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
