This has been in my head for a few days now, spurred on by a TikTok I saw from Adam Conover where he claimed "people liked television until Netflix came along with their streaming lies." I usually agree with a lot of Adam's takes, but that one I called out as BS because tons of people hated television by then. I certainly did.
Then I started thinking: when did television start becoming less relevant to me, or "fall off"? And I realized my answer was 2004-2005. That was when television gradually started to "optimize" for the sake of making more money and better ratings.
Growing up in the 90s, television networks all had their own identities. A&E was mostly (though not entirely) a stuffy channel where you got Agatha Christie's Poirot or Nero Wolfe. Sci-Fi Channel aired things like Knight Rider or Amazing Fantasy or Dark Shadows.
Most channels didn't have a lot of original programming, so they'd pull from prior decades to fill time, leading to viewers of all ages being exposed (or re-exposed) to tons of series from television history. Cartoon Network lived off this for the first 10 years of its existence: Flintstones, Smurfs, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Centurions, G-Force, etc.
But as early as the mid-2000s, networks began "optimizing". Channels started running more marathons because they could get similar ratings or better than if they aired varied programming throughout the day. Suddenly a channel that might've aired over a dozen shows a day in the 90s aired half that. The endgame of that is modern MTV, where they just re-run Ridiculousness, Catfish, and Teen Mom for the entire day.
Gradually networks lost their identity, which is how you got stuff like the History Channel airing Ice Road Truckers and Sci-Fi airing ECW and SmackDown before just saying screw it and changing their name so people would stop whining at them about it. And everyone gave up on older television, relegating it to channels like Boomerang, Toon Disney, and TV Land (later MeTV), so they wouldn't have to pay any licensing costs. No big deal really, though it does suck to lose out on easy exposure to older media like that.
I saw all that stuff starting to happen in the mid-2000s, leading to me gradually being disinterested in the entire service. I was ready to cut the cord long before the streaming services came along, they just gave everyone else an excuse to move on too.
What about you? Were you ever big into cable, and if so when did you fall off? Lastly, obviously this is all my perspective as an American, people from other countries are going to have wildly different opinions I'd imagine.
Then I started thinking: when did television start becoming less relevant to me, or "fall off"? And I realized my answer was 2004-2005. That was when television gradually started to "optimize" for the sake of making more money and better ratings.
Growing up in the 90s, television networks all had their own identities. A&E was mostly (though not entirely) a stuffy channel where you got Agatha Christie's Poirot or Nero Wolfe. Sci-Fi Channel aired things like Knight Rider or Amazing Fantasy or Dark Shadows.
Most channels didn't have a lot of original programming, so they'd pull from prior decades to fill time, leading to viewers of all ages being exposed (or re-exposed) to tons of series from television history. Cartoon Network lived off this for the first 10 years of its existence: Flintstones, Smurfs, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Centurions, G-Force, etc.
But as early as the mid-2000s, networks began "optimizing". Channels started running more marathons because they could get similar ratings or better than if they aired varied programming throughout the day. Suddenly a channel that might've aired over a dozen shows a day in the 90s aired half that. The endgame of that is modern MTV, where they just re-run Ridiculousness, Catfish, and Teen Mom for the entire day.
Gradually networks lost their identity, which is how you got stuff like the History Channel airing Ice Road Truckers and Sci-Fi airing ECW and SmackDown before just saying screw it and changing their name so people would stop whining at them about it. And everyone gave up on older television, relegating it to channels like Boomerang, Toon Disney, and TV Land (later MeTV), so they wouldn't have to pay any licensing costs. No big deal really, though it does suck to lose out on easy exposure to older media like that.
I saw all that stuff starting to happen in the mid-2000s, leading to me gradually being disinterested in the entire service. I was ready to cut the cord long before the streaming services came along, they just gave everyone else an excuse to move on too.
What about you? Were you ever big into cable, and if so when did you fall off? Lastly, obviously this is all my perspective as an American, people from other countries are going to have wildly different opinions I'd imagine.
