Once Great Cable Channels That Have Gone Downhill

[TMC1982 0]

*AMC post 2001, when they started becoming more of a "general movies" channel (hell, they once played "Catwoman" for Christ's sake ) instead of a classic film channel. It was also around this period, that they became an advertiser-supported network (which as result, meant that the movies had to be edited for objectionable content).

 

*BET some time after Viacom took over

 

*Cartoon Network whenever they started showing live-action stuff

 

*Disney Channel post 2002, when they stopped being a general audience channel (hence, the elimination of "Vault Disney") in favor of tween fare (which also came at the expense of animation)

 

*ESPN sometime after Disney took over

 

*ESPN Classic post 2004, when it became awfully apparent that they weren't trying anymore

 

*G4 shortly after Neal Tiles became the president of the network

 

*MTV post 1997

 

*Nickelodeon post 1999

 

*TV Land whenever they started showing current reality shows (e.g. "Extreme Makeover") and movies (when the channel should be devoted to classic TV programming)

 

*VH1 post 2001 (when they started relying too much on pop culture nostalgia like "Best Week Ever" and the "I Love the..." series and crummy reality shows)

 

 

[Ravenbomb 0]

Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon were the first two that I thought of. There was a really brief period for Cartoon Network between their current meh state and back when they were practically the Scooby-Doo channel where I would mostly just watch that one station most of the day.

[CBright7831 0]

I hate to sound like an old instrument by asking this question but does MTV still play music videos?

[MFer 0]

If you mean every once in a blue moon during that 5-9 A.M. time frame, then yeah.

[Jaxxson Mayhem 0]

mtvU is pretty much all videos all the time.

[DrVenkman PhD 0]

Dejaview dropping Charles in Charge for Silver Spoons irked me.

[TMC1982 0]

If you mean every once in a blue moon during that 5-9 A.M. time frame, then yeah.

 

 

Even worst, MTV2, which was initially created to make up for the decreasing number of hours that the regular MTV was putting for music videos, has in recent years, degraded into purely a backhaul of the regular MTV's programming (a la ESPN2).

[DrVenkman PhD 0]

As a white man, I often see my program guide list BET as airing blocks of shows I would enjoy watching (Family Matters, Diff'rent Strokes, and the like) but as a Canadian, I seem to be getting teased as it's always rap videos no matter what.

[El Psycho Diablo 0]

Speed Channel. It was all doing really well until FOX bought it, when it may as well have been renamed NASCAR2.

 

Food Network has also decidedly made a shift for the worse over the last couple of years.

[cd213 0]

I disagree on G4, I never watched it until recently. I don't know when they started airing shows like NINJA WARRIOR and UNBEATABLE BANZUKE, but that's why I watch the station, that and Olivia Munn.

 

MTV is the worst offender. It was created to show 24 hours of music videos. Once that started to slow down, they created MTV2 to show 24 hours of music videos, and then that started to slow down.

 

VH1 I don't mind, since their the train wreck station now, and that's not always a bad thing.

 

Food Network, I agree to a point. Some of their shows are fun to watch, but others just annoy the hell out of me. I've been watching since it was MMMMtv and was only show for half a day, so I've seen the rise and somewhat downfall of this station.

 

AMC just sucks now. I agree with the idea that it just show whatever now. I remember watching some classics from the 1950's and before that I couldn't see anywhere else, but now I have to sit through crap that doesn't even garner a 1 star rating.

[Perfxion 0]

MTV/MTV2/VH1 all suck. I am glad I have VH1 Classics, VH1 Soul, MTV Hits, MTV Jams, and MTV-U. All 5 stations seem to be 24/7 music videos. In the case of Classic, if it isn't a music video. Its a doc on an artist. Something music related, not bullshit like "washed up/never will be dating game!!!".

 

Cartoon Network having live action is really crappy.

[Cheech Tremendous 0]

I miss the old days of videos on MTV and VH1, but you can't fault their business model. Those trashy reality shows do monster ratings and on the whole, it has made both stations far more profitable and popular. As a supporter of good taste, I'd like to see the music back, but even I know that it wasn't a "bad" move for them.

 

The problem is VH1 and MTV kept the original names of the stations when they got away from showing music. Had they used entirely different names for their channels I think they'd avoid a lot of this backlash.

[HollywoodSpikeJenkins 0]

Tech TV/G4 after the buyout. 100% percent. I remember watching anything and everything on Tech TV and then suddenly, it was all gone and replaced with dumb ass hosts and COPS.

[Youth N Asia 0]

I loved Tech TV and G4 by themselves

 

Tech TV was a lot of fun, mostly computer stuff, with some video game news mixed in.

 

G4 was all video games all the time...granted, they didn't have a ton of material, and you got a lot of repeats, but it was still fun. I miss Laura Foy

 

I enjoy AOTS and Ninja Warrior, but yeah, COPS? What the fuck?

 

I'm not even going to start in on the VH1 and MTV crap, that's just too easy

 

I could do without TBS, apparently they think they're a comedy station now.

[EVIL~! alkeiper 0]

The History Channel. Between shows about the future, shows about the paranormal, shows about ice road truckers, do they even cover history anymore?

[treble 0]

In Canada, Showcase used to show different movies almost every night (a lot of them European), but at least ones that you normally wouldn't see on other stations. About a year and a half ago, there was a big shake-up with a bunch of companies being bought out (CTV buying Chum being the big one) and Canwest took over Showcase and I guess they wanted to get rid of the more risqué programming, so every night's programming is now re-runs of shows like House, CSI, CSI: Miami, and Numb3rs. The worst is Saturdays, though, which are now 'Blockbuster' nights. Last week was an Adam Sandler double-bill (Click and Spanglish), but it seems like every 2 weeks they're showing The Island. They also seem to show Scary Movie 4 a lot.

 

Even worse, though, are the commercials for the blockbuster movies have some actual good ones in there (stuff like the Departed, Spider-man 2, and Collateral), but those are never the ones they seem to show.

[cabbageboy 0]

One could argue that even at its peak MTV showed a lot of crappy videos along with good ones. But consider where the station used to be circa 1993-95, when they at least tried to focus on more obscure stuff along with the hit videos. It wasn't just the new focus on non music video programming, it was the music that they did have when they bothered showing videos. As someone who likes primarily rock music I had no interest a lot of what they were selling (girly pop, boy groups, rappers, and rap/rock).

 

AMC however is the biggest offender here. From 1991-95 AMC was seriously the best network ever. Great studio hosts like Bob Dorian and Nick Clooney, classic films along with oddball obscure stuff, and they would repeat movies in case you missed something good. However, as the 1990s went on two things really hurt AMC: 1. TCM. Turner now had his own network for old Warner Bros., MGM, and RKO stuff. This hurt AMC mostly due to not having as much RKO, since they never really showed much MGM or Warners. 2. Fox Movie Channel. Once Fox had their own channel for their entire library, AMC was largely shut out there too. At that point it was tough to keep a network going with only old Paramount, Universal, and Columbia. So they started putting ad breaks in the movies. And then it slowly became what it is now, and it's sad to see.

[PUT THAT DICK IN MY MOUTH! 0]

YouTube has pretty much made "Music Television" irrelevant and the music video "art form" has been in pretty steep decline for the last 5+ years, so I really don't understand why people still bitch about MTV not showing videos anymore. And those trashy reality shows are great.

 

Oh and Bravo really deserves a mention in this thread. 12 hours straight of Real Housewives of Orange County? Come on. You're better than that, Bravo.

[King Kamala 0]

Probably doesn't count as its a great cable channel that went defunct rather than a great channel that went downhill but was there ever a better cable channel than Trio? Good lord, I loved that channel. Brilliant But Canceled, Parking Lot, Good Clean Porn, old ass reruns of Late Night With David Letterman, tons and tons of bitching documentaries. Yeah, I only know one other person that watched it but I was pissed when I turned on my TV one day to find out it had been replaced by Sleuth (not a terrible network but it's not Trio) and found out that Trio was now an online network. Now I think even it isn't even around as that. Well I guess it's better it went out on top rather than going downhill like the channels listed in this thread.

[PILLS! PILLS! PILLS! 0]

There was once a time when MTV had awesome non-video programming, including, but not limited to:

 

Remote Control (it jumped the shark when it went Network)

The Real World (the first three seasons)

The Jon Stewart Show

The State (one of the best things MTV has given us)

Beavis and BUTT-Head (though it did get old after a couple of years)

Liquid Television

MTV Oddities

Singled Out

Undressed (sort of a guilty pleasure of mine)

 

This, of course, does not include dozens of programs and specials that I could not even begin to remember.

 

 

[PUT THAT DICK IN MY MOUTH! 0]

Don't forget Daria!

 

edit: Also King Kamala is stupid. Sleuth network rules. Miami Vice and Homicide: Life on the Street reruns? Fuck yes.

[PILLS! PILLS! PILLS! 0]

Fuck me. I really shouldn't have, since I had the theme song stuck in my head the other day.

[King Kamala 0]

Hey, I very specifically said it's not terrible. In fact that's being harsh on it. Sleuth is a good cable channel...it's no Trio. I'm not sure if anyone here shares my appreciation for the late lamented channel---as I said before, like six people watched it.

[TMC1982 0]

YouTube has pretty much made "Music Television" irrelevant and the music video "art form" has been in pretty steep decline for the last 5+ years, so I really don't understand why people still bitch about MTV not showing videos anymore. And those trashy reality shows are great.

 

Oh and Bravo really deserves a mention in this thread. 12 hours straight of Real Housewives of Orange County? Come on. You're better than that, Bravo.

 

MTV has gotten lazy with their programming. There are other ways to conduct music oriented programming besides just airing the videos (it's just that the folks at MTV don't have the brains or ingenuity to think outside of the box). Just because of YouTube doesn't automatically mean that MTV is justified in airing crap like "Bromance", "A Shot at Love", "Paris Hilton's New BFF", etc.

 

[TMC1982 0]

I loved Tech TV and G4 by themselves

 

Tech TV was a lot of fun, mostly computer stuff, with some video game news mixed in.

 

G4 was all video games all the time...granted, they didn't have a ton of material, and you got a lot of repeats, but it was still fun. I miss Laura Foy

 

I enjoy AOTS and Ninja Warrior, but yeah, COPS? What the fuck?

 

I'm not even going to start in on the VH1 and MTV crap, that's just too easy

 

I could do without TBS, apparently they think they're a comedy station now.

 

TBS is basically, a comedy channel now to counter it's sister, TNT being a "drama channel".

[PUT THAT DICK IN MY MOUTH! 0]

Airing two (2) different Tyler Perry shows is kinda antithetical to the whole "comedy channel" concept.

[EVIL~! alkeiper 0]

Like Cheech said, the problem is that MTV in its current guise is immensely popular. Those shows are widely watched. Of course, I think the people watching them are morons, but facts are facts.

[ZGangsta 0]

TLC used to actually be "The Learning Channel" and would show cool engineering and science, or military, or nature shows. Then over a couple of years it devolved to the point where it shows nothing but wedding preparation and makeover shows

[BUTT 0]

Don't forget about A&E, which went from highbrow British programming and Biography to I AM THE MIIIIIIIINDFREEEEEEAK.

[King Kamala 0]

Is any major cable channel still good according to you goons? I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm having a hard time thinking of one that I haven't heard someone say is going downhill.

 

Even HBO is not completely infallible after The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Deadwood, and The Wire are done. VH1 Classics is pretty cool but I think they're starting rely a bit too much on Movies That Rock and countdowns. Though That Metal Show is pretty entertaining.