Channel drift
Channel drift or network decay is the gradual shift of a television network away from its original programming, to either target a newer and more profitable audience, or to broaden their viewership by including less niche programming. Often, this results in a shift from informative, quality programming aimed at the high culture and educated viewers toward sensational, ratings-based or reality-TV programming designed solely for the entertainment of a mass audience. Channel drift frequently features the incorporation of infotainment, reality television and heavy advertising into the channel's lineup.
Overview
United States
Cable
Networks primarily focused on a particular topic, such as History Channel, tend to add shows that the channel's management feel that a larger audience wants to see, thus leading to additional profits. By producing irrelevant or low-quality programming they can increase their ratings to a target audience, increase viewership and increase revenues. The degree of channel drift can vary: some of the nonconforming programming may retain some degree of association with the channel's original purpose, while other programming may have no association whatsoever. Channel drift can also result from the acquisition of sports rights or reruns of popular television series that would otherwise not fit the channel's format; Outdoor Life Network, for instance, acquired the rights to the National Hockey League in 2005, so the network began transitioning toward a general sports network known today as NBCSN. Conversely, WGN America abandoned its expensive sports packages in 2014 as part of its drift from a Chicago-centric superstation into a nationally oriented general entertainment channel.A channel may rebrand itself to more accurately reflect its new content. Sci-Fi Channel changed its name to Syfy for both trademark reasons and to allow a stretching of the network's definition of appropriate programming to include content such as reruns and WWE professional wrestling. Another example is the conversion of Court TV to truTV, which allowed it to show more reality-based programming and slowly phase out their advertising-averse legal system and courtroom programming. This process ended in October 2009 when the remaining courtroom analysis programs transitioned to CNN.com's legal news section and occasional court coverage from CNN Center on the mainline channel. TruTV then aired competitions, hidden camera prank shows, and even the first three rounds of the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament. TruTV was further reformatted to a more conventional reality network with a strong emphasis on comedy on October 27, 2014, and then to comedy programming full-time in 2016 with the addition of scripted programming. Court TV would be revived as a digital subchannel network in 2019. Other examples include the drifting of The Learning Channel, which has officially renamed itself under the three-letter orphan initialism "TLC" since its transition to primarily reality television series, and that of most of the MTV Networks.
MTV Networks were a pioneer in channel drift. Music Television was originally a channel devoted to popular music videos upon its launch in August 1981, but began adding entertainment and reality programs geared toward a young adult audience in the 1990s, beginning a progression toward its current focus of reality and scripted programming. The music videos on the main channel were eventually limited to overnight and morning time periods, and were eventually pushed to spinoff networks MTV2, then to MTV Hits. MTV2 itself would gradually drift from an all-music video format to include reruns of MTV programs, original series, and acquired off-network sitcoms; MTV Hits would later be discontinued in favor of NickMusic.
Video Hits One likewise began as an outlet for adult contemporary music before transitioning to an urban pop culture channel as VH1; Country Music Television drifted to southern culture and general rerun programming as CMT; and The Nashville Network, perhaps the most dramatic, drifted to general entertainment format as The National Network and then to a heavily male-oriented program lineup known as Spike, only to drift back toward general entertainment in 2015 and become the Paramount Network.
While Nickelodeon has largely remained a children's-oriented channel throughout its history, its late-night Nick at Nite programming block has drifted greatly from airing classic television, to more recent shows still airing in local syndication, to its current focus on adolescent and young adult audiences similar to that of ABC Family. Nick at Nite launched TV Land as a spin-off channel due to its increased focus on more recent programming, only for TV Land itself to eventually shift to more recent programming and even original programming. In recent years, networks such as Cozi TV and MeTV have emerged to fill this gap with their programming being primarily 1950s–1960s television shows; even those networks have left older content to early hours in their broadcast day for more recent content. Retro Television Network is the most prominent network still focused on 1950s and 1960s television shows.
Nickelodeon's cable channel Nicktoons is another example of channel drift. In 2014, Nicktoons added sports content to its lineup to little viewer interest, but the block continues as three of the programs were produced by sports leagues or to promote Viacom personalities on other networks. Recently, Nicktoons' schedule has begun to feature live-action sitcoms on a cyclical basis, depending on the current output and success of Nickelodeon's animated series.
Channel drift can also result from a network's parent company purchasing a competing channel and drifting one or both channels' formats to avoid overlapping. The aforementioned TNN was one example of this, as its Southern culture programming overlapped extensively with CMT's. ABC Family was also an example as The Walt Disney Company's 2001 purchase of the channel from News Corporation dramatically reduced its carriage of children's programming in order to avoid redundancy with Disney Channel. Destination America, a channel prone to frequent format changes over the course of its history, began as a network targeting rural middle America; parent company Discovery Communications' purchase of the former Scripps cable networks brought it under the same corporate umbrella as Great American Country, and thus Destination America began adding professional wrestling and paranormal ghost-hunting programs to its schedule. Both GAC and Destination America were candidates to be reformatted entirely in 2019 to make way for the Magnolia Network, which is now expected to replace DIY Network when it launches in 2021.
Another case of channel drift is HLN, which started as CNN2. Its format originally consisted of rolling half-hour newscasts that were updated periodically throughout the day; one year after its launch, the channel changed its name to CNN Headline News to better reflect the rolling news format. By 2005, its programming began to include hour-long specialty and discussion-based news programs similar to those found on the main CNN channel and by 2013, it had ceased its scaled back its rolling news coverage further – relegating it to morning and early afternoon timeslots – and shifted toward crime mysteries and docudramas, showing programs such as Forensic Files.
Broadcast
One of the earliest examples of channel drift, and one that predates modern cable television, was CBS. During the late 1960s, CBS had a reputation as a network with a disproportionate number of shows that targeted rural and older viewers, which were seen as less attractive to advertisers. Beginning in 1970, incoming network vice president Fred Silverman orchestrated the rural purge, in which these shows would be canceled in favor of shows targeting younger, suburban viewers with more disposable income.Another example of channel drift is the case of the Fox Broadcasting Company. Throughout its early existence, and even after its ascent to major network status, Fox had a reputation for lowbrow, alternative programming and knockoffs of other networks' hit shows. Beginning with the major success of American Idol in the early 2000s, Fox drifted away from this reputation; its dramas and sitcoms became more conventional compared to the Big Three television networks and it put less emphasis on reality programs later that decade.
Even PBS has been subject to channel drift. In order to maintain donations, PBS stations largely abandoned high culture programming in the 1980s and began programming popular music specials and self-help seminars of high popularity but questionable integrity, especially during its pledge drives, to maintain funding from donations; while public radio still has a large number of classical music programming, such shows on television are largely limited in the 21st century to the Classic Arts Showcase, which is funded entirely by an endowment from the estate of its founder.
Counterexamples
Channel drift is not always successful, and can often lead to backlash. The Weather Channel, for instance, faced severe backlash for its attempts to add movies to its lineup in 2010. In addition to numerous complaints, Dish Network even went so far as to threaten to drop the channel and had a replacement channel, The Weather Cast, ready for launch. The Weather Channel backed off and has not aired any movies since, but again drifted away from its forecasting coverage into a mostly reality show-oriented lineup by 2014, at which point another carriage dispute prompted the channel to go back to all-forecasts during the day at least temporarily to restore its reputation. Most of the high-profile efforts of Cartoon Network to carry live-action series or specials have been unsuccessful and short-lived, though lower-profile efforts with little expectation of success have maintained minor success. Its late-night Adult Swim programming block has had more success airing live-action programming.The former Family Channel is one of the few known instances in which the amount of channel drift allowed was limited to some degree. Launching as religious network CBN Satellite Service in 1977, it later incorporated family-oriented secular programs by 1984, which became the channel's dominant form of programming for nearly two decades. In 1990, CBN agreed to sell the network to International Family Entertainment, but with strings attached: it is required to air CBN's flagship program The 700 Club twice each weekday as well as a day-long CBN telethon each January in perpetuity as part of a long-term time-buy. Following its sale to News Corporation, CBN made another long-term time-buy on the station to air a daily half-hour CBN talk show, then known as Living the Life, to the lineup. After The Walt Disney Company acquired the channel from News Corporation in 2001, Disney planned to reformat the channel as "XYZ" and shift its target to a more hip audience such as college students or young women; possibly to avoid redundancies with the existing family-friendly Disney Channel. To create XYZ, Fox Family would have had to cease to exist — Disney would have had to create XYZ as an entirely new network, and negotiate carriage agreements with pay television providers from scratch. Nonetheless, under the ABC Family brand, the channel drifted from its strictly family-friendly format under Disney ownership; the channel gradually dropped series aimed at children from its schedule and incorporated programs aimed at young adults featuring profanity, some violence, and some sexual content, alongside its family-oriented series and films, and now airs a standard disclaimer before each broadcast of The 700 Club in which The Walt Disney Company disowns any connection to the show. Disney further denied the "Family" stipulation existed in late 2015 when it announced plans to rename the channel "Freeform" in January 2016. In February 2009, Disney XD was originally launched as a boy-oriented TV channel, with the parent channel's shows aimed mostly at girls aged 13 – 16. Four years later, after the network was found to have a surprisingly high female audience, Disney XD added some programs with female protagonists, such as Kim Possible and Star vs. the Forces of Evil, while maintaining a mostly action-driven format.
In more recent years, networks have started abandoning the idea of channel drift as some of the channels experienced poor results. AMC drifted successfully into scripted short-form television in the late 2000s but its efforts to drift into reality shows were mostly unsuccessful, prompting the network to cancel all but one of the reality shows en masse and focus on its movie and scripted programming. USA Network, which built a niche for light-hearted hour-long dramedy series through the 2000s, attempted to augment that with traditional scripted comedies but mostly backed away from that approach in 2014. In 2017, SYFY, as it approached its 25th anniversary, reverted to focusing on the science fiction and fantasy genres and their fandom.