercials (and on The Soup) E! openly acknowledges itself as a guilty pleasure channel.
• E!'s sister network, Style, launched as a network which stuck on two popular things in E!'s late-1990s scheduling — their fashion and design coverage — and when it launched it showed mostly runway shows and interior design programs designed to show off the current "styles" of a time period. This decayed into more generic reality programming.
• G4, a struggling video game network, bought out Tech TV, a popular computer enthusiast network with good ratings, merged them into one channel, and basically turned into a geekier version of Spike TV. G4's lineup picked up reality shows like Totally Outrageous Behavior and COPS (titled "COPS 2.0"), Japanese game shows such as Ninja Warrior and Unbeatable Banzuke, and reruns of Star Trek, Lost, and Heroes. Eventually, the only shows left on the network that were relevant to either channel's former demographics were X-Play and Attack of the Show!. To put in perspective how little anyone thinks of G4 since the decay, the premiere of Proving Ground got 31,000 viewers, less than the population of Juneau, Alaska, while the UFC passed by the opportunity to own G4 for their own network for a deal with Fox. DirecTV even found so little to value in the network that they dropped it, and DirecTV almost never drops networks in comparison with Dish Network. And with the departure of network veterans and hosts of the few remaining Gaming/Technology shows Adam Sessler (co-host of X-Play) and Kevin Pierera (host of Attack of the Show!), the future of the channel is in even more doubt.
  • G4's Canadian counterpart, G4 Canada, went under a similar network decay as G4, to the point that the CRTC pressured that G4 Canada was competing against sister channel OLN and deviating too heavily from its purpose, which was to air technology-related programming. They also stated that the channel's "programming is not in compliance with its nature of service definition" and that it detail measures "to ensure that the service is in compliance with its nature of service."
• The NBC Sports Network, formally Versus and originally the Outdoor Life Network (licensed from a magazine of the same name), originally focused on outdoorsy stuff like hunting and fishing. Then their annual coverage of the Tour de France became popular, due to Lance Armstrong's utter dominance of the event with seven yellow jackets in a row. They then acquired the rights to the NHL, a sport which is not played outdoors. Around the same time, they started to focus on extreme sports and college sports (although stuck with only covering lower-tier games from conferences in the western half of the country despite being based out of Philadelphia {because the Worldwide Leader got almost everything else}, and out of New England prior to that), resulting in a name change to Versus. In 2012, following a merger with NBC and Comcast, Versus was rebranded as the NBC Sports Network to become a 24 hour cable extension of NBC Sports, and perhaps to directly compete with ESPN. Low-brow programming such as Groin Attack clip shows and Sports Soup was abandoned the moment NBC took over. The network still shows outdoor programing, but it’s for the most part been relegated to the morning hours.

The rebranding does have positive aspects. Once neglected and obscure sports like the NHL and the UFC, have received much better exposure and viewership since they aired on the network, with the latter being able to get a lucrative deal with FOX as a result. Soccer fans are hoping NBC can do the same thing with their sport with the network receiving the rights to MLS games. In addition, NBC plans to use the network for their Olympic coverage to present more live events. Considering NBC's previous tendencies to broadcast events Live but Delayed, fans had approval for the decision. It may even be a case of NBC's sports coverage Growing the Beard as a whole. Back when the main network was the only place NBC put its sports broadcasts, they were infamous for giving little to no promotion for sports that weren't the Olympics or the NFL - in other words, they wouldn't promote the sports that really needed it - and overloading those broadcasts with too many commercial breaks (Don't talk to a NASCAR fan abut when NBC carried races). As the increased exposure detailed above indicates, they appear to finally be learning how to get people hyped for lesser known events via this newly re-branded station.

• Oxygen was once the anti-Lifetime, airing shows revolving around making women better, Xena: Warrior Princess and Roseanne reruns, and programming about yoga and improving yourself, along with women's sports. By the time NBC bought the channel in 2007 the original partners had long left, and the new management decided programming which exploited women such as the Bad Girls Club, Snapped and shows revolving around how Tori Spelling's love life would do better. Your Mileage May Vary on how much of a role NBC played in it; some argue that the decay began as early as 2004, which, for around a year, devoted late nights to the next rung below softcore porn and a QVC-like block devoted to sex toys. (We wish we were making this up.)
• Syfy started out as a network devoted to Science Fiction shows and movies, then went through several stages of this trope. Branching out into fantasy and horror barely counts, since these still fell under the label of "Speculative Fiction" and there's significant fandom overlap. Adding some documentaries on contemporary trends in computing and technology might have been slipping a bit, but it was at least something many fans of SF are also interested in. Viewers were even mostly accepting when it became the "Paranormal Channel" with shows like Ghost Hunters, Destination Truth, and their numerous clones and Spin-Offs. It was when they started adding reality shows, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit reruns, a cooking show, and, most damningly, Professional Wrestling that it really began to decay. Their name change to "Syfy" cast further doubt on their commitment. The executives claimed they wanted a name that could be trademarked, but most people are convinced otherwise. Their insulting explanation for the name change, in which they refer to sci-fi fans as basement dwellers and insinuated that they repulse women, went a long way toward accomplishing this.

The network slipped fully into Total Abandonment territory between 2010 and 2012 when it canceled Stargate Atlantis, Caprica, Stargate Universe, and Eureka in rapid succession. The network is now known as haven for pro-wrestling and So Bad It's Good creature features, though they did announce that they might be interested in bringing science fiction television shows back to the science fiction television network. Possibly.

• • In Canada, Sci-Fi's counterpart (called Space) manages to mostly avoid this, though they have somewhat broadened their scope to show fantasy and horror shows/movies, such as Supernatural and Relic Hunter. Still, the various Stargate Verse shows and Star Trek series constitute about 70% of what Space airs.
  • Syfy UK show some heavily-promoted proper science fiction series, but mostly they construct their schedule from a mix of documentaries on the supernatural/occult/alien abduction, kung fu movies, MMA, action series (such as Human Target), frequent Buffy the Vampire Slayer reruns, disaster movies, monster movies, sword-and-sandal flicks, medieval adventure movies (First Knight and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves? Seriously?), all kinds of fantasy, and quirky dramas like Eli Stone. It's rare to see a genuinely science fiction movie on there. Syfy UK seems to following the American network's trend with the announcement that they will be showing the MMA promotion BAMMA.

Animax International Channels Examples

• Animax (supposed to be a 24-hour Anime channel), in its Latin American side, both Brazilian and Spanish-speaking versions, became this:
  • The first slip and the most Egregious example — its cycle of movies appropriately named "Reciclo", since it recycled all the action flicks already worn by repetition in other channels of the Sony Group, like AXN. The only remotely anime-related movie shown there was Tokyo Godfathers... and they had repeated Hellboy and The Fifth Element each six weeks or so since its inception. Then they added series such as Lost, Blood Ties, and The Middleman (with the Brazilian side also having infomercials at odd hours), canned a slew of top-rated series, such as Death Note and Neon Genesis Evangelion, and inserted a concert block for Latin American performers. Then in May 2010, the channel announced that it would shift its focus to an overall youth programming, thus warranting its place in Total Abandonment. After that they were still broadcasting 12 hours of anime (13 during weekends). Five months later, anime was only 5 hours, starting at 2 AM. And just five months later (March 2011) they announced a name change that occured in May - the channel becamen then known as "Sony Spin". Animax RIP 2005-11.
  • Before Animax LA was owned by Sony, it had other name, Locomotion. Originally was a children oriented channel, but became a youth oriented channel a year later to avoid competition with Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon. Shortly after it became an adult oriented animation channel (it showed things like Aeon Flux, The Maxx, The Head, the Prince Valiant movies and Wallace and Gromit shorts, along with experimental animation, among others shows), and eventually it evolved into an anime channel (showing more than 10 anime series a day), so it started calling itself "the anime channel". The problem is that after a while it stopped showing animes at all, crowded with other programs (of quality) like Duckman, South Park or The Critic. Eventually, it created an advertisement that said "The good anime, takes time. Anime-station". Did this mean they were going to add more anime in the future? Watchers were really confused by this. It turned out they had sold their rights to Sony to become a full Anime channel. Eventually this lead to the channel being rebranded to Animax, and later to Sony Spin.
  • As Sony Spin, the channel still aired anime at early morning hours, even airing new series like Nodame Cantabile, Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood and new episodes of Bleach. This changed in March 2012, when the slot was replaced by live action shows, thus abandoning its remnants of anime programming completely. Even with the elimination of anime, the channel itself couldn't make out what public they really wanted to aim, mixing musical spaces, old series discontinued from the Sony channel, some newish teenage-oriented series, and even a Latin soap opera, but the audiences continued to shrink. Sony Spin languished for a couple more of years, having its newest series being moved to the other channels of the Sony brand, until it finally died around July of 2014, being substituted by either History 2 or an Spanish feed of Lifetime on most cable companies and ending a legacy of almost 18 years.
• Animax Spain followed the same disastrous way as Latin American's. Japanese animation found itself in the minority (they only broadcasted either very old series like Kochikame or Lupin III, or commercial successes like Inuyasha or Naruto). 90% of Animax Spain timeslot became low-budget live-action series like Primeval, Samurai Girl, Torchwood, or Reaper, or bland, soulless "young adult" TV shows like In The Qbe or Insert Coin. They even earned the moniker of "Yankeemax" amongst Spanish otakus (similarly, the LA version has been called "Gringomax" by Mexicans and other South American folk). Eventually, even their non-anime programming was moved to other channels, and by the time they closed on December 2013 it only aired a loop of Kochikame and Yakitate!! Japan (the latter having the honor of being the last show shown before the end of transmission), which at least was still more hours of anime than its Latin-American counterpart.
• Animax South Africa followed the same disastrous was as Latin America's and Spain's. Japanese animation became almost in the minority and were few and far between, as reality shows took over the schedule, and was soon closed down to make way for a new channel, Sony Max, which basically airs the same reality shows that aired on Animax South Africa.
• In the Southeast Asia feeds, blocks of Korean Dramas were added. Thankfully, no further slipping has happened, but given the above precedents...
• In general the Animax brand has been very luckless outside of Japan and Eastern Asia. With the exception of Germany's feed, who as of 2016 is still on air, almost every attempt to establish the brand ended with the channel irremediably decaying, or turning into a programming block in the local AXN channel before eventually disappearing (and having caused decay in said AXN channel too).

Other "Total Abandonment" examples:

• The entirety of cable TV, since the original premise of cable was that your monthly fee bought you commercial-free TV. Since in those days cable was something you got to watch movies on (were there even any cable channels besides HBO, SHO, and MAX before MTV got started?), the lack of commercials (and the lack of FCC censoring regulation) that allowed showing movies uncut was in fact a huge advantage worth paying for. These days, of course, you pay even more and now have to suffer with movies cut for time, edited for content, "formatted to fit this screen", and liberally strewn with ads.
  • CATV could be considered even more of an example of this since the original CATV meant 'community antenna television', and was simply a communal antenna, attached to various homes via a cable in areas where reception might have been dodgy at best for individual homes (such as in mountainous regions or remote communities), but didn't provide any 'cable specific' programming.
• Another French music channel, MCM, began with music related programs, then started adding "cult" anime at night, then mainstream anime in the middle of the day, then MTV-original reality shows, and finally, airing made-for-TV horror movies in their primetime block.
• MuchUSA was originally a simulcast of the Canadian network MuchMusic. In 2001, CHUM Limited sold their share of MuchUSA to the network's co-owner, the American cable company Cablevision, who promptly gutted all the Canadian programming and replaced it with original American shows. The network's name was changed to MMUSA, and later Fuse TV. For Fuse TV's own past experience with Network Decay, see "Temporary Shifts".
• In the UK, similar fates to G4's decay befell Game Network (which drifted towards soft pornography, phone-in quizzes and psychic hotlines, to the point of mercifully dropping the GN brand) and later XLEAGUE.TV (from eSports, to general games, to games-with-some-odd-niche-US-sports, to not broadcasting at all in the space of about 18 months).
• Much of The History Channel's (now called "History") programming now consists of roughneck-focused docu-soaps (Ice Road Truckers, Ax Men) and conspiracy theory "documentaries" about aliens, the Bible Code, ghosts, Atlantis, Nostradamus, and The End of the World as We Know It, earning the network the derisive nickname "The Hysterical Channel". Regarding actual history programming, they air, at best, specials on a few major holidays, and only when their big ratings grabbers like Pawn Stars are on season hiatus. It makes many older fans long for the "Hitler Channel" days when all of their programming seemed to be about either World War II, the Nazis or The American Civil War -- at least that was actual history.

One big reason for the network's decay is that the Smithsonian Institution, which was one of the go-to organizations for the History Channel in their early days, is now under an exclusive deal with Showtime where they produce programming around Smithsonian exhibits and properties for their exclusive Smithsonian Channel, which is not allowed to decay by design, while Showtime and CBS maintain rights to the institution's film library. Showtime, of course, isn't about to do anything to help its competitor, thus History has to look for other ideas to fill their broadcast day.

• • History International went from a channel focused on world (as opposed to US) history to a vault channel for old History Channel documentaries. It changed its name to H2, with the slogan "More to History", coinciding with a shift to placing many of History's remaining serious programming, like The Universe, on the channel... along with blocks of History's conspiracy and paranormal fare.
  • Realising its sheer number of military programmes, including a documentary series on modern-day Canadian fighter pilots, the UK now has a Military History channel spun off from its History Channel.
    • The US also has a Military Channel... which also happens to fit this Trope perfectly, because it used to be Discovery Wings, a network dedicated exclusively to aviation. Until the execs caught onto the fact that their most popular shows were about military aviation. Interestingly, this channel now seems to be drifting from documentaries on current military life and technology to showing nonstop World War II documentaries, perhaps in a bid to capture disgruntled former viewers of the History Channel.
• A&E ("Arts & Entertainment") used to show artsy films and documentaries for the over-30 audience. Like many other networks, it drifted towards reality shows, True Crime shows, CSI: Miami and Crossing Jordan reruns and marathons. An executive for the channel even joked at one point that it experienced the fastest drop in average demographic age ever.
• A&E's Biography Channel spin-off (now known as "Bio" to deliberately muddle the channel's mission) didn't fare much better; about half the programming eventually consisted of true-crime shows and repeats of shows like Airline. At one point, they even showed reruns of Night Court and News Radio in an attempt to be to A&E what Boomerang was to Cartoon Network, these shows having been rerun on A&E in the past.
• TLC, originally focusing around science and nature documentaries in the style of the Discovery Channel, drifted toward almost nothing but "home makeover"-style reality shows. In a somewhat confusing (in these days of internet porn) play at grabbing the all-important 18-30 male demographic, TLC acquired the rights to air the Miss America pageant. After sufficient decay consisting of more shows about toddler beauty pageants, pastry chefs, tattoo artists, strange families and Body Horror, one would never guess that TLC used to be called The Learning Channel and was once co-owned by NASA. This just about sums it all up... and this too.
• Court TV. Originally, the channel aired only actual courtroom trials, which included the proceedings along with anchor's analysis. Then the channel began carrying original and acquired shows. It was then revamped as TruTV, completely dropping the live court footage that defined it... then started playing court footage for about six hours each weekday. TruTV has started showing college basketball during March Madness — which has nothing to do with crime whatsoever...well, other than it's played on a court.

Then again, many channels or programming blocks that focus on actual courtroom proceedings tend to fall victim to decay because, let's face it, real courtroom drama is about as dramatic as watching paint dry, and the ones that actually are dramatic get wall-to-wall coverage on the major media outlets anyway.

• Over the years, the networks have gradually dumped their traditional Saturday morning blocks for more dramas, reality shows, soaps, and news. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, all of the broadcast networks except UPN had the entire 6:00 AM to Noon block of Saturdays set aside just for animated programs and other programs appealing to people of all ages, with FOX and the WB even going so far as to add in an extra two to three hours every weekday morning and afternoon, as well. But in the late 1990s, increased cable competition (Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, etc.) and FCC mandates requiring a minimum three hours of educational kids' programming on broadcast networks each week proved crippling -- since most kids bar preschoolers don't/won't watch strictly educational shows, there was little incentive for producers to make them. Entertainment shows like The Weird Al Show wound up getting compromised by Executive Meddling to fit the mandates.

At the same time, FCC regulations, voluntary guidelines, and pressure from parents' and teachers' groups rebuilt the wall between advertising and children's entertainment. This killed lucrative Merchandise-Driven cartoons and hamstrung the traditional Saturday morning advertisers (cereal, snack food, and toy companies) so much that it's too expensive for them to advertise on television without disclaiming everything or trying to somehow impart that their cereal is healthy or their toy is educational in some way. It's much cheaper for them to put up a website for their product, or create their own cable networks (like Hasbro did), and go after them that way. As a result...

• • Only The CW (successor to The WB and UPN) currently^[when?] maintains a full-length Saturday morning block, Toonzai, made by 4Kids! Entertainment.
  • NBC and CBS broadcast blocks at the three-hour minimum required by federal mandates, consisting of shows supplied by different companies.
  • FOX was able to avoid the federal mandates by exploiting loopholes, but subsequently abandoned their Saturday-morning animation block altogether and now their programming consists of infomercials (though a few affiliates, and even some O&Os, don't bother to take it since the money goes to FOX).
  • ABC abandoned their block in favor of "Litton's Weekend Adventure", a syndicated programming block meeting the aforementioned federal mandates (the block is broadcast by ABC stations only, though it is part of a syndication deal).
  • The FCC regulations prohibited the host of a kids' show from endorsing a toy or a cereal, resulting in the extinction of locally-produced, live-action kids' shows, as it no longer made economic sense to pay someone to host a show instead of just showing all cartoons. The longest holdout was probably the original Bozo Show on WGN in Chicago, which ended in 2001; the last four years had Bozo wedging boring tours of Chicago landmarks and factories into the show to get the E/I bug on the screen.
• The British satellite station Bravo (unrelated to the American Bravo mentioned above) began as a channel showing black and white TV from the 1960s (mostly Lew Grade action shows), dropped this in favour of Speculative Fiction and horror, dumped that for True Crime shows and "adult programming", and in the end of its run showed an eclectic mix of programmes that could best be described as "lad's mag/men's magazine television". In other words, the British version of Spike TV, right down to them both showing TNA Wrestling and UFC as the big draws. It also ran sci-fi repeats (mainly Star Trek: Voyager, Deep Space Nine and Enterprise), in what was possibly the same effect as mentioned elsewhere when it was noticed that the demographics were similar to their other programmes.
• In a related case to both Bravo UK and ABC Family, the UK version of the Family Channel eventually reduced itself within four years into constant "Family Challenge" game show marathons before giving up the pretence and rebranding itself as Challenge TV, the British equivalent of the Game Show Network. As further decay on that genre, it then later starting showing poker tournament blocks and, along with it, films like Casino, but the block has since been dropped. The sale of both Challenge and Bravo to Sky in 2010 and Bravo's subsequent closure in 2011 meant that Challenge is now the home of TNA Wrestling. Not to mention that as the years go on, Challenge's library of programs seems to get smaller. As of current, it looks like they are not showing any program older than 1990. Makes it rather annoying if you are a fan of a show such as Bullseye and wish to see any episodes from the early 80s through to 1989.
• Imparja was created to service indigenous Australians in Central Australia, but, thanks to network aggregation, it is now essentially Channel Nine from Sydney with a couple of breakaway programmes.
• Australian examples are rare because there are so few networks, most of them are owned by the same companies, and the ratings are too small to quibble about (if the most watched programme in Australian pay TV history got 419,000 viewers, how's the How To Channel supposed to gain any?). The only notable example is Fox Kids, which adopted a programming block called Fox Classics (not entirely unlike Nick at Nite) before the Fox Kids block moved to Fox8, leaving Fox Classics to absorb the entire network.
• UK Gold went from a mix of the BBC and Thames archives, to suffering the same "six months ago is classic" syndrome the US "classic" TV channels seem to have suffered, with a sprinkling of fairly recent Hollywood films and repeats of Prison Break. It's now been split into the backronymed G.O.L.D. ("Go On, Laugh Daily"), a comedy channel mostly recycling all the same old shows that are always repeated... and Watch, which takes the rest of the "classic" output of UK Gold.
• Centric used to be called BET Jazz and focused on, believe it or not, jazz. Concerts, videos, wonderful old Panoram films, occasional spoken-word programs, and pretty much nothing else, 24/7. The revamped version is mostly talk shows and general-interest programming aimed at a relatively mature African-American audience; the little music they play is Caribbean or soul.
• In Latin America, Infinito was a cable channel that used to show documentaries about conspiracy theories, UFOs, Atlantis, Hollywood Global Warming (before it became mainstream), alternative medicine, and related stuff. Suddenly, in the mid-2000s, the channel started to mutate into a really bad Travel Channel wannabe, showcasing documentaries about New Age society, alternative lifestyles, Feng Shui, and spas which no one cares about. By 2009, it had completely ditched its original concept revolving around alternative sciences, and marketed itself as a serious documentary channel about crimes, the human mind, and historical tidbits. Then it started to decay again in mid-2009, when it started to showcase movies based on Real Life stories and events. As of January 2012, it rarely showcases documentaries, and most of its programming consists on films based on Real Life events and shows from Spike TV.
• AXN was originally meant to be an all-action channel, but now they run movies and TV series in general. Most of their shows are not even action-oriented. Their signature shows include all three CSI shows, House, The Amazing Race, and now So You Think You Can Dance. Strangely enough, not a bad thing as the action genre and syndicated action series have decayed since AXN's launch, necessitating a strategy change.
• The Spanish cable channel Buzz was once focused on anime, and one of the few, if not the only place in Spain to ever show Seinens and subbed anime. Then they started showing more unrelated stuff (Western animated shows? Sure. Extreme sports? Uh...), and for a while the only anime-related thing they aired was (according to the cable provider's TV Guide) Hentai movies on weekends...and then, eventually, even those were removed.
• The TV Guide Channel, formerly the Preview Guide or Prevue Channel. Originally, it was a nice little channel that gave the local TV listings and the weather, along with unobtrusive text ads, using Teletext-style graphics set to music from a local radio station. About a year later, it added Muzak and dedicated half of the screen to trailers with the rare show (or whatever the cable company wanted to advertise). It was later bought by TV Guide, which mutated it into the tabloid channel it is today. When TV Guide took over, the listings were pushed down to the bottom half of the screen so as to make more room to show talking heads blab about reality shows, awards ceremonies, and whatever Britney did. When Lionsgate acquired the network in 2009, the listings were removed altogether, prompting a few cable companies to drop the channel; although this has since been reversed. It could be argued that this change was made to compete with Internet channel listings and the electronic program guide features available with satellite and digital cable packages (which allow viewers to scroll through the listings at will and select channels from the menu).
• Fine Living Network, a sibling to Food Network and HGTV, was revamped into Cooking Channel on May 31, 2010 (though Fine Living already showed some food-related programming). By the time of the overhaul, "Fine Living" didn't really fit its name, as much of its programming consisted of shows that used to/should be on Food Network or HGTV, things which made the "fine" in the name seem superfluous (if you take it to mean "of high quality", though the word has myriad meanings).

To clarify, Scripps Networks (parent of Food Network, HGTV, and DIY among others) launched Fine Living as an upscale lifestyle-oriented network, with emphasis on the upscale (thus the "fine"). It was basically a classy version of Food Network/HGTV and Travel Channel rolled into one. There were a lot of shows about wine and entertaining, travel to exotic locales, and the home decor/gardening shows definitely didn't have low budgets in mind. Somewhere along the line it fell victim to the usual problems, and became a dumping ground for shows from the other Scripps networks. Its decay can probably be traced right back to Food Network and HGTV's decay, but it was also a victim of bad timing more than anything, with the economy tanking (though the slide began before then). When people's McMansions are being foreclosed on, they probably don't give a crap about hosting parties in them, and showing a program literally called I Want That! in a recession is probably not a good idea. Given how badly Food Network sucks now, though, the retool of this network might be a blessing in disguise. That said, someone still seems to think there's a market for the original concept, but don't remind anyone with HD cable service of that fact. Along with Mav TV and any outdoor channel producing content for pennies, Wealth TV is a major Berserk Button channel since it takes a slot that could air actual programming more than 21 people in a service area would watch...and instead airs inane programming that appeals to a very select few.

• Planet Green replaced Discovery Home as a channel which was intended to jump on the trend of 'going green' in 2008 by airing a schedule of programming solely involving green and environmental programming. However the economic meltdown and people angered because Discovery threw off all the Home programming without placing it anywhere (only Holmes On Homes remains, and that's because HGTV Canada produces it and the US HGTV took it the moment Discovery stopped carrying it), pretty much made programming a network about a lifestyle that required lots of that other kind of "green" to maintain untenable for the long run. A couple of non-green programs snuck on the schedule in 2009, and because of the incredible viewer apathy the network receives even among green enthusiasts, it's pretty well on the road to ruin only three years after its launch. Their original shows after the first year now have very little to almost no relation to the environment at all, such as a show about Canadian restaurants run by prisoners on work release and ex-cons. The most mentionable being about two business executives learning how to run a farm from the internet.

With the ratings very low, it's now airing shows about oil drilling in North Dakota and the people lucky enough to make money from it (no, that's not green at all), programs about UFOs (little "green" men landing on a "planet"? Does that count?), a series about loggers who use helicopters to collect lumber (chopping down trees is "green" now?), ghost stories, and reruns of stuff Discovery has aired to death on their other networks, but can't air after other network conversions (historical documentaries that used to air on Discovery Times, which is now Investigation Discovery, for instance). Meanwhile, the actual "green" programming was stuck in the middle of the night and completely ignored (as of 2012 the shows are completely gone), while the network's logo has been recolored red. And now Discovery's CEO has even said the channel is on life support.

In 2012, they began to devote their Wednesday nights to shows airing police chase shows regurgitated from shows that aired years ago, and a horrible Parking Wars clone involving hit-and-run wrecks, about as far as you can get from environmentally conscious. The only thing "green" about these programs is the recycling of old footage and the remains of said salvaged felony wrecks.

The reason for these odd programming choices? To give the channel any ratings life ahead of Memorial Day 2012, when the channel will relaunch as Destination America, which turns up the Patriotic Fervor to 11 and features nothing but Eagle Land programs and pretty much is Discovery admitting they shouldn't have sold the Travel Channel, which carried much of this programming until it was sold off, and that they had the worst timing ever in launching Planet Green.

Among the programming in Destination America's first few days: marathons of David Blaine specials, Destroyed In Seconds, and A Haunting, and LA Ink. Does it count as decay if you're doing it in the very first block of programming?

• Logo, an LGBT-centered channel, a problem with finding memorable shows that are relevant after inexplicably cancelling its two highest rated shows (Noah's Arc, a soap opera about gay men of color, and Rick and Steve, an animated satire)...so it seems they'd rather just go with popular stuff instead, such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and only showing clips in ads of Willow and Tara, and hype it up like it's the premise. They also aired Thelma and Louise, even though it's just about two straight women evading the law. But now they're also showing Daria, to which there's nothing directly or indirectly mentioning homosexuality except for a bi girl who flirts with Jane in the first TV movie. The fact that all three shows have heavy servings of Les Yay offer some arguable justification, but not much. And now Logo is ditching its gay-themed programming for more "mainstream culture", and thus, abandoning it's original concept entirely.
• Lone Star was a Canadian cable channel that showed nothing but westerns (movies and old TV shows) when it first started in 2001. After several years, it added non-western action movies to its lineup, until they dominated the schedule. In 2008, the station rebranded itself as Movie Time. The American equivalent, Encore Westerns on the other hand hasn't decayed by design, since it's part of the Starz premium package that you pay extra for to get a channel devoted to westerns.
• DIY Network started out as a channel which had wonderful programming which laid out projects step by step in such diverse genres as knitting, scrapbooking, car care, basic home maintenance, and larger projects. However as the years have gone by the instructional programming has been pushed off to accommodate the shows on HGTV's schedule which didn't fit the "Buy, buy, buy! Remodel, remodel, remodel! Redecorate all you want, the fun times never end!" programming model that was at its worst at the height of the housing bubble. Currently^[when?] it's a mix of those older shows, along with shallow and inaccessible programming designed to appeal to the "king of the castle" guy like Cool Tools, and programs consisting entirely of outdated tips spewed out by rent-a-spokesmen on the "Today Show.
• Television New Zealand (TVNZ) since the late 1980s (specifically TV1 and TV2) went from a mainly BBC-style license fee-funded model to a mainly advertising-funded model - as of 2011, 90% of TVNZ's revenue was from advertising. As a result, it shifted visibly towards the Lowest Common Denominator, and whether it's a good or a bad thing depends on one's political and economic viewpoint.
  • Inverted with TVNZ-6 and TVNZ-7, which were spun off from TVNZ as part of New Zealand's Freeview digital TV platform in 2008. These 2 channels were explicitly public broadcasting-oriented, in comparison with the heavily commercialised TV1 and TV2. However, a change of government and subsequent non-renewal of funding have meant TVNZ-6 has been turned into the commercial youth channel TVNZ-U, and TVNZ-7 is to go off the air for good in 2012.
  • You can watch decent TVNZ channels like Kidzone24 and Heartland. The catch? They're not available on TVNZ's Freeview digital network, you can only watch them if you have a subscription to pay TV operator SKY.
• Discovery Kids, an outgrowth of the Discovery Channel which showed mostly educational programming similar to the fields of the parent channel, was replaced by The Hub, a channel backed by Hasbro which focuses on the company's Merchandise-Driven franchises (Transformers, G.I. Joe, My Little Pony, etc.), though many of these have attracted considerable acclaim. Out of international versions, only the Latin American remains: the UK version was replaced with Discovery Turbo (cars, bikes, boats, and planes) and the Canadian one with... Nickelodeon!
• Romance Classics, a rather specific Spin-Off of AMC that was geared towards women, was launched in January 1997 and aired nothing but old and cheesy romance films and Doris Day movies. By late 2000 it was decided that the channel was going nowhere, so it was blown up and overhauled into WE: Women's Entertainment, intended to be a "contemporary" counterpoint to Lifetime. It has since changed its name to WEtv and is better known for Bridezillas and other wedding-related fare (enough to fill a Spin-Off, Wedding Central, which died in July 2011 both because the wedding craze died and their parent company couldn't get anyone to carry a weddings-only channel) than anything else.
• There used to be an awesome cable/satellite TV channel called Newsworld International that was owned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (Canada's answer to the BBC), aired in the U.S. and showed all sorts of foreign TV news broadcasts, from Britain's ITV News at Ten to evening news broadcasts from Japan's NHK, Germany's Deutsche Welle, its very own CBC, etc. Then it was sold to an investment group largely owned by Al Gore and it transformed itself into the Current TV. It purports to be a 24-hour news channel for young adults (the 18-30 set), but eventually degraded into the same old mish-mash of reality shows and snark about the news you see on other general channels because of the usual problem with channels that start with a higher purpose, but have to downmarket to get ratings. And now with Keith Olbermann coming into the channel the signal is clear that Current is going after young adults of a certain political ideal above all others.
  • Olbermann has since been fired due to Creative Differences. However, a news channel for young audiences is probably a case of Tropes Are Not Bad. The three big news networks (Fox News, CNN and MSNBC) are aimed towards older audiences and the one aimed towards liberal audiences (MSNBC) doesn't do 24 hour news. A news channel for young liberals could actually work in the right hands.
  • Al Gore purchased NWI with the intent to create a liberal alternative to Fox News (before MSNBC fully embraced Keith Olbermann's popularity and populated its schedule with other liberal hosts), but Current initially didn't launch with that format because he found that it would be difficult to get cable companies to carry such a channel or advertisers to advertise on it. Instead, Current launched mostly with documentaries. Oddly, Olbermann's arrival may have caused Current to "re-cay" to a format it was originally intended to have but never actually had in the first place.
• The majority of Brazilian free television has been plunging into this for some time. While unoriginal only-six-plots soaps are still their chief-products and released periodically, there's been a spike of cheap reality shows, "news reports" solely devoted to celebrity gossip and programs focused on butt exhibits, cashing in on the newest musical/memetic fad and crude uninspired humour. And if you're not interested in any of the locally produced stuff, bad luck. It's been for some years that the major stations (Globo, SBT, Record) pretty much abandoned exporting state-side films/series. Until the mid 2000s, their typical modus-operandi was to buy 2-3 years old blockbusters (still not so good a deal) and announce them at the start of the year, them slowly air them until the purchase of the next batch. But nowadays, they just don't seem to care anymore, announcing fewer (if any) new movies, while infinitely recycling yesteryears batches (with titles like Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the earlier movies of the Fast and Furious franchise and other big things of 5-10 years ago being aired every 3 weeks or so). Also, in the series department, there is rarely any new syndication as of this entry, not so many to begin with, and with long running comercially successful shows like House, the CSI franchise and Two and A Half Men getting very delayed new seasons, resulting in them re-airing old episodes ad nauseum (putting these kinds of +/-24 episodes-per-year series in daily time-slots deffinitely doesn't help). Well, as longer as there's someone to still sit through all this and see the ads...
  • Regarding local production (most states have an office of all the six majors): most channels have the local news and probably a sports show. If there's anything else, the major is being generous.
• Filipino Free-to-air channel TV 5 started out as a youth-oriented channel with less news, thanks to the Animega block. But when they got so popular with the public, this went over their head and deleted the block, put a variety show in the evening, and put in horrible Filipino dubs of Cartoon Network and Disney Channel shows (try to imagine Hannah Montana speaking Tagalog... horrible right?), and even dubbed the movies that air in the channel's movie block and made it an all-masa (masses) station. Many youths are pissed off with the changes and the deletion of the block, that many of them are asking the channel to bring it back to the way it was, but the higher-ups in the channel didn't care at all.

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