Network Decay, or, more channels =/= more good programming

I'm sure many of us here on WGW are old enough to remember when there weren't nearly as many TV channels as there are now. In Britain, for example, there were just four terrestrial ones when I was growing up, and it was a big deal when Channel Five started up (it then proceeded to become known as The Channel What Shows Lots Of Porn, before settling down as the 'well-known movies and American imports' channel). Satellite TV was an exciting luxury, and itself relatively limited in the number and variety of channels, e.g. Sky mostly showed movies and sport, with Sky One as the 'exciting super-new American imports' channel.

Then came the digital revolution, and with the arrival of Freeview you could suddenly get at least a couple of dozen channels without paying anything extra. Granted, there were quite a few channels that were just news or shopping, but between the original five channels, their assorted spinoffs (BBC3-4, ITV2-4, E4, More4, Film4, Five US) and various others, there were suddenly a lot more places to get comedy, drama, sci-fi and other fiction programmes. However, curiously enough, the number of new fiction programmes that were actually good and passed into legend didn't really go up.

This coincided with the rise of reality TV, which is dirt cheap to produce in terms of both creative effort and money. Guess what - creating more channels doesn't magically increase the number of potential viewers, the number of talented writers or the amount of advertising revenue available, at least not sufficiently to have the amount of quality programming go up in proportion to the number of channels. Result: eleventy billion reality TV programmes, shows both fictional and otherwise being imported and/or cloned on opposite sides of the Atlantic to a greater extent, endless repeats, and more franchise spinoffs like the newer versions of CSI, Law and Order, Stargate etc. (and, recently, NCIS).

How many fictional live-action shows from the last 3-5 years that you thought were great can you name that aren't franchise spinoffs? No more than for the same period a decade earlier, I'd imagine. And lets not get into the fact that a lot of good series get Screwed By The Network.

This rant was prompted by reading the Network Decay page at TV Tropes (it'll ruin your life, yadda yadda), which features a depressing parade of once-distinctive channels increasingly given over to reality TV, CSI reruns, and the like.

Australia only had five channels - three commercial and two government-funded. Suddenly that's grown and while I'm a little glad for the new sports channel (not that I like sport, but seriously, I changed onto it one day and... TRAMPOLINE BASKETBALL), the channels are basically excuses to do re-runs of the same episodes twice/three times a week.

That and Australia is extremely terrible when it comes to original content. Many of our shows are sourced from the US, and any UK/foreign/movies older than the 90s/questionable content/documentaries are shown on the government channels. AND WE HAVE TOO MANY DIFFERENT CRIME SHOWS TO COUNT. Even what little Australian content we have is usually made up of crime shows. It's as annoying as it sounds.

Oh Sci-Fi network how far you have fallen.

Edit: Also Cartoon Network is a disaster, holy shit.

God, I remember everything in that fucking TV Tropes article and it makes me sad. Taking a trip down memory lane to revisit when Cartoon Network, Sci-Fi Channel and TV Land were good, and MTV aired music videos... when Discovery Health wasn't the Babies Come Out of Censorbars Channel... before TechTV became G4... it goes on and on.

And Nick used to be good, dammit.

But what's nice about the internet is I can catch Leo Laporte's podcast and watch pretty much whatever I want, whenever I want. So I'm not that disappointed. Besides, Star Trek is on at 6pm on one of the antenna channels. So not complaining. But kids these days don't know what it's like to have a channel of nothing but cartoons, and entertaining ones at that! God, Toonami. Just Toonami.

What really gets me is not so much the preponderance of reality TV and detective/cop/hospital shows, it's the number of things that are chronically under-represented, often due to the channels supposedly devoted to them becoming genericized. Hence sci-fi is scattered all over the schedules, and good luck finding anything other than Star Trek, Fringe or Stargate, and THERE IS NO CHANNEL IN THE ENTIRE BRITISH ISLES THAT SHOWS ANIME IN ANY QUANTITY. THIS MAKES ME SAD. Similarly, non-mainstream films are less common on TV than they were at one point, due to the dumbing down of Film4 (this used to be one of my favourite channels - WHY, CHANNEL 4, WHY?!) and, across the pond, the 'diversifying' of AMC.

On another note, I've found that channels showing repeats often seem to continually loop small bits of a particular series, not the whole thing. Thus BBC3 keeps showing the same 20-30 or so episodes of Family Guy over and over again, Living's endless CSI repeats have become stale for me because I've seen all the episodes they ever show at least once, and so on.

LOL, AMC... American Movie Classics. They often show movies that aren't American. Cracks me up every time.

Otherwise... a lot of the degredation of television programming can be blamed on the viewers. If reality shows weren't a hit, they wouldn't be around, for example. It is rather sad though to see the niche channels--the ones who shouldn't expect to have a huge audience, like G4 for example--cop out.

Maximilia wrote:

Otherwise... a lot of the degredation of television programming can be blamed on the viewers. If reality shows weren't a hit, they wouldn't be around, for example. It is rather sad though to see the niche channels--the ones who shouldn't expect to have a huge audience, like G4 for example--cop out.

Yeah, there must be a large silent majority of TV viewers that are quite happy to watch lots of the same stuff and keep coming back for more, which is sad, because a lot of niche stuff and more involved/imaginative fiction is getting squeezed out. The advertising-supported TV channel business model just doesn't seem to support niche programming enough to be profitable - I wonder if subscription and buy-on-demand stuff is the way forward. HBO certainly seem to have benefited from being funded differently to a lot of other channels, producing quite a few of the best programmes of recent years and showing a much greater willingness to try something a bit different (and no, I'm not just sucking up to them for having the guts to tackle A Song of Ice and Fire). Certainly I would be happy to pay a subscription to watch specific series that I knew (via word of mouth/free first-episode previews) to be good, instead of paying more money for a whole package of channels out of which I might only watch three programmes in a given week.

Fifty-seven channels and there's nothin' on...

I can remember when American TV had basically four channels: ABC, CBS, NBS and what was called a local access channel, which tended to play odd things and eventually became PBS. We owned a TV from before I was born, but I understand from my older siblings that my parents didn't actually buy our first TV set till the early 1950s. Before that, you listened to the radio. The Dumont channel still existed when my parents bought their first TV set, but was gone long before I was old enough to watch TV.

We didn't have anything approaching cable till we moved to Ottumwa when I was 12-a grand total of eight channels. PBS used to show reruns of Monty Python and Dr. Who, as well as various other British TV shows like The Professionals, The Avengers and The Prisoner. I always wondered why American TV couldn't come up with anything that cool.

Now, we've got roughly 600+ cable channels (we'd have another 200 if we got HD) plus Showtime on Demand. I spend most of my time watching The Discovery Channel, the BBC, Showtime (for Dexter, on Sunday nights), and The Food Network.

Oh, and I watch ABC when Lost is airing.

It's a good thing my sons are paying for this, because otherwise, I likely wouldn't have a TV at all, preferring to spend my money on cable internet and watch movies on the DVD player.

And I'm extremey disappointed in Scyfy. I want my New Years Eve/New Years Day Marathon of Twilight Zone back, dammit!

I remember when back in MY day Cartoon Network had Dexter's Laboratory, Ed, Edd, 'n' Eddy, Samurai Jack and MEGAS XLR.

DAMN IT JACK AND MEGAS WERE THE TWO BEST CARTOONS IN THE HISTORY OF HISTORY. D8

This is why I don't have a TV for anything but watching DVD's. If there's a series someone promises is awesome, I'll find it online or rent it on DVD. I refuse to pay for a bunch of crap I never watch.

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

I remember when back in MY day Cartoon Network had Dexter's Laboratory, Ed, Edd, 'n' Eddy, Samurai Jack and MEGAS XLR.

DAMN IT JACK AND MEGAS WERE THE TWO BEST CARTOONS IN THE HISTORY OF HISTORY. D8

They show a few Cartoon Network shows in the morning here on one of the new stations. I miss out on Grim Adventures and Ben 10 due to my waking schedule, but I eat breakfast when Camp Lazlo is on.

WHAT THE HELL IS CAMP LAZLO? It swings from being mildly clever and amusing to being flat-out brain-dead, cliche and drooling. AND I SWEAR LAZLO IS VOICED BY BEASTLY FROM CARE BEARS WHICH FREAKS ME OUT JUST A LITTLE.

Keith Fraser wrote:

THERE IS NO CHANNEL IN THE ENTIRE BRITISH ISLES THAT SHOWS ANIME IN ANY QUANTITY. THIS MAKES ME SAD.

We get about one or two anime series here. At the moment I think it's Afro Samurai and Ergo Proxy... which are on air at rather ridiculous times at night. And they're the dubs, which I couldn't care less about (although I did watch Code Geass dubbed, which made everything funnier).

At one stage there was a proposition for an all-anime channel or something like it, but I haven't heard anything since that first idea.

rae wrote:

This is why I don't have a TV for anything but watching DVD's. If there's a series someone promises is awesome, I'll find it online or rent it on DVD. I refuse to pay for a bunch of crap I never watch.

Before the boys moved back in, that's all I used it for. Morgan would record Lost, and I'd go over to their place to watch it every week.

I can live without cable TV, but I can't live without the internet. Go figure.

Keith Fraser wrote:

THERE IS NO CHANNEL IN THE ENTIRE BRITISH ISLES THAT SHOWS ANIME IN ANY QUANTITY. THIS MAKES ME SAD.

I remember Propeller (forget what its called now) showing largely uncut episodes of Elven Lied at 9pm, when little Billy might still be awake to be traumatised by what he thinks will be a harmless cartoon. Also remember SciFi showing anime of various quality late at night (as in 3am) on the weekends.
They stopped doing that for some reason.

Since moving, I haven't bothered to get Sky, only have the four Irish stations, and find myself watching exactly as much (or as little) TV as I did with Sky. Whilst I do occassionally miss being able to stick some Top Gear or Star Trek (since one or both is on at least 6 or 7 hours a day - more at weekends) on in the background when cooking or something, by and large I don't miss it. Says a lot about how shit TV is these days.

Ahh... bad networks. A universal truth, it seems.

Sweden has two government funded channels (SVT1 and SVT2, which have branched out to include SVT24 - which mostly shows news and sports) - they do the most reliable news reporting, and have rules about how much of their content has to be Swedish/produced in Sweden. There's a lot of documentaries and talk shows and a disturbing number of police shows - imagine CSI without the gore and the somewhat competent use of colours/lighting/camerawork. Most Swedish dramas look like they were filmed with a shaky hand-held camera in some school basement somewhere. Everything is fucking grey.

I do appreciate the somewhat odd documentaries, though. They can be fun. And the fact that there are no commercials. A one-hour show on SVT is a one-hour show.

Then there's channels three, four and five. Channel three airs from Norway, which allows them to get around the Swedish laws on commercial content, and mostly airs reality show crap and really bad soap operas. Channel four has lots of competitive shows - Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, Swedish Idol, etc., etc., whereas channel five shows a lot of American imports and movies.

There's other channels, too, but I don't really pay attention to them. They were dead from Network Decay before they even got off the ground.


As for anime? Hahahaha - we get .hack in the middle of the night, and Pokemon. I heard rumours of ZTV airing Fullmetal Alchemist a while ago, but I don't think that was true.

Where I live, we only have 3 local channels worth mentioning, the other 3 are a PBS affiliate, a music video channel and some sort of all-preaching-all-the-time channel.

As for the big three, they're laughable, to say the least. We get the choice of vulgar sketch comedy that seems to be written by monkeys banging their heads against keyboards... an insult to monkeys everywhere, I assure you... or canned Mexican/Colombian soaps or the news, which seem to take a large chunk of programing time and are generally utterly worthless.

Needless to say, thank God for cable.

Showcase started out as The Anime Channel, and showed things like Ghost in the Shell:Standalone Complex (both series), Cowboy Bebop, the Japanese continuation of G1 Transformers into Headmasters, GI Joe(!) and some other "classic" anime from way back in the eighties.

Now it's all TV movies and other bullshit, with GitS and Cowboy Bebop the only animé left, bumped to 4am.

I remember when Tech TV was actually about tech stuff. X-Play, how I miss you...

The "Real" X-Play, you mean. Not that retreaded G4-TV wearing an X-Play mask.

I remember when A&E was actually arts and entertainment (with Law & Order reruns as pure filler). I can't recall a single show they produce that isn't a reality show (Especially since they pushed Biography on to it's own channel).

MTV... Need I say more?

Kids, want to know what BET was like before rap videos took over? That's pretty much TV One.

I remember when ESPN2 was supposed to be ESPN's younger, hipper sibling. And then when they realized what a horrible idea that was, they made it more like ESPN's earlier "Call it a sport, we'll air it" days. Now, it's the other ESPN. Period.

Am I the only one who misses the days when Comedy Central was stand-up comedy, sketch comedy and MST3K?

And yes, I refuse to use SciFi's new stupid looking name.

Freezer wrote:

Am I the only one who misses the days when Comedy Central was stand-up comedy, sketch comedy and MST3K?

No, you're not. I sorely miss the stand-up comedy and MST3K. I spent the better part of 4-5 years taping episodes off Comedy Central.

Freezer wrote:

The "Real" X-Play, you mean. Not that retreaded G4-TV wearing an X-Play mask.

I liked X-Play for a long, long time, until the most recent change when they added a bunch of nobody-fucking-cares segments and cast members with no personality (you know, the one guy). I think the merger systematically destroyed first all the TechTV programming, then all the gaming programming, until X-Play was a shining beacon on top of the pile of Cheaters and Cops marathons. So they had to shit on it, too. The executives must really hate the channel.

Miss Prince wrote:

Freezer wrote:

The "Real" X-Play, you mean. Not that retreaded G4-TV wearing an X-Play mask.

I liked X-Play for a long, long time, until the most recent change when they added a bunch of nobody-fucking-cares segments and cast members with no personality (you know, the one guy). I think the merger systematically destroyed first all the TechTV programming, then all the gaming programming, until X-Play was a shining beacon on top of the pile of Cheaters and Cops marathons. So they had to shit on it, too. The executives must really hate the channel.

I don't even play a lot of video games and used to watch that show, until a couple of years ago. My brother and I can still make each other laugh by mentioning the Golden Mullets, Dik Dik Van Dik, Ratty Handpuppet, and the Kha'ak Invasion of San Diego. [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Delcat wrote:

I remember when Tech TV was actually about tech stuff. X-Play, how I miss you...

I remember when it was ZDTV.

Trioculus wrote:

I don't even play a lot of video games and used to watch that show, until a couple of years ago. My brother and I can still make each other laugh by mentioning the Golden Mullets, Dik Dik Van Dik, Ratty Handpuppet, and the Kha'ak Invasion of San Diego. [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

I'm pretty sure I still know most of the Shad Grimgravy skits by heart.
The gate will fall down when lean upon it! It occurs you t rouble!

The last time I watched X-Play, there was a total of one game review on the entire show. I heaved a shuddering sigh, canceled my DVR Season Pass, and changed the channel, ne'er to return again. I can't even find torrents of the old episodes... :<

Zeiss, I have never been so unsurprised about anything in my life. Just an F-Y-I.

[quote="Delcat"]Zeiss, I have never been so unsurprised about anything in my life. Just an F-Y-I.[/quote/]

Are you saying that you don't find it SHOCKING?