Some Cable Channels Now Have NO Relation To Their Titles.

[TheMastersNemesis]

Channels like Discovery, HGTV, History, et al have nothing to do with their titles. On History channel you have a lot of pawn and antique shows and other nonsense. The HGTV channel is really now nothing but a real estate reality show channel with no shows about gardening from what I can tell. Discovery has little to do with what the original channel was.

The cable landscape is really a mess in so many ways. Of course, the news channels are pretty much a train wreck. About all you can expect is false and distorted news and partisan news mostly GOP. The Trump era will only make matters much worse. There are some good show but the news is mostly distorted equal time crap. Some ideas and policies have no reason for any time at all ugh less equal time.

The promise of cable and satellite was that it would move the country forward. It would inform and a enhance information. I see little of such promise being fulfilled at this point.

[PoliticAverse]

1. They originally did but apparently found it more profitable to shift their programming. n/t

[sarisataka]

2. The country will never move

Forward until HGTV is at least 35% gardening programs!

[TheMastersNemesis]

6. Certainly HGTV Cannot Do ALL Gardening. Was Speaking To Cable Generally.

I do not see how HGTV can do all their time in gardening but 35% would be a good start. Plus it is hard to find or create good gardening material. It is somewhat limited. They could focus more are what their title says though.

Cable has become overpriced and fragmented TV. With so many channels right now and the audience being so diffuse it is hard to get agreement about anything. We have national issues that need some agreement that does not now exist. So much now is just mindless infotainment aimed at profits and NOT informing or educating. It is about consuming endlessly.

[Mariana]

17. It can't be that hard to find or create such programming.

Certainly they used to do it. I really enjoyed many of the home and gardening shows and did quite a few projects inspired by things I saw done of them. But it cost more than the shit they're putting on now, I suppose, so it had to go.

The public library can get me just about any movie or series that's ever been released on DVD, and there are plenty of home and garden project vids online if I'm looking for ideas. Plenty of the amateur stuff is crap, but the proportion of worthwhile stuff is about as good as what's on cable now. Also, this way I'm not paying through the nose to watch ridiculous numbers of obnoxious ads.

[Different Drummer]

7. This. n/t

[frazzled]

3. A result, most probably, of cable being in its death throes.

As on-demand streaming continues to gain prominence, cable is dying. This explains the endless repetitions of junk that many cable channels have become: they are just filling air time in the cheapest way possible and are becoming mere delivery vehicles for advertising. I believe cable will become drastically reduced or completely defunct within the next five years.

[HAB911]

5. Wait til the GOP kills net neutrality

and the streaming gets hit by the carriers.

It's going to be a battle of the Mighty-Mo's

[hunter]

15. I'm optimistic the GOP will fail. Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft...

... all profit from net neutrality. These companies have huge resources and bad-ass lawyers.

It's not for any ideological reasons net neutrality will be defended, but that's where we are.

The old tel-com model is obsolete, most especially cable television. What's going on here is a negotiation of surrender. Existing tel-coms are trying to hold on to some piece of the pie.

Interesting fact: Netflix runs on Amazon's cloud infrastructure, even though Amazon has its own competing streaming video service. Amazon will rent its infrastructure to almost anyone.

Places like Finland and Canada have already declared that high speed internet is something every citizen has a right to.

The Republicans can't stuff this one back in the box.

Personally, I'd prefer a socialist solution such that free wifi existed wherever there was a paved public street, road or highway, and out into more rural areas too. (We could borrow from the television spectrum for that.)

As a nation we were once able to accomplish things like that. My great grandma was still bitching about rural electrification when I was a kid. Apparently my spendthrift great grandpa had loved his radio and enthusiastically supported rural electrification; no more fussing with batteries. Years later, long after my great grandpa had passed on, my great grandma was still complaining about her minimal electric bill, yet still enjoying the two forty watt light bulbs that lit her small cabin with no indoor plumbing. She started in again on electricity when my mom's cousin installed an electric pump in the well and a kitchen faucet of the larger ranch house to keep his new bride happy.

[HAB911]

4. When I first got cable

we paid for programming and no commercials, now there are more commercials than on broadcast television, sickening.

[TheMastersNemesis]

9. What Your OP Says Was The Selling Point For Cable In The First Place.

The problem is that everyone is paying high prices for cable that should be a lot less. Like you I am mad that so much is paid for cable and you are right that we have as many or more commercials than non paid TV. So we are being taken advantage of at both ends of it. High prices plus lost content time due to over commercialization.

Plus there is one other problem in that the money and profits ARE NOT being plowed into more decent programming. That is why you have endless paid programming (commercials) and endless repeats ad nauseam. Some channels repeat the same programs all day long.

Cable has become the vast wasteland original TV was accused on becoming.

[Different Drummer]

8. Cable channels have been going downhill ever since...

MTV abandoned music videos. Their name now no longer fits what they show.

[TheMastersNemesis]

10. Yes Another Good Example. Few Music Video Are Being Made Now.

[Mariana]

18. Oh, they're still being made.

You just won't find them on MTV.

[TheMastersNemesis]

20. Don't Want To Pay The Royalties

[KamaAina]

11. CNN used to have news.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

12. The Learning Channel

Here Comes Honey Boo Boo
Kate Plus 8
Say Yes To The Dress
My Five Wives
America's Worst Tattoos
Cake Boss
Global Beauty Masters
My Big Fat Fabulous Life
(etc.)

[neeksgeek]

13. This has been true for some time

I remember as a teenager and college student in the late 80s and early 90s, looking at the TV listings in the newspaper, and seeing the shows that were on cable channels like A&E, Discovery, and Bravo... It always bugged me that we were too far into the country to get cable. I didn't get to watch these fantastic-sounding science and arts shows. Since we didn't have cable, I just watched PBS. Nova in particular was a great show back then.

A&E used to have a show called Breakfast With The Arts, which I discovered when I was in college the second time around, in the late 90s. They played Moses Pendleton Presents Moses Pendleton, one of the best artist bios I ever saw. But that was another time. We cut off our cable TV in 2010.

[Calculating]

14. Cable and 90% of network tv is pure garbage.

I really only watch occasional pbs programs, masterchef, and the occasional Seinfeld episode on network tv. I watch netflix and youtube most of the time.

[Wounded Bear]

16. Mostly taken over by bullshit "reality" programming....

Did I mention I hate reality programming?

[Elwood P Dowd]

19. Add the science channel to the list.

Most of their stuff has also turned to shit.

[oberliner]

21. A&E

Not sure what Duck Dynasty has to do with the arts.

[Ilsa]

22. The only reason for HGTV to exist now is to play in the waiting room of

A psychiatrist's office. Any other talk show, reality show, even during daytime, can cover topics that can set off patients that are having trouble recovering from sexual assault, abusive family, bad work or school situations, etc.

The stupid programs on that network are generally seen to be innocuous.