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TV's Awful Decline


DirtyHarry

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1 hour ago, iron_lion said:

Saw that too!! Soap writers seem to be ignorant that repetitive poor writing and not just changes in viewing habits have lead to the genre's collapse. The only reason those shows retain an audience is viewer loyalty. 

1 hour ago, iron_lion said:

Saw that too!! Soap writers seem to be ignorant that repetitive poor writing and not just changes in viewing habits have lead to the genre's collapse. The only reason those shows retain an audience is viewer loyalty. 

This part. Unfortunately the days of soaps written by the likes of Bill Bell, Agnes Nixon, Harding Lemay and Douglas Marland are long gone…

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13 hours ago, mrschimpf said:

There used to be fun to TV in the afternoons, where people did live shows and there wasn't a news story to be found. Now the fun is limited to the last part of the newscast and met/sports anchor interplay, and with even Jerry and Steve in reruns now, it's either bad court shows, news, or repeats of sitcoms only palatable to older audiences, and the newer tolerable sitcoms are absurdly easy to access in full and commercial-free (or with saner commercials) on streaming services.

 

Only three game shows (and one, Family Feud, doesn't even get near a 1/10 of an entendre and makes me embarrassed to watch) are left, and it seems except for PBS, broadcast, cable and streaming have unilaterally decided that all kids watch is Fortnite and play Roblox and refuse to put money into any children's content (the Saturday morning E/I Hearst 'for kids...but really old people' racket doesn't count), and David Zazlav showed his true hand by culling every bit of kid's content from HBO Max and ready to cut Cartoon Network to the bone.

 

Don't get me started on the refuse that is the Discovery networks, or alleged movie channels Sundance and IFC carrying not one independent film. I'm sure cable providers actually want to cut useless filler like MTV2, TruTV and 4 of the Discovery networks, but the big companies are like 'oh, you don't want Yellowstone or the NCAA tournament? Or SpongeBob? Welp, then you don't get CBS or Nick because you don't want to carry a diminished TV Land!' Big events get held hostage because of small networks which started as 'special interest', but now carry nothing but reruns.

 

We live in a time for consumers to have plenty of choices. It used to be that syndicators/distributors have no alternatives but to sell the rights to local FOX/UPN/WB affiliates who were once independents. Now, the same classic TV shows, movies and cartoons can be seen anywhere and everywhere. Hence, television stations are left with scraps...or worse, informercials to fill time and to pay the bills. I mean, the onslaught of first-run court, game and talk shows produced by Byron Allen is no match for the classics, and even then some. As for classic cartoons, yes MeTV has the rights as of this post to the WB library since the FCC relaxed the E/I mandate for the diginets, so there are chances to see more of those types on as well. As for the main channels, they can either continue or shut down.

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13 minutes ago, RetroCirqII said:

 

We live in a time for consumers to have plenty of choices. It used to be that syndicators/distributors have no alternatives but to sell the rights to local FOX/UPN/WB affiliates who were once independents. Now, the same classic TV shows, movies and cartoons can be seen anywhere and everywhere. Hence, television stations are left with scraps...or worse, informercials to fill time and to pay the bills. I mean, the onslaught of first-run court, game and talk shows produced by Byron Allen is no match for the classics, and even then some. As for classic cartoons, yes MeTV has the rights as of this post to the WB library since the FCC relaxed the E/I mandate for the diginets, so there are chances to see more of those types on as well. As for the main channels, they can either continue or shut down.

 

Given the crap on TV these days, I just don't see much of a future for the business until they can figure out a way to provide something unique. I just don't see who would watch most of those shows other than low income, less than intellectual types.

 

At least the fighting on Jerry Springer and Richard Bey was funny. There's nothing funny or entertaining about any of these shows.

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13 hours ago, mrschimpf said:

There used to be fun to TV in the afternoons, where people did live shows and there wasn't a news story to be found. Now the fun is limited to the last part of the newscast and met/sports anchor interplay, and with even Jerry and Steve in reruns now, it's either bad court shows, news, or repeats of sitcoms only palatable to older audiences, and the newer tolerable sitcoms are absurdly easy to access in full and commercial-free (or with saner commercials) on streaming services.

 

Only three game shows (and one, Family Feud, doesn't even get near a 1/10 of an entendre and makes me embarrassed to watch) are left, and it seems except for PBS, broadcast, cable and streaming have unilaterally decided that all kids watch is Fortnite and play Roblox and refuse to put money into any children's content (the Saturday morning E/I Hearst 'for kids...but really old people' racket doesn't count), and David Zazlav showed his true hand by culling every bit of kid's content from HBO Max and ready to cut Cartoon Network to the bone.

 

Don't get me started on the refuse that is the Discovery networks, or alleged movie channels Sundance and IFC carrying not one independent film. I'm sure cable providers actually want to cut useless filler like MTV2, TruTV and 4 of the Discovery networks, but the big companies are like 'oh, you don't want Yellowstone or the NCAA tournament? Or SpongeBob? Welp, then you don't get CBS or Nick because you don't want to carry a diminished TV Land!' Big events get held hostage because of small networks which started as 'special interest', but now carry nothing but reruns.

 

I don't get why Paramount Global doesn't move some of their lower-watched, nothing but reruns channels like MTV2, Teen Nick, Nicktoons, and MTV Classic to Pluto TV. We know the way retrans works is that all the big conglomerates want ALL of their channels carried on a provider, and if not, channels that people actually watch will get blacked out. Paramount and WBD seem to be the worst when letting minimally watched channels survive. Even NBCU has shut down channels that had almost no viewers. I think MTV2 and MTV Classic have long been among the lowest rated channels overall. 

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1 minute ago, Newsjunkie24 said:

 

I don't get why Paramount Global doesn't move some of their lower-watched, nothing but reruns channels like MTV2, Teen Nick, Nicktoons, and MTV Classic to Pluto TV. We know the way retrans works is that all the big conglomerates want ALL of their channels carried on a provider, and if not, channels that people actually watch will get blacked out. Paramount and WBD seem to be the worst when letting minimally watched channels survive. Even NBCU has shut down channels that had almost no viewers. I think MTV2 and MTV Classic have long been among the lowest rated channels overall. 

Once again, this has a lot to do, aside from the originals, with the rights to said reruns. Many WB shows (Martin, Fresh Prince, Living Single) could very well be on HBO Max's service and have it also appear 24 hours a day on a Pluto Channel?

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And one would think an abundance of choice would make tv better but it's had the exact opposite effect.

 

Something left out of my earlier essay, lol. Cable channels rerunning the same thing ALL day long. I'm looking at you Rediculousness MTV, or SpongeBob Nickelodeon. Does Rediculousness even do that well in the ratings to be rerun that often?

 

I wouldnt even mind an endless array of cable channels playing movies if said feature was inline with it's niche. Example: a movie like Notorius (about the music industry) on VH 1. 

 

Edited by iron_lion
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Corporate greed. The companies want to force cable companies to give in to the bundle. Are there any viewers of the binge-watch Henry Danger repeats on Teen Nick? It wasn't long ago that MTV2 was devoted to alternative music programming, and Teen Nick used to have reruns of GUTS and Double Dare among other classic kids game shows...ahem, it used to be Nick GaS. Even their '90s Are All That' block of Rugrats, Kenan & Kel, etc. seems to have gone away.

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6 minutes ago, Newsjunkie24 said:

 

I don't get why Paramount Global doesn't move some of their lower-watched, nothing but reruns channels like MTV2, Teen Nick, Nicktoons, and MTV Classic to Pluto TV. We know the way retrans works is that all the big conglomerates want ALL of their channels carried on a provider, and if not, channels that people actually watch will get blacked out. Paramount and WBD seem to be the worst when letting minimally watched channels survive. Even NBCU has shut down channels that had almost no viewers. I think MTV2 and MTV Classic have long been among the lowest rated channels overall. 

(Didn't merge) Didn't even realize MTV 2 was doing that bad. Content wise it's superior to it's sibling Rediculousness and Teen Mom ladened MTV.

Edited by iron_lion
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1 minute ago, VHSgoodiesWA said:

Corporate greed. The companies want to force cable companies to give in to the bundle. Are there any viewers of the binge-watch Henry Danger repeats on Teen Nick? It wasn't long ago that MTV2 was devoted to alternative music programming, and Teen Nick used to have reruns of GUTS and Double Dare among other classic kids game shows...ahem, it used to be Nick GaS. Even their '90s Are All That' block of Rugrats, Kenan & Kel, etc. seems to have gone away.

This was due to older demographics, I may say so....

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9 minutes ago, iron_lion said:

(Didn't merge) Didn't even realize MTV 2 was doing that bad. Content wise it's superior to it's sibling Rediculousness and Teen Mom ladened MTV.

 

In the age of streaming, the majority of networks have declined. Only a few have increased.

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29 minutes ago, iron_lion said:

(Didn't merge) Didn't even realize MTV 2 was doing that bad.

 

If I remember correctly, Pluto uses Vevo for music videos.

 

I don't mind a reasonable amount of commercials. I realize people have to pay their bills and make some money. The problem is when they keep layering them and the commercials never seem to end. The other thing I hate is when they push low quality borderline scam products on us. If they're so great at pinpointing potential customers, they should know who is stupid enough to buy those things and who isn't.

 

I personally believe that all stale content should be free, when it comes to music, print and video. Forget the copy protection and all this other crap, just encode them in a way so that a reasonable amount of commercials get inserted from the internet. If you want to watch commercial free, then you can watch them through a service. (I understand that you should pay for first-run and newer content however.)

 

 

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19 minutes ago, DirtyHarry said:

 

If I remember correctly, Pluto uses Vevo for music videos.

 

I don't mind a reasonable amount of commercials. I realize people have to pay their bills and make some money. The problem is when they keep layering them and the commercials never seem to end. The other thing I hate is when they push low quality borderline scam products on us. If they're so great at pinpointing potential customers, they should know who is stupid enough to buy those things and who isn't.

 

I personally believe that all stale content should be free, when it comes to music, print and video. Forget the copy protection and all this other crap, just encode them in a way so that a reasonable amount of commercials get inserted from the internet. If you want to watch commercial free, then you can watch them through a service. (I understand that you should pay for first-run and newer content however.)

 

 

BET does this alot. Weird timeslots like 4:27 pm to 5:06 pm to accomodate more commercials.

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2 hours ago, VHSgoodiesWA said:

Corporate greed. The companies want to force cable companies to give in to the bundle. Are there any viewers of the binge-watch Henry Danger repeats on Teen Nick? It wasn't long ago that MTV2 was devoted to alternative music programming, and Teen Nick used to have reruns of GUTS and Double Dare among other classic kids game shows...ahem, it used to be Nick GaS. Even their '90s Are All That' block of Rugrats, Kenan & Kel, etc. seems to have gone away.

I think the block that used to be "The '90s Are All That" which eventually became NickRewind was the only reason TeenNick existed in the first place. It was the saving grace for the channel when everything else around it just screamed "A channel that exists only for filler." Even NickRewind succumbed to decay in its final year or so, to the point that the block - which was what got me interested in the '90s and the '80s in the first place - was a sad shell of its former self. Now, TeenNick is the home of "Henry Danger" and "AFV" reruns.

 

Sad, but not surprising, considering MTV has basically inserted itself into a pattern of show "Ridiculousness" almost entirely on loop when nothing new is on, pretend to care when a new episode of a show other than "Ridiculousness" is on, and repeat. No music-related programming at all.

 

This is what television as we know it has come to. Back in the day, you'd have a wide variety of programming to choose from on a wide variety of channels. Now, it's reruns, reruns, reruns. It's crass and exploitative shows posing as inside looks at child pageants or dance teams. It's actively spitting in the faces of viewers who long for the days gone by and showing no remorse for it. It's true crime dramas when there are already too many of them to go around. (Apparently, we haven't learned our lesson with oversaturation, which is what caused The Great Video Game Crash of 1983.) Channels have lost their plot altogether. No care or thought is put into making a good programming lineup anymore.

 

And somehow, TCM remains the shining example of a channel that actually cares about its viewers in the modern age (a trait that has become all but extinct now). Rewind TV, Antenna TV, and MeTV don't count, since they are diginets, but they also show more care than just about the entirety of cable barring live sports.

Edited by DJonNews
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3 hours ago, DJonNews said:

And somehow, TCM remains the shining example of a channel that actually cares about its viewers in the modern age (a trait that has become all but extinct now). Rewind TV, Antenna TV, and MeTV don't count, since they are diginets, but they also show more care than just about the entirety of cable barring live sports.

 

I'd pay for a TCM only subscription, if that's possible, without bundling it with other channels. I can't say I miss too many other things on cable since I cut the cord a few years ago. Actually, the cable channels, for now, come through my TV because I still have internet through them. And I still don't watch it. But supposedly they are changing over to IPTV so that's not going to last much longer.

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23 hours ago, iron_lion said:

BET does this alot. Weird timeslots like 4:27 pm to 5:06 pm to accomodate more commercials.

OMG, yes! BET has the longest commercial breaks on TV, I swear. I can’t even enjoy a movie when it airs on there. 

22 hours ago, DJonNews said:
On 1/4/2023 at 1:50 PM, VHSgoodiesWA said:

I think the block that used to be "The '90s Are All That" which eventually became NickRewind was the only reason TeenNick existed in the first place. It was the saving grace for the channel when everything else around it just screamed "A channel that exists only for filler." Even NickRewind succumbed to decay in its final year or so, to the point that the block - which was what got me interested in the '90s and the '80s in the first place - was a sad shell of its former self. Now, TeenNick is the home of "Henry Danger" and "AFV" reruns.

Yup. The “90s” block and Degrassi was TeenNick/The N’s bread and butter back in the day.

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53 minutes ago, CLETVFan said:

Has anyone noticed how channels like IFC, TLC and VH1 have become completely different than what they were 20 or even 30 years ago?  They are nothing more than networks with different acronyms.

VH1 just cut one of their four shows with a pulse, Drag Race, which is now on MTV to minimize that network's damage. It won't be long until the rest move there or BET.

 

And to be fair, MTV Classic and BET Jams/Soul still actually show music videos so they haven't moved from their original remits; I have no issue with them. It's the acronym networks that just plug in a VLC playlist of one show and call it a day.

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MTV Live also hasn't strayed from MTV's original purpose, except it also shows music-related programming in addition to a constant cycle of music videos, so there's a bit of variety, at least.

 

After all, aside from FAST channels like Vevo Music, a traditional channel devoted to music videos only wouldn't fare too well nowadays, and that's what's causing MTV Classic to perform so poorly.

 

But that's beside the point. What mrschimpf said is right. Nowadays, it's the norm to put on whatever programming you could and call it a day. No care. No variety. Nothing.

 

Diginets are showing cable how it's done, and that should be the wake-up call for television itself. Forget the rerun farms. How about the channels basically running on autopilot? How many people would want to watch Science Channel anymore besides "How It's Made?" Exactly.

 

And how about speeding up any pre-2014 program to the point that they're PAL-pitched? Yes, it's syndication, and yes, you have to attract those advertisers, but at the cost of just trying to watch the show normally? Paramount Global is the only company I know that is a huge offender of such a practice. Ever wondered why the "Everybody Loves Raymond" episodes sound a bit off on TV Land? This is why.

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2 hours ago, DJonNews said:

And how about speeding up any pre-2014 program to the point that they're PAL-pitched? Yes, it's syndication, and yes, you have to attract those advertisers, but at the cost of just trying to watch the show normally? Paramount Global is the only company I know that is a huge offender of such a practice. Ever wondered why the "Everybody Loves Raymond" episodes sound a bit off on TV Land? This is why.

I scanned by Great American Family one day during one of their Who's the Boss marathons done to waste time because they only care about existing during Christmas and Valentine's Day and Sony is happy to give them reruns for a pittance. The theme song was pitched to the point that Steve Wariner sounded like a eunuch, Tony, Angela and Samantha seemed to be on what Jessie Spano took for that one test and burning holes in the carpet as they did their scenes, and I could not understand much dialogue as even the captioning track was rushed. My spectrum brain noticed immediately and wished for everything to slow down. It was so disrespectful to the show, the actors, and the viewer, along with the creatives. All this...to shove in more ads.

Edited by mrschimpf
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4 hours ago, DJonNews said:

MTV Live also hasn't strayed from MTV's original purpose, except it also shows music-related programming in addition to a constant cycle of music videos, so there's a bit of variety, at least.

 

After all, aside from FAST channels like Vevo Music, a traditional channel devoted to music videos only wouldn't fare too well nowadays, and that's what's causing MTV Classic to perform so poorly.

 

But that's beside the point. What mrschimpf said is right. Nowadays, it's the norm to put on whatever programming you could and call it a day. No care. No variety. Nothing.

 

Diginets are showing cable how it's done, and that should be the wake-up call for television itself. Forget the rerun farms. How about the channels basically running on autopilot? How many people would want to watch Science Channel anymore besides "How It's Made?" Exactly.

 

And how about speeding up any pre-2014 program to the point that they're PAL-pitched? Yes, it's syndication, and yes, you have to attract those advertisers, but at the cost of just trying to watch the show normally? Paramount Global is the only company I know that is a huge offender of such a practice. Ever wondered why the "Everybody Loves Raymond" episodes sound a bit off on TV Land? This is why.

 

MTV Classic doesn't play any videos post 2009, and probably doesn't have a wide selection of songs. The few times I'm at a house which carries it, which is rare, sometimes I'll see a video I saw there before. I liked it better when it was VH1 Classic and aired documentaries about music.

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Yeah, but Liberty Mutual got to air "Limu Emu...and Doug" another two more times! All thanks to TVLand pitching and speeding up actual television programming!
👏👏

 

Another one of those crappy channels now is Logo. What used to be a network for the LGBT community is now tons of old sitcom reruns, probably pitched and sped up for commercials. Very few BBC-sourced shows on BBC America nowadays, it wasn't that way 20 years ago. FYI runs The King of Queens and Storage Wars reruns instead of what used to be biographical shows.

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6 hours ago, CLETVFan said:

Has anyone noticed how channels like IFC, TLC and VH1 have become completely different than what they were 20 or even 30 years ago?  They are nothing more than networks with different acronyms.

 

I don't understand BBC America either. I see virtually nothing British there that differentiates it from any other channel. It seems like the same movies that run on AMC are then passed on to IFC, then Sundance and sometimes then to BBC.

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46 minutes ago, VHSgoodiesWA said:

Another one of those crappy channels now is Logo. What used to be a network for the LGBT community is now tons of old sitcom reruns, probably pitched and sped up for commercials. Very few BBC-sourced shows on BBC America nowadays, it wasn't that way 20 years ago. FYI runs The King of Queens and Storage Wars reruns instead of what used to be biographical shows.

FYI also aired what turned out to be a very discredited edition of Miss USA in October. Unless you are a pageant superfan, you would've never known it was on because FYI's budget is the same as A+E Network's budget for paper and cleaning supplies. And the only thing Viceland proved is that young people will not pay for content that's on YouTube for free.

 

I just don't understand why AMC consolidates around that sole channel and just cut things down to AMC and BBC World News. All of their networks don't really have a focus; BBC America has pretty much made way for Acorn and Britbox, WEtv just seems to be a CSI outpost, and IFC/Sundance are down to the Independent Spirit Awards and a few rare great shows like Sherman's Showcase.

 

I get more monthly out of my YouTube Premium subscription for $10.50 than I do for $150 of cable programming, which for me is basically sports, local news, a couple of talk shows I like, SNL, and some shows I just prefer to let accumulate on my DVR and watch later without commercials. Most of the time I just watch a local looping weather channel I can stream for free.

 

YouTube allows me to shift from Animal Crossing to football to old commercials to news opens to highway content to product reviews to Strong Bad to MLM takedowns to fun LGBTQ+ content and then odd rabbitholes like 'why is there a big NO SMOKING sign on supertankers' and dopey drivers on drivecams. And there's no bean counter to stop me from mainlining Caillou grounded videos for an entire night (it's trainwreck content), with not a commercial in sight.

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