

The sad devolution of Discovery Channel - srikar
http://qz.com/249615/the-sad-devolution-of-discovery-channel/

======
gramms
There's a cynical startup lesson in here.

Build a niche audience with quality and integrity. That leads to growth and
eventually a strong brand. When you saturate your audience, shaft your early
adopters for a broader, more streamlined appeal, but keep the branding.

The result is that every non-scientist watches Shark week and feels much
smarter for it, the actual scientists shake their heads, and the network rakes
in the bucks.

------
rbanffy
How about "Ancient Aliens" on "History" Channel?

Let's face it - the idiots are a better market.

~~~
buckbova
I don't consider myself an idiot, as I'm sure most idiots don't, but I've
watched several episodes of that program. Yes, it's ridiculous but I was
entertained.

Those of us who recall the early days of the history channel remember the
constant WWII programs. I think it's better now.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_(TV_channel)#Criticism...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_\(TV_channel\)#Criticism_and_evaluation)

The channel to fall the farthest for me is TLC. It used to have actual things
to "learn" as suggested by the name of The Learning Channel. It's dead to me.

I guess they term this channel drift.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_drift](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_drift)

~~~
bentcorner
I recall watching TLC in the mid-90's, and splitting my time between it and
Discovery Channel. The whole push for "A [foo] Story" turned me away, and I
guess things went downhill from there.

Also, this is mind boggling:

> _The Weather Channel, for instance, faced severe backlash for its attempts
> to add movies to its lineup (already having drifted from all-forecast
> programming into reality shows for much of its lineup over the course of the
> previous decade) in 2010._

I guess you could call this a "pivot", but if you've named yourself "The
Weather Channel", I don't think you should be surprised if you get backlash
because you decide to stop delivering what you said on the tin.

~~~
cratermoon
Did you happen to read the article linked from this OP's? TLC changed its
tagline to "Everyone needs a little TLC", more or less explicitly jettisoning
any association with "learning"

[http://qz.com/239882/american-cable-tv-has-now-reached-
total...](http://qz.com/239882/american-cable-tv-has-now-reached-total-
convergence/)

Remember when you could watch music videos all day on MTV?

------
incision
In happier news, Cosmos (2014) is now on Netflix.

What I really wonder about the devolution here is if/how the viewership has
changed?

If people who are interested in the sort of material that Discovery used to
show have simply moved on to learn and explore their curiosity elsewhere while
the channel fattened up on insatiable reality TV consumers raised on network
TV it would be sad.

If people who were interested in the sort of material that Discovery used to
show have been gradually transformed into reality TV consumers it would be
tragic.

~~~
click170
I used to enjoy Discovery Channel shows but lately I've all but lost interest
in favor of BBC, ITV, Smithsonian, Al-Jazeera, and HBO for Last Week Tonight.
PBS Frontline is still pretty good, but it seems like Discovery Channel,
History, and Nat Geo seem like they're producing shows of lower and lower
quality.

------
jordan0day
It seems to be _really easy_ to make a new TV channel these days (relatively
speaking, that is). It seems the Discovery Channel (or the very missed 'The
Learning Channel'), _used_ to be able to make ends meet in their old,
educational formats.

How hard would it be to build a new cable TV channel that looked more like the
Discovery channel/The Learning Channel of the 90's? Is there just too much
competition now (and too few viewers) for that to even be viable nowadays?

~~~
pbreit
Easy to make a new TV channel? Uh, no. It might be easy to make a web channel.
But you will hit an early brick wall in TV if you don't have millions (10s of
millions?) of dollars just to get your channel available in a few homes.

------
taybin
Remember when MTV used to play videos?

~~~
KhalPanda
It still does. There's just no music in them.

So yes, yes I do.

------
EliRivers
Every time I try to scroll down to read the words, the page flicks back up to
the top. Web design is in serious danger of disappearing into its own precious
cleverness.

(Opera on Ubuntu, which yesterday had no trouble dealing with
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8172365](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8172365)
where other combinations were having trouble - welcome to the fragmented web;
let us party like 'twas 1999)

~~~
rbanffy
Tested it in Chrome and Firefox on Ubuntu. I think the problem is with Opera.

------
DougN7
This is nothing compared to the fall of TLC. It used to be called The Learning
Channel!

------
ulfw
Remember when American TV news stations reported the news - and not opinion
pieces?

------
PublicEnemy111
I'm currently watching "10 things" on the History Channel. I have a strong
feeling this show is an attempt to capitalize on the BuzzFeed model

------
carsongross
We now find ourselves with 999 channels of "Ow, my balls".

Idiocracy was prophesy.

------
mikeash
Most TV is awful. Even the good channels are not great most of the time.

I blame the realtime broadcast format. It's not possible to produce enough
high quality content to cover 24 hours a day. But you can't do too many
repeats nor show too much old content, because a lot of viewers won't put up
with it. Thus, the format basically _requires_ you to shovel crap. You may be
able to avoid it for a time, and you may be able to have some gems among the
crap in the long term, but you're doomed to be _mostly_ crap in the end.

Throw in the need to interrupt the content every five minutes for tasteless,
idiotic advertisements and you're _really_ screwed.

I anticipate a major boost in quality as content moves from the old broadcast
TV format to on-demand delivery systems.

