While walking around the show floor at this week’s Cable Show in Los Angeles, I was reminded again of a pet peeve I have had for years about cable network names.
My peeve: network names have come to mean nothing at all.
As I walked past the booth for TV Guide Channel promoting all its celebrity and entertainment programming, I wondered when was the last time anyone turned to the TV Guide Channel to find a TV guide?
Likewise, the Cartoon Network now promotes its live-action shows; TV Land shows movies; ABC Family aims mostly at teens these days with programming decidedly not family-oriented.
It’s nearly impossible to find headline news stories on CNN’s Headline News channel these days between shows such as Nancy Grace, Joy Behar and Showbiz Tonight, just as MTV: Music Television long ago abandoned music videos and VHI: Video Hits One seldom offers video hits.
While we’re at it, are “Mr. Mom,” “Tigerland,” and the 2007 film “The Astronaut Farmer” really classics befitting the name American Movie Classics (no wonder they go by AMC now)?
And I’m not even mentioning the networks whose names are a little more forgiving but whose programming has changed entirely from the original format, like Bravo, which began as a high-brow network of opera, concerts and eclectic interviews. The network now features an announcer who incessantly yells at viewers the names of upcoming low-brow fare such as “Kathy Griffin: Balls of Steel” and “The Real Housewives of Wherever.”
With the advent of satellite signal delivery, cable proliferated in the late 1970s and ealry 1980s with the great promise of providing 500 channels of niche programming. Now we have 500 channels of networks that mostly all look like broadcast networks with a hodgepodge of formerly fun specialty channels like USA and TNT that now deliver a familiar mix of reruns, original series and whatever else sells to the lowest common denominator — aka, the easiest and widest audience.
Cable may not have the exclusive on brands that no longer relate to their product — how many radios do you suppose Radio Shack has sold recently? — but the industry must surely dominate that category.
— By Scott Hettrick
Remember when A&E was Arts & Entertainment… and use to offer programming with art and entertainment? Many of these station work to brand themselves as different, then scramble to stuff their lineups with shows that pander to the obvious common denominator — the 18 to 35 year old male.
Good point! and I believe Radio Shack recently attempted to rename/rebrand to “The Shack” so people wouldn’t think they only sold radios… however I’m not sure I would know what was sold in a “Shack”…