Cable execs: I see your point. In 2024 we'll be introducing trash reality shows that feature the weather.
They don't even need to feature the weather. TLC stands for The Learning Channel and no one learns anything from their shows.
The only thing you learn from TLC is that you don't want to watch TLC
Apparently, folks don't realize that even The Weather Channel has already dabbled in trash reality TV.
Some famous enough to have their own Wiki pages:
Big list (pay attention to the ones marked "long form"): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_programs_broadcast_by_The_Weather_Channel
I certainly wasn't. I guess the enshittification is complete.
Nope, you neglected the worst offender.. SciFi, that they renamed to SyFy (and I pronounce "siffy" or "siffylis" now) that used to have good science fiction but decided WWE and ghost hunting was the way to go.
I still haven't forgiven them for cancelling MST3K after only 3 seasons.
Or Dark Matter!
The full list of good shows they cancelled or cut off early is long and painful to read.
Cable shifted to low information viewers across the board decades ago. Dumb people watch commercials I guess.
They're making people watch commercials on the streaming services now too. There's really only one solution left, matey.
No sir, I am a good Christian Man, raised right.
Whats my favorite Veggie Tales song, you ask?
We are the piiiiirates
Who dont do anything
We just staaaay here
And lie around
Er um. Yes. Just a catchy tune! Nothing relevant about my online activities here sir, nope ;)
This is incorrect. There is also reality tv on the weather channel.
Coming up next "See which wildly underpaid ~~intern~~ meteorologists bite the dust this time. Coming at you live from inside the storm"
✨️enshitification✨️
This is the best use of this emoji, ever.
Cartoon Network then: cartoons
Cartoon Network now: Teen Titans Go! on repeat
Jesus Christ, I just looked at their schedule there's a total of 7 hours of TTG per day. Where's the Adventure Time? Where's the Billy and Mandy? Where's Ed, Edd, n' Eddy!?
It's seriously infuriating, the catalog they have at their disposal and they just rerun TTG, a show that at the time caused TT fans to be legitimately upset. No one wanted TTG.
there's a total of 7 hours of TTG per day
Holy shit, I've seen the memes but I just naturally assumed they were exaggerated... That's actually ridiculous
There is actually a lot of nuance to this.
If TTG stops producing content then their rights to the IP can expire, same reason Sony had to make new Spiderman and X-Men films every other year last decade.
Changes in leadership and management to Cartoon Network are frequent and often produce a more straight-cut and less innovative direction for the network, the sort of people that institutional stock holders and WarnerMedia management think are the safe options: data analysts, cost minimizers, tough negotiators.
For the above reason and more, many artists stopped wanting to work with the corporation, and new artists are aware of the issues plaguing the company so they also don't want to touch it. For example, Rebecca Sugar faced a struggle just to continue Steven Universe, one of their more successful titles, but eventually she was forced to wrap it up and leave. Twice.
Enshittification IRL
Enshitification is just a symptom of capitalism. It's been happening in real life forever.
Reality TV is cheaper to produce than scripted shows. Profit is the reason all they show is reality shows.
Yeah, but it is really funny how many people are putting out documentary quality output on YouTube.
TV in the US is so weird. I mean, we've got all of that in Europe too (on some channels), but whenever I watch American TV, everything seems to be cranked up to 11. The aggressive of your news shows, the quantity of your advertisements, the weird rules from the middle ages (no swearing or nudity on certain channels), etc.
And the Pharma commercials?! It's insane, if I want a pill I go to the doctor/pharmacy say I have a headache they will prescribe some shit and I will pick it up, why would I need a commercial for that?
MTV has been all over those "reality" shows and candidate shows since at least the late 90s though.
Hey, I'm Bam Magera and this is Jackass Roomraiders where Xibit builds flat screens into your entire house for no reason after we had a hot girl go through all your embarrassing shit while you waited in a car of some kind outside watching together with your adversaries who go absolutely apeshit about anything that happens, also UV sperm detection light.
NEXT
Yep. Although it still did music videos for at least a few hours a day until the 2000s. VH1 was a holdout for a longer time. Does that Canadian MuchMusic channel even exist anymore? We got that when I used to have DirecTV. It had a fun early low budget MTV feel to it which I knew was not destined to last.
The weather channel now is ads.
Youtube in has done a remarkably good job carrying the torch of high quality documentaries and educational content beyond the realm of traditional media. Science, art, technology, history. It's all there, and much of it meets or exceeds the quality of anything the old guard of cable TV channels ever managed to produce.
I'm actually only now realizing that some of the most established channels have been reaching a wide audience with consistent and high quality content for the better part of a decade, and yet I can't think of any who have successfully broken into more "traditional" media such as television or or even streaming services. That seems exceptionally strange to me. I mean, last month there were headlines about Netflix giving $55 million to an unproven director who proceeded to blow it all on expensive cars instead of filming the show he was hired to make. Who decides to hire that guy over any number of youtube creators who have spent the last ten years cranking out a short video a week along with occasional longer form projects, all with a small crew on a shoestring budget. I can imagine three possible reasons for this. No idea which one(s) could be the real reason, or if there's something else entirely going on.
That last one in particular seems unlikely, but I do recall that the popular Primitive Technology channel went quiet for a year or more before abruptly coming back to life. Rumors swirled that he had been hired to turn the concept into a TV show, but the production company kept trying to change things and he eventually gave up and went back to doing it his way on youtube.
^1^ used here as shorthand for the more corporate and structured entertainment industry at large.
Wasn't Bravo originally for performing arts? I thought it used to show theater productions and stuff like that.
The Gold Diggers and Gold-Diggers caught me off guard, that's funny.
How is there possibly this much market for this shit?
It happened during the 08 writers strike. Reality Tv is cheap to produce and requires minimal writing.
Gen alpha: What are "TV channels?"
Weather channel has trash shows about surviving weather events
Yeah I get that the weather channel is the punch line here but let's not act like it hasn't also gone to shit
Oh, don't worry, the same cancer is destroying fun on the internet, only worse because of the techniques they use to keep your attention that TV can't replicate because it's not an interactive medium.
The weather is pretty trash, but it's not the weather channel's fault :/
The history channel also has Nazi documentaries.
Edit: I just checked their line up, as I haven't been anywhere cable was playing for years. They're doing one show per day now, it's an all day marathon of either Ancient Aliens, Pawn Stars, The UnXplained (bigfoot, etc.), American Pickers (literally a reality show about trash) or Mountain Men (seems to be a reality show about some dudes in Alaska).
I used to love A&E when it was biographies and Lovejoy.
The major TV networks were so embarrassed by being outproduced in quality by these niche cable networks that they raised the level of their programing to match. LOL, no. They bought out all the niche cable TV channels and turned them into trash. Hurray Capitalism.
Edit: and in the streaming era, the same kind of thing happened to Pluto. They had some great, quirky programs. Like the train channel. Checked them out a couple weeks ago and they look completely different post buy out. All the tech and gaming content gone. No train channel. Bunch of channels that just run reruns of one show.
Reality shows have people I never want to meet, mostly.
TLC is the 21st century version of the freak shows
RIP Discovery Channel
In the 80s, if you got up really early, like 5 am, Discovery would sometimes just put a camera on a professor giving a lecture. It was pretty cool. I guess we have YouTube for that sort of thing now, but you even make a suggestion like that to a Discovery executive now and they'd probably try to murder you.
And one show being split up across multiple streaming services with only a few seasons on each service is why i have a jellyfin server now
Cable also ruined streaming services
C-Span then: empty chairs
C-Span now: empty chairs
Welcome to Costco, I love you.
David Zaslav is the common denominator across all these examples, and now he's in charge of Warner Bros...
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