Editor's note: This post was made back in 2016, but it never made it to post and just lingered as a draft all this time. Part of a plan that didn't come together as well as previously thought, so we are here to post it now. This post hasn't been changed from it's original premise in 2016, minus this note being added on top. Some things have changed since this post, thanks to streaming, especially. Thankyou for reading.
As part of our 10th anniversary , we take this time to take a look at TV stories or things in TV that happened in the past 10 years or maybe something that happened before but effects TV to this day. We take a look at topics in television or media that have an interesting or important element to what television brings us.
You can read our past posts here in our 10 years section
Have you ever gotten mad at the History Channel for airing non-history factual programming? Did you know that Bravo used to be an arts channel , hence the name Bravo?
Honestly , Yes Names should mean something! (Don't look us like that) The phrase of what to call a channel that has gone off their launch mission is called Channel Drift. It can also be called network decay. Let's say Joshuoanline had tons of money and we launched a TV channel called Car-Repair TV (no relation to any real Car Repair TV's that might be out there) that aired how to shows on how to repair cars. Our target audience people with cars maybe ages 18-49 ,which is basic for advertisers. We do pretty well ,viewers love finding out how to fix their cars and we even start adding programs for people who want to modify their cars. Our concept goes so well that other companies launch their own versions , some fizzle away be cause nobody can beat Car Repair TV. A few years later we start adding programs that have nothing car repair but may fit with those watching, Our channel's biggest audience is Men ages 30-50 in fact we beat ESPN in the audience so we find programming that we think they would like besides car repair , let's say we pick up rights to NASCAR races. It has cars so it fits and we might get some viewers who weren't watching who might stay after the race to watch Stick Shifts with Buck. Have we drifted ? Yes ..but in a small percentage. Reality Shows are hot , so we add a reality show that fits with our channel though , called Can you Fix it ? Where our contestants are compete to on who can be the best mechanic. We rename the channel to an acronym of CRTV (Car Repair TV) and we continue. Well there's in wrench in life later as people have found other ways to have car repair info , they can go on the internet for it ,and now there's a video site that you can look it up, and in fact we start doing the same. Our TV channel needs to survive so we do the unthinkable we decide to cut back on our Car Repair TV programming and refocus our name as CRTV and decide to keep Nascar , make some reality shows about cars , we pick up other car racing groups . Our older programming is shoved to mornings and our website. Our channel drifted, slowly, but times caught up to us and our management felt we had to change.
The Biggest name brought up in a channel drift is MTV , formerly MTV : Music Television. MTV was part of the early days of cable , which was an inventive time and possibly at it's best. (hang on) There were many single program style program channels, Want Sports and Sports news 24/7 : ESPN (1979) , want News all day live ? CNN (1980) , are you a kid tired of not being able to watch children's shows at 5pm on a Saturday ? Nickelodeon (1979). Music videos did air on TV but there was not an outlet of MTV's scale and they changed out music videos were done. But then in the mid 2000's they cut back on music videos and few other music programs like TRL , to focus on other things in the demo they were attracted. Today they air dramas, sitcoms, and reality shows this is a definitely a drift. Is this a bad drift ,good drift ? Maybe a survival drift. MTV to stay on the air felt they ad to adapt to the changing market place like our fake CRTV had to do. This makes people ,who grew up with MTV doing Music and music videos (as of this writing they are going to do some music programs starting soon) , though if MTV was to put back music videos, there's a chance that you might not watch. They are not going to air the same music videos that you remember because MTV Always did current music videos. MTV Hits , which was an extra channel on cable airs music videos all day of current songs not songs from the 80's and 90's also with the internet you can find tons of music videos from the past right there and watch anytime you want, or watch MTV Classic which airs older music videos all day.
The another drift offender, the most outrageous one is TLC. If you were to tell someone that didn't grow up in the 90's or before that TLC's letters used to mean The Learning Channel , they would be shocked or not , what do we know? Not to make this a history lesson so we are going to make this short. TLC was launched in 1972 by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare and NASA as the Appalachian Community Service Network. It was a way to provide educational and instructional programming using television. In the 80's the name was changed to The Learning Channel and it did what the name was on the tin and it was privatized when it was renamed. A competitor launched called Discovery Channel ,think about that channels competing for viewers over programming about nature, science, history ,and other educational programs. In the 90's Discovery bought TLC , that's who owns them today. Discovery must have felt that having two learning channels would be a bit redundant. In the late 90's they went for a new focus the slogan I remember the most "Life Unscripted" was started, this brought in programming like inetior design shows , guess to compete with the HGTV market. Shows like Baby Story and crime shows and etc. So in this period was the decay? I would say no , was it drift , yes? Though I guess you are learning about how crimes are solved or how to do some D.I.Y is some type of learning. They did started focusing on the name TLC and less on The Learning Channel , like when our fake channel focused on CRTV , it lets the channel have more flexibility. TLC then started finding success in reality shows but their focus instead of competition shows like the networks , or whatever the heck Bravo is doing , they went for "real people" well many call this lowest common denominator programming.
But why did they do it ? Well ratings , were high yep and that equaled that they felt you wanted more. People watching Jon and Kate Plus 8 .. well hey here are some other big families with maybe some drama added in. Do you like Cake Boss... well let's make more. TLC is now having to find some other direction they will be adding some scripted programming soon though. So our question was this good drift or bad drift. Well it was good for Discovery who had lots of viewers watching TLC more than watching the learning programming or even the D.I.Y/ home programs (which apparently were a fad), it was bad for everyone else , unless you were the new viewers watching. This one is subjective in answer isn't it?
more after the jump or come drift was us / wait that was awful
Meanwhile I would really want to see how Divorce Horse would work.
Let's use our CRTV example again but modify it , we still air car repair programs , but we added the competition shows to our channel and air live car races , our channel is decked out in cars just not car repair because we needed to broaden out , so not like VH1 or TLC where we have gone past our beginning programming to grab a new audience because our other was too niche. This could be considered good drift. That is subjective on if you like the new programming , but it fits it's like we were a cars channel and started airing a show about a family with 90 kids and 30 dogs.
Food Network has drifted ,did it decay? Food Network was a channel pretty much rooted in instructional programs , they were like what PBS stations air on the weekend daytime 24/7 minus the infomercial slots. Today they still air Food programming ,they haven't descended into airing a show about swimming with sharks or dating sailors. They have reality shows now ...yes but they are focused on food. They even made a spinoff channel that focuses on cooking because if you still want that kind of show , besides PBS and create, you have cooking channel as your option, though they have a little drift there. Is food network a good drift? Yes, a little, it gives them a leeway to do still do what they launched on but attract other audiences and they network still does what's on the tin and not half-heartily
Copyright WNET
The factor you may have noticed in some of these decisions is commercials , it's an age old wonder that cable channels that people pay for run commercials , or in TV Land's case they run some shows in the breaks of commercials. The Premiums like HBO and their ilk are extras that pay directly for their survival and in exchange you don't find out what car you shouldn't drive as a skateboard. So for some reason , maybe it makes the channel not ask more from cable companies or whatever, so the advertising rates are dictated by viewer amounts If my channel is getting more viewers though dying of self respect for airing "My Car is not a Skateboard and Other Things that Got Me Into The E.R" instead of airing a more up brow lower rated program like "Abe Lincoln's Letters". (If any of these shows are real hmmm)
I am slightly concerned they had to tell someone that /Chevy
TLC and other Discovery Channels have commercials and since people were watching their reality shows they made more because the more viewers made advertisers want to pay for spots on the channels , because more people watching "Long Island Medium" (A real TLC show) meant more people were available to see the commercial about for the new 9 stack hamburger (that might exist) and were thinking "Yeah I want that!". If people weren't watching L.I.M and more were watching "Beavers make Dams"(not a real TLC educational show) TLC would make more of that and less L.I.M and advertisers would be attracted to the ratings.
Let's say RCTV did so well we had extra bundle of money laying around and we decided to launch SLOPE TV (no relation to any real Slope TV's out there) and we bought the rights to a bunch of repeats of soaps like "Passions", "One Life to Live" , "All My Children", and more. It's not a Joshuonline post without talking about soaps. And we have same day repeats of "Days of Our Lives" and "General Hospital". Wait for it , we are commercial free. There are no other channels airing this programming, we have soaps from the 60' s -2000's and current episodes for those who really don't feel like recording them or waiting for on demand. We can do what we want more because no advertisers to Holden us plus we have some money, and we charge the cable companies a nice low rate so they will air our channel with out a problem. Our channel has become popular and we have more viewers than A&E and USA combined .in the evening. Then we feel that our large bundles of money aren't as swim-able as they used to be. Let's ad some ads , advertisers will our Huge figures and it will be good for both of us and we get more dough. Well we found out something our evening broadcast at 8pm et of "General Hospital" and 9 pmet broadcast of "Days of our Lives" same day repeats do well and advertisers love that huge rating , in contrast our 10 pmet broadcast of "Search for Tomorrow" is lower in fact many of our 60's soaps ratings aren't doing as well as our 80's to 2000's repeats. So we do some change up we move our older soaps to daytime hours were there are less viewers we get some ads and move our more contemporary episodes ,90's and 2000's soap episodes the evening. We also decided to take Sunday Night we don't have any thing to same-day repeat anyway and we make soaps of our own.
Did our network drift? Yes, but that is in the Food Network sense partially , or AMC in another way. AMC was the original classic movies network , before it was the Breaking Dead Man channel, it fact it's older than Turner Classic Movies. AMC stood for American Movie Classics , they were a classics movie channel. It was like watching an independent station's movie line up anytime you wanted. It was premium channel like HBO and we mean 80's HBO so less gore and whatever else HBO does now. 10 years later , TCM was launched as a competitor, yes there was a time channels used to compete over classic movies. It was also away for Ted Turner to air the stuff he bought , like Cartoon Network was. Pretty Much AMC kept on going and they tried and original series called "Remember WENN" created by Rupert Holmes , yes that one. They were commercial free , so is the awesome TCM , but this stopped in 1998 when they accepted traditional advertising. Then they started drifting. They started going more by AMC and less by the American Movie Classics. They felt the reason for commercials was because they weren't getting enough money from cable companies. They were going to air a broad span of movies including some 70's and 80's movies, they later tried a reality show and some other things that were kind of related to film. In 2007, they picked up a show called "Mad Men" and this put them on a map more original dramas that got more acclaim were put in. See more viewers , more notice, more advertisers all round fun for them. They did try some reality shows again , but those fizzled and they stuck to scripted. They still do fill their line up with movies , alot of them from the 80's -2000's now they will dig up some older ones for events or Christmas. Yes this channel has drifted, again subjectively it might be good or bad. For them it was good they have more notice and more money.
In a sense there is more ways to get classic (let's say pre 80's ) movies now , TCM still does them and hopefully will never stop. There are digital sub channels like Movies!, even though it has commercials airs classic movies and un cut (except if there is any objectionable non network standard content which is rarer for older movies due to codes back then) . Fox Movies Channel used to be a network about airing older movies has become FXM airing older movies from FOX's library un-cut commercial free for one half day and the other half airing newer movies you might see on FX and FXX as well, with commercials , they have the best of bold worlds. Other examples of the same kind of drift that AMC did , was their now sister channel IFC ,which used to air independent movies un cut now airs comedies, dramas, mainstream movies and with commercials.
Viacom launched When digital cable came out and more spin off channels came out it was like the 2nd burst of cable. Viacom launched spinoff channels for Nickeloden for example : a channel just for nickeloden's toons (Nicktoons) , a channel for Teens , a channel for pre-schoolers , a channel for their collection of game shows and sports related programs. The idea of haivng a spinoff channel was simple in a broad scope yet keep in your family of channels. Well you also get cable companies to pay a little more. These channels could be cited in being those 1000 channels you have but don't watch and why the heck should have you have cable then. Usa Network has a spinoff network called Cloo , formally called Sleuth it doesn't have high coverage infact it's owner Comcast doesn't even have the channel. It has become the channel that USA uses to dump some repeats of their content and some movie showings on. Teennick ,had more inventive spirit when it was the N, it is now a Nickeloden channel that airs an archive of nick programming. If you are wondering what does this have to with drift, well sometimes it gives a main channel justification to drift. Back to MTV, they have MTV Hits that airs nothing but music videos so that they can say "hey look , we have a place on TV for your music videos". Ealier when we were talking of Food Network, Cooking Channel , mentioned they used Cooking Channel as away to do some drifting in programming of their how to cooking shows.
The other part of drifting could be changing your name and being a new channel instead of just changing your programming and keeping your old name. Investigation Discovery is a good example did you never heard of it's predecessor Discovery Times or even what it launched as in 1996, Discovery Civilization Network , a channel focused on world history and geography until 2002, when the New York Times decided to co-run the channel and it became Discovery times a channel about American culture. Later on the Times gave up their part and it was run by Discovery alone again but kept it's name. In 2008 it was relaunched as the current Investigation Discovery and now airs crime programming , it waited for name change to change it's programming meaning it was not a drift. (it also filled a Court TV sized whole in hearts of home crime solvers ) Also Court TV did drift a little from being a channel that aired live trials all day and maybe repeats of trails and news shows about trials to being a channel that also aired shows with crimes being solved, they later decided to become Tru TV ,which itself drifted from being a straight sometimes ,knock of other channels reality shows channel , to being a reality show channel with shows to make people laugh.
We couldn't possibly look at every channel that has drifted in depth that would make this article longer than it already is , in as much some channels drifting fit with channels we mentioned already. A&E was an arts and entertainment channel hence the letters , now it airs reality shows ,and has some dramas as well. It's drift started in around 2003 ,when some reality shows were added more of the drifting started later when they added shows like "Dog the Bounty Hunter" . Their change is related to our viewers being niche audience and the audiences gravitating to the other programs the channel was trying. Bravo fits into our becoming commercial made them change their ways category. A&E was an ad funed arts and entertainment channel owned by ABC , later capital cities , later Walt Disney , and Hearst. (These companies also co-own ESPN) they tired to be PBS with ads ( thankyou advertisers like you , Ford) Bravo , on the other hand was a commercial free channel owned by Rainbow media and Warner (Rainbow /Cablevision also started AMC) devoted to arts in 1980, and was a premium network like HBO , and later on Disney Channel started as. They did go commercial free basic cable (like TCM is ) in 1992 they later went PBS style with underwriters and finally commercials in 1998. After some sells it was sold to NBC in 2002 and the channel started changing to air more lifestyle shows and later reality shows.
Cartoon Network is a special momentary lapse of insanity in 2009 they launched a block called CN Real. The Idea of Cartoon Network airing something that's not animation on the CN part of the channel not Adult Swim, angered many Cartoon Network fans. They had been trying slowly to add live action shows possibly to go after it's Nickelodeon and Disney Channel competition the block name died off but they did try more live action shows but none were that successful and they stopped in 2012 and their line up is back to all cartoons except some movies they air.
Our look at channel drifting could have gone way more because there are so many examples , but I think it's good to end here. The idea of a channel staying the same is not what we may mean , it's more of what's on the tin you call yourself a History Channel air History. I personally dislike what the Weather Channel has done. This article wasn't do defend or attack channel drift it was to explain it. The concept of branding changes though due to channels trying to keep you and not have someone ditch cable their names maybe the lowest rung. They have to work with what they have as an audience. Is Channel drift bad or good? It's not that easy an answer. When TV Land drifted , classic TV shows have more places to be than ever before thanks to Antenna TV, This TV, Get TV, Me TV, Cozi TV, and their ilk , on demand places like Amazon, Hulu , and Netflix. So yes we lost one channel in classic TV but gained so much. PBS cultivates programs that commercial networks don't pick up, like arts and music programming. This maybe a topic , we may talk about more of in the future. In the past 10 years it has gone more in what television has done, as cable channels were no longer this new niche thing that appealing to mass was important for survival ,even though cable was kind of the home of getting away from the general audience appeal of network TV.
Cartoon Network is a special momentary lapse of insanity in 2009 they launched a block called CN Real. The Idea of Cartoon Network airing something that's not animation on the CN part of the channel not Adult Swim, angered many Cartoon Network fans. They had been trying slowly to add live action shows possibly to go after it's Nickelodeon and Disney Channel competition the block name died off but they did try more live action shows but none were that successful and they stopped in 2012 and their line up is back to all cartoons except some movies they air.
Our look at channel drifting could have gone way more because there are so many examples , but I think it's good to end here. The idea of a channel staying the same is not what we may mean , it's more of what's on the tin you call yourself a History Channel air History. I personally dislike what the Weather Channel has done. This article wasn't do defend or attack channel drift it was to explain it. The concept of branding changes though due to channels trying to keep you and not have someone ditch cable their names maybe the lowest rung. They have to work with what they have as an audience. Is Channel drift bad or good? It's not that easy an answer. When TV Land drifted , classic TV shows have more places to be than ever before thanks to Antenna TV, This TV, Get TV, Me TV, Cozi TV, and their ilk , on demand places like Amazon, Hulu , and Netflix. So yes we lost one channel in classic TV but gained so much. PBS cultivates programs that commercial networks don't pick up, like arts and music programming. This maybe a topic , we may talk about more of in the future. In the past 10 years it has gone more in what television has done, as cable channels were no longer this new niche thing that appealing to mass was important for survival ,even though cable was kind of the home of getting away from the general audience appeal of network TV.
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