Busy Nothings
According toTV Week, “On average, the networks are off the mark by 10% from last year in
total viewers and off 17% in the 18- to 49-year-old demographic.” So, in short, May Sweeps, were a bust. This news doesn’t really surprise me though, because in my opinion the television as we’ve known it for the past fifty-sixty years is in the process of digging its own grave, and I don’t believe that it’s just the five broadcast networks. I think that for the most part, cable networks are alienating their own core audiences.
Throughout the Eighties and Nineties, as more cable networks were created, many were started with a certain niche, their own special genre, and they would air shows in which the subject could be viewed as under the umbrella of their certain genre. The History Channel, now justHistory, focused on shows with a historical context. The Discovery Channel was created to help viewers learn about the world around them. TV Land was supposed to expand on theNick at Nite of the eighties that aired reruns ofclassic TV shows likeBewitched,The Donna Reed Show,My Three Sons,The Patty Duke Show, and so many other wonderful shows of yesteryear – as well as the wonderfully nostalgicRetromercials.
It seems that today though, most of our niche cable networks have strayed from what brought them their core viewers to begin with. Discovery received so much flack that they’ve adopted a policy of returning to their roots. I only wish History and TV Land would do the same. Both networks have been replacing their good programming with reality crap. We get enough reality from almost every other network, not to mention the broadcast networks. I don’t want to seeI Pity the Fool,High School Reunion,Ice Road Truckers,Ax Men, orMonster Quest. I also don’t want to see Extreme Makeover: Home Edition or any other show aired in the past ten years on TV Land. I want tolearnwhen I watch History. I miss “The Hitler Channel.” I used to love “Bloody Old England Week.” Something is terribly wrong with things when last week I watchedVH1for the DocumentarySex: The Revolution, a purely historical show, while History probably aired something related to music.
Since what I want to see is no longer being aired in favor of what many consider to basically be crap, I choose to turn off my TV. Instead I will read a book or do what many people my age are doing, watching things online, viaYou Tube,Hulu,Joost, and so many other wonderful services that let me choose what to watch, when I want to watch it. There is also always DVR/PVR if a station actually airs something worthwhile, AND if they don’t block DVR / PVR asNBC did recently. Boy, that was a dumbass mistake, but it is the network that pulled all of its shows from iTunes buttook them to the Zune Marketplace. As I read somewhere, “2,000.000 Zunes sold since 2006…“ compared to the 140 million unites sold by Apple. I, as an owner of both an 8 GB nano and 8 GB iPod Touch, will just not pay to watch NBC content, but will watch it onHulu, the one good decision NBC has made in this age of digital everything.
In my opinion, TV Land should create spin-off networks focused solely on certain decades. There should be a TV Land 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, 90’s, and Current channel. The History Channel should create a Current Events channel to air crap like Ax Men and Ice Road Truckers just as they created The Military History Channel, even though I can’t get that because as of now, we’re not payingCox Cable for Digital anything. We’re waiting onAt&t Uverse to debut here in NW Arkansas this fall. I’m thrilled Cox is going to get some real competition besidesDish Network andDirect TV. Basically, television executives need to pull their heads out of that place where the sun doesn’t shine and listen to the public, or they’ll continue to lose the battle. If I, a twenty-eight-year-old married woman with a decent income (hello desirable demographic) am disgruntled, what about the rest of the world?
