CMT and I are Stupid

[robmadden1]

They are both airing Mama's Family at 8pm lol.

 

[LABreeze]

Yep.....They ARE stupid!

 

[desertv]

Err..doesn't CMT stand for "Country Music Television"? What does "Mama's Family" have to do with country music?

 

[D-Oradio]

ITA! I Expect CMT to go the crappy route even more this year. It wouldn't surprise me to see Dallas on CMT soon or other shows like Golden Girls, Designing Women, and hell maybe even The Waltons. BET and CMT (even they they do have a lot of original programming) are the more sydnicated outlets while MTV and VH1 air a bunch of original non-music programming. All I have to say is the glory days of CMT are long over and don't expect it to get better.

 

[oldschooltv]

This is very interesting now that I think of it.

Cable TV and digital cable were supposed to revolutionize the way American viewers watched television, presenting them with a variety of options, hundreds of channels geared toward certain tastes and niches, basically "a channel for everyone!"

Now it seems like after 5-10 years of all these specialty cable channels, many of them are dying miserable deaths. CNN, CNN Headline News, MSNBC, CNBC, and FoxNewsChannel cannot survive on just the news alone, instead they show movies, documentaries, news talk shows, basically anything but sufficient, live, news. The Weather Channel can't survive on weather alone either, but reverts to home and garden segments, Storm Stories, and other non essential programming. TNN couldn't survive on country music and entertainment alone, died a sad death, and now it seems that CMT can't do it either. MTV and VH-1 couldn't survive on music videos, or even music related programming for that matter, and is now like an R-rated Disney Channel for teenagers and college students.

A channel for everyone? Doesn't seem like the cable TV experiment has worked. I was more satisfied with the programming on my 56 channels 8 years ago than I am with my 750 (a lot of nothing) channels now.

 

[anotherguyTN]

Springsteen's song updated: "750 channels and nothing on..."

 

[marko83]

In case you haven't noticed...nothing stands for what is used to. MTV doesn't play music much. TBS and TNT aren't owned by Turner. Cartoon Network shows live action movies. It just doesn't matter anymore.

 

[raccoonradio]

>>What does "Mama's Family" have to do with country music?

Well, it's a sitcom based in the heartland/South...maybe a bit of countrified comedy? If they run
stuff with Jeff Foxworthy, Larry the Cable Guy, or Bill Engvall (country-flavored comedians)
that's got nothing to do with country music either (though Foxworthy did do a tune where he told
jokes while a country band--I forget which one--backed him up)_

What got me was when VH-1 started putting movies on "Movies that Rock" that had absolutely
nothing to do with music!

>>CNN Headline News

As the Saddam execution took place, they had on Nancy Grace talking about Scott Peterson,
and Showbiz Tonight. Though yes, they did briefly mention the hanging on some top of hour
headlines...so I guess it is headline news. headlines then a bunch of celeb/crime stuff.

 

[dgendvil]

Well if you want country music videos all the time like what TNN & CMT were, I suggest you get Great American Country. They're weren't owned by Gaylord/Viacom. But unfortunately, you won't probably get GAC on Digital Cable here in Las Vegas, but you'll probably get that on DirectTV or Dish Network. So I would suggest that.

 

[Braves2005]

Well if you want country music videos all the time like what TNN & CMT were, I suggest you get Great American Country. They're weren't owned by Gaylord/Viacom. But unfortunately, you won't probably get GAC on Digital Cable here in Las Vegas, but you'll probably get that on DirectTV or Dish Network. So I would suggest that.

Do they still show the Grand Ole Opry live every week? From what I understand, they have aired reruns of the show instead of the live show that is carried every Saturday night.

 

[Braves2005]

CMT has totally been ruined by shows and movies which have very little or basically nothing to do with country music. If they are not running the movie "Pure Country" for the 500th time, they are rerunning the 2006 Miss America Pageant for the same amount of time. I just wonder if after the 2007 Miss America Pageant shows in late January how many times they repeat that ad nauseam. The Miss America Pageant belongs on Lifetime, WE or Oxygen not CMT but I bet CMT got the MAP for as cheaply as possible. And what are shows like "Trick My Truck", "Coyote Ugly", "Cowboy U", "Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders", and other reality shows doing on CMT? And what is "A River Runs Through It" doing on CMT? Brad Pitt has nothing to do with country music and if so, when did he become country? :

 

[Morgan Wick]

One of the other big conglomerates should start filling the void Viacom is creating by homogenizing their networks, especially the music ones. I wonder how TimeWarner or News Corp would do music. Would their resources allow them a faster rise than Fuse or The Tube?

 

[PTBoardOp94]

Carriage would be the issue if News Corp. or TW would start music channels: most cable systems carry MTV, VH1 and CMT on the "extended basic" tier. My grandma even gets MTV2 with extended basic. Any one company offering four very similar channels would have quite the uphill battle.

Maybe MY network could start showing music videos in prime-time since none of the cable channels do any longer ::

 

[BDBopper]

If I remember correctly TNN didn't show music videos all the time either. It's kind of ironic that CMT is heading towards what TNN used to be. Seems like the whole TNN to Spike thing was a waste of time if you were going to go the same route with CMT later and revert back to TNN.

Anyone else confused about what I just wrote? LOL

 

[BDBopper]

I think the only channels still doing what they were originally programmed for are Boomerang, TMC (AMC has jumped the shark by putting newer movies on) and I think that's it. I'm not sure why these two networks have kept it up considering Turner is out of the picture. Maybe the program directors haven't changed since Ted Turner left. I ask the question because the other Former Turner properties (TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network) have been run into the ground

 

[justthenumbers]

I think the only channels still doing what they were originally programmed for are Boomerang, TMC (AMC has jumped the shark by putting newer movies on) and I think that's it. I'm not sure why these two networks have kept it up considering Turner is out of the picture. Maybe the program directors haven't changed since Ted Turner left. I ask the question because the other Former Turner properties (TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network) have been run into the ground

I think the answer is simple (and ironically, I just posted something about this in the "TV History"/Golf Channel thread) -

Boomerang and TCM (not TMC) do not air commercials (other than promos for themselves or other networks).

If they did have to worry about airing commercials, we would more than likely have seen dramatic programming shifts by now. Advertisers (and especially ad agencies) care almost exclusively about targetting Adults 18-49 and/or Adults 25-54. It is the job of Turner Broadcasting (or whoever owns the networks now) to cater to the advertisers'/agencies' needs. I would imagine that neither Boomerang nor TCM are A18-49/A25-54-friendly networks.

This is why the AMC changes were made. They DO air commercials. Their current programming style is more A18-49/A25-54-friendly (or at least PERCEIVED to be that way) than their original approach.

BTW, am I the only one who was confused by the subject line of the first message in this thread? My first impression was that the author was referring to himself when he wrote "I" in "CMI and I are Stupid".

 

[marko83]

TNT and TBS are two of the highest rated cable networks, I don't think they've gone downhill. When Turner owned them, they lacked focus. Now TBS has the comedy and TNT has the drama.

 

[Braves2005]

If I remember correctly TNN didn't show music videos all the time either. It's kind of ironic that CMT is heading towards what TNN used to be. Seems like the whole TNN to Spike thing was a waste of time if you were going to go the same route with CMT later and revert back to TNN.

Anyone else confused about what I just wrote? LOL

No, but at one time TNN from when it first started in 1983 to around the late 90's aired not only country music videos but programming based on country music such as the Bill Anderson country game show, "Fandango", a country talent show, "You Can Be A Star", a night time country talk show, "Nashville Now", reruns of older shows such as Porter Wagoner, Barbara Mandrell and Hee Haw, plus they carried the Grand Ole Opry every Saturday night live for an hour, not to mention The Statler Brothers Show on Saturday nights in the 90's.

TNN did show some shows that were really good like WKRP, Alice, The Real McCoys, The Waltons, Dallas, Dukes Of Hazzard, among others.

It would be good to see CMT come back with country music shows and not a bunch of reality show stuff that has nothing to do with country music.

 

[MarkL]

TNT and TBS are two of the highest rated cable networks, I don't think they've gone downhill. When Turner owned them, they lacked focus. Now TBS has the comedy and TNT has the drama.

There's no doubt they've certainly changed dramatically since they came under Time Warner ownership. TBS has gone from reruns of "Andy Griffith" to repeats of "Sex and the City."

I think in some ways, they were forced to change. When Turner created these networks, there weren't hundreds of cable channels - today you have to stand out from all the others.

Personally, I'm really going to miss Braves Baseball on TBS - the last hold-over from the Ted Turner days is now going away.