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Channels changing their mission.

A

arnoldevns

Follow along with me here.. and I'll have a question at the end..

TV Land used to be a repository for all kinds of good older TV shows. Now it has a bunch of original shows, reality programs and runs movies.

TV Guide channel used to be just that: a channel that showed you what was on TV. They added some logical programming where they still ran the guide on the screen, but also had shows about the TV programs on TV. Now they're running movies and some off-network shows too.

The Weather Channel used to be wall-to-wall weather forecasts. Now it's filled with programs that sometimes strain to relate themselves to weather and movies that have little to do with weather. It has Al Roker doing whatever he does in the morning and a lot of just straight news at times. The weather seems to be an afterthought.

Years ago, The Nashville Network changed it's name to TNN and changed it's programming to be less country specific. It later became Spike TV.

Outdoor Life Network picked up the Tour De France and since it was an outdoor sporing event it still made some sense. Later it added Hockey. When it did and it became more of a sports network, they changed the name of the channel to Versus.

My question is this: why is it so hard for channels like TV Land, TV Guide and The weather channel to admit they don't want to be what their names suggest anymore? Why can't they do what TNN and OLN did? Change their name and just move on to what they want to be. To me, it's almost like false advertising for the weather channel to call themselves that anymore. Rename and move on.
 
(See also:

MTV - Music Television
CMT - Country Music Television
VH1 - (Music) Video Hits One)
 
SyFy is the last example of a channel rebranding itself. It doesn't directly correlate to science fiction anymore. Hmmmm! :(
 
They are all rapidly becoming different versions of the same thing. And, not only is that sad, but it's horrible news for those of us who value the ability of the marketplace to deliver variety as part of the value obtained from paying for cable/satellite TV. Clearly I am not the only one to notice this taking place and I doubt that everyone here is too "old" for advertisers to worry about.

There are a few holdouts, to be sure. Discovery, Science Channel, History/History Int'l, Nat Geo, and HGTV come to mind. But even those are - at times - more watered-down than they should be.
 
Program directors who pop out of some university with a degree in Marketing Communications
who think they are smarter than ANYONE who has EVER worked in the business since
Philo Farnsworth powered up his first vacuum tube.
 
i do agree with the other posters. everything is getting ruined. they are some channels theat are still good. not many.
 
tested said:
The Weather Channel used to be wall-to-wall weather forecasts. Now it's filled with programs that sometimes strain to relate themselves to weather and movies that have little to do with weather. It has Al Roker doing whatever he does in the morning and a lot of just straight news at times. The weather seems to be an afterthought.
Click to expand...

The internet has more/less made The Weather Channel obsolete. People want the weather, for many of them its to go online and find out. Same reason why many radio station announcers no longer do weather forcasts or even traffic/sports scores. Rather than doing such things they just tell their listeners to check it out online while on the air in its place is the announcer talking about their bipolar meds or what had happened last night on American Idol. For the Weather Channel its to offer movies..and Al Roker. But "the Weather Channel" is a brand and I am sure NBC wants to milk it as much as possible for the time being.
 
tested said:
Outdoor Life Network picked up the Tour De France and since it was an outdoor sporing event it still made some sense. Later it added Hockey. When it did and it became more of a sports network, they changed the name of the channel to Versus.
Click to expand...

Yet Versus refuses to let go of its outdoor roots -- many of its daytime shows are still outdoor sports programs (usually hunting or fishing).
 
This has been going on for years now. A&E used to stand for "Arts and Entertainment." Their programming veered away from that years ago. Bravo started with a similar mission, now it's just another NBC satellite network.

What about Hallmark? I associate that brand with well produced family dramas (Hallmark Hall of Fame), but their network is just another off-network rerun machine now.

Remember the Nashville Network (country music based) becoming the National Network, then Spike?

Cooking shows and WWE wrestling on SyFy? nowI guess they can argue that this is OK since "SyFy" doesn't mean Sci Fi any longer.

We could go on and on...
 
Or in some cases when formats evolve with the times, they don't change their call letters.

The "mission" is to make money. When your programming (a) limits your ability to grow, (b) is rendered obsolete and/or (c) sees its audience become not that which advertisers want to reach, you make changes. Anyone hear of basic business?

Yet more silly handwringing over what in some cases is a handful of hours on an overall schedule. It's amazing...no, wait, comical is the right word, how many people still can't get over the concept that video jukeboxes in 2010 aren't a smart business model for anyone seeking a decent audience.
 
imhomerjay said:
Yet more silly handwringing over what in some cases is a handful of hours on an overall schedule. It's amazing...no, wait, comical is the right word, how many people still can't get over the concept that video jukeboxes in 2010 aren't a smart business model for anyone seeking a decent audience.
Click to expand...

Exactly. Thats why all of the jukebox networks (MTV Jams, CMT Pure, MTVU, MTV Hits, etc.) are on the digital tier of cable systems.
Plus, the internet really decreases the demand for those, because its easy to go to youtube and find almost any music video. MTV.com does that as well, I believe.


Something else to consider: How many people who complain about MTV or VH1, and how they don't play music anymore, would actually watch it today if they went back to 24 hours of videos? Pretty much the same group complains about today's popular music, so who would really watch it?
 
I would disagree about the History Channel. It should be the APOCALYPSE CHANNEL or THE END OF HISTORY CHANNEL They run countless shows based on prophesy on the end of the world. It seems this is less than three years away. SOB! :'(
 
Easy solution to this nonsense: just cancel your cable TV subscription! I did! When enough cable TV outlets start losing money because of cancelled subscriptions, they will make some changes! If they don't, then you are just saving your own money by NOT subscribing to their lowest-common-denominator pablum! And you can feel good about that! Meantime, just use the money that you are saving, to buy some DVDs of quality programming that YOU like! Or just read a book!
 
imhomerjay said:
It's amazing...no, wait, comical is the right word, how many people still can't get over the concept that video jukeboxes in 2010 aren't a smart business model for anyone seeking a decent audience.
Click to expand...

I agree with you about music videos, but to me what is even more comical is how the networks and advertisers are so into that young demographic. OK, let me take a look...a retired couple in their 60's with 300K in the bank plus owns their own home, perhaps land too. Then there is that young 25 year old man who lives in a cheap apartment without a TV set or radio ( his choice, he thinks both suck ), spends all day on Facebook playing Farmville, has only $12.75 in the bank plus his idea of "fine dining" is Burger King or Carls Jr. Yet the networks & advertisers are far more interested in reaching that broke " I hate TV" 25 year old than they are that retired couple with lots money to spend who chances are actually watches TV. To me THAT is comical !!!!
 
Let's begin with the basics--the networks are interested in who the advertisers want to reach. The networks aren't chasing them on some whim, it's because, quite simply, you fish where the fish are. If the advertisers tell them thanks but no thanks for delivering an older audience, the networks are hardly going to do well.

As to whether the advertisers are "right" or not, it's a matter of years and years of research. The hypothetical case of the retired couple with a nice nest egg is all well and good, but just that, hypothetical. You can just as easily create an example of the older couple--or widow/widower--struggling to get by on a fixed income and living on Wal-Mart brand rice because their medicine costs too much.

That's why you go by research, that which you can measure. Time and time again, older audiences are found to be less willing to spend (regardless of their bank accounts) and being more set in their brand preferences. That's why the advertisers aren't as interested in them (save for the scooter and Colonial Penn ads on Price is Right, perhaps ;) ) and pay far less to do so.

Basic economics.
 
I don't think people care that much about the explicit theme or mission of a channel anymore. If the NFL announced tomorrow that Super Bowl L (50) would be simulcast on Lifetime, Oxygen, and WE tv in 2016, it'd still get millions of men (and women) watching those channels live.

Linear scheduling doesn't mean as much because of the DVR, and neither does a channel 'theme'. The channels in question are crafting original programming more toward the audiences they can reasonably attract, and not toward the original theme of said channel/network.
 
The young demographics being important, for years I used to think that was the case. Young people-Good...Older people-Bad. Alright maybe that is the case but there is one exception...WTTG FOX 5. Last year back when I was still checking out DCRTV.com, Dave Hughes did a story about FOX 5 WTTG's( Washington ) news anchor 30 something Brian Bolter. Bolter had a Facebook profile with many pics of him. Even though there were no "bad" pics of him were on Facebook but there were others that I had seen when the profile was active showing him drinking a Coors Light, smoking a cigar at the beach, sporting his tattoos and a goatee plus his profile had videos of him doing extreme sports like skateboarding and snowboarding. Also his profile mention that Bolter was a big fan of rock and hip hop music. OK most of these things are pretty much considered "COOL" among those in their 30's ( like Brian Bolter ) and younger. Yet FOX made him take down his Facebook profile. Of course neither FOX nor WTTG or even Bolter himself never did give the reason why for the deleting of the profile. However someone from WTTG did emailed DCRTV shortly afterward saying the reason why was that FOX didn't like those photos and sport videos and felt they were bad for their image and FOX/WTTG didn't want attract that crowd. Right there this tells me that FOX or at least WTTG, doesn't really care that much about those in the 20s & 30's as far as watching their news is concerned. If they did why not allow those pics and Facebook account to remain online to show the human side of their anchor Brian Bolter not too mention attacting that age group to watch their news.
 
I'm gonna answer the question posed in the OP. I didn't really read any of the replies, so sorry if someone already said this.

Anyway, today when new cable networks start up they need to get on cable systems. They do this by being a niche type channel that gets people interested and demanding the channel. Nobody would demand a start up general entertainment channel. However general entertainment bring in more viewer, and thus more money. So once they fool enough cable systems they start changing format.

VH1 classic is a perfect example of this. It was wall to wall 60's 70's, & 80's music videos when it started, which was right after VH1 stopped being about music. old Vh1 fans, and people who grew up on MTV wanted this channel bad. Around 2005 it was basically on every system, and started to add movies, and reruns of VH1 reality programs more and more. Today it is basically VH1-2. Now why? The original format was cheap, so it wasn't cost cutting. No cable system would pick up a network that just reruns the stuff already aired on its sister network, nor would their be any demand for it. However reruns of flavor of love sell ad space for more then wall to wall old music videos.
 
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