Channel drift

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Channel drift or network decay^[1] refers to the gradual shift of a television network away from its original programming in order to target another, more profitable, audience, or to broaden its viewership by incorporating less niche content. This often results in a shift from informative or artistic quality programming, aimed at educated viewers, toward sensational, ratings-based or reality-formatted programming designed 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.

Networks primarily focused on a particular topic, such as the History Channel, tend to add shows that the channel's management feel that a larger audience wants to see. The degree of channel drift can vary: some of the nonconforming programming may retain some degree of association with the channel's original purpose, examples of this on the History Channel include shows such as: Pawn Stars, American Pickers, and Top Shot; for a channel like the Animal Planet there is the show Tanked). Sometimes, the programming may have no association whatsoever such as Ax Men and Ice Road Truckers, both of which aired on the History Channel.

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. This led to the network transitioning toward a general sports network known as NBC Sports Network (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.^[2] WGN America eventually started a gradual transition away from entertainment programming (structured in a way to fulfill contractual commitments to existing syndicated programming) to adopt a cable news format and a rebranding into NewsNation in March 2021.^[3]

A channel may rebrand itself to more accurately reflect its new content. Sci-Fi Channel changed its name to Syfy for both trademark reasons^[4] and to allow a stretching of the network's definition of appropriate programming to include content such as Law & Order: Special Victims Unit reruns and ECW professional wrestling.^[5][6] Another example is the conversion of Warner Bros' Court TV (Court TV would be revived as a digital subchannel network in 2019) to TruTV, which allowed it to show more reality-based programming (though initially retaining a law enforcement focus, such as reruns of World's Wildest Police Videos) and slowly phase out their advertiser-repelling legal system and courtroom programming. This process ended in October 2009 when the remaining courtroom analysis programs transitioned to CNN'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 Division I men's basketball tournament.^[7] TruTV was further reformatted to a more conventional reality network with a strong emphasis on comedy on October 27, 2014, and then to full-time comedy programming in 2016 with the addition of scripted programming. 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 the Travel Channel, renamed to the "Trvl Channel", which abandoned its destination-themed shows for paranormal programming.

MTV Networks (now part of Paramount Skydance) were an early example of channel drift. Music Television (as MTV was originally known) was originally devoted to music videos upon its launch in August 1981, but began adding reality programs and other entertainment programs geared toward a young adult audience in the 1990s, beginning a gradual progression toward its current focus of reality and scripted programming. Music videos on the main channel were eventually limited to overnight and morning time periods, and were eventually pushed to the spinoff networks MTV2, then to MTV Hits. MTV2 itself gradually drifted from an all-music video format to include reruns of MTV programs, original series, and acquired off-network sitcoms.^[8][9] In the fall of 2016, MTV Hits was later discontinued in favor of NickMusic.

Video Hits One likewise began as an outlet for adult contemporary music before transitioning to a Black-aimed pop culture channel under the name VH1. Country Music Television drifted to Southern culture and general rerun programming as CMT. The Nashville Network, perhaps the most dramatic, drifted to general entertainment format as The National Network, now known as TNN.^[10] and then to a heavily male-oriented program lineup known as Spike,^[11] only to drift back toward general entertainment in 2015 and become the Paramount Network in 2018.

While Nickelodeon has largely remained a children's-aimed channel throughout its history, its late-night Nick at Nite programming block (which for Nielsen ratings purposes is a separate channel from Nickelodeon) has drifted greatly from airing classic television (first from the Golden Age of Television, later expanding to shows from the 1960s and 1970s), to more recent shows still airing in local syndication, to its current focus on teenaged and young adult audiences similar to that of ABC Family (now Freeform). Nick at Nite launched TV Land as a spin-off channel due to its increased focus on more recent programming (as well as the elimination of non-sitcom programming on Nick at Nite), 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, though that channel had already been an overflow channel for Nickelodeon. In 2014, Nicktoons added sports content to its lineup to little viewer interest, but the block continued as three of the programs (NFL Rush Zone, WWE Slam City, and Wild Grinders) were produced by sports leagues or to promote Viacom personalities on other networks (for Wild Grinders, MTV host Rob Dyrdek). For a time, 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. As of mid-2024, animation-focused spinoff Nicktoons became entirely dedicated to reruns of SpongeBob SquarePants.^[12]

Channel drift can also result from a network's owner 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. Destination America's 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 (briefly) and paranormal ghost-hunting programs to its schedule;^[13] the paranormal programming has since shifted over to the Travel Channel. Both GAC and Destination America were candidates to be reformatted entirely in 2019 to make way for the Magnolia Network, which replaced the DIY Network when it launched in 2021. GAC was spun off to Great American Media the same year.

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 (such as Showbiz Tonight, Nancy Grace and Issues with Jane Velez-Mitchell) and by 2013, it had ceased its scaled back 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.

The drifting of channels to lineups dominated by reruns as a cost-cutting measure has become a major movement in the 2020s, as cable has lost subscribers, with general interest channels being especially prone to the phenomenon.^[14][15] Such channels are left with little to distinguish them, other than price, from free ad-supported streaming television channels to Internet television channels designed to compile mostly archival programming to the viewer for free.^[16]

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One of the earliest examples of channel drift, and one that predates modern cable television, was programming changes by CBS. During the late 1960s, CBS had a reputation as a network with a disproportionate number of shows that targeted rural and older viewers. Beginning in 1970, incoming network vice president Fred Silverman orchestrated the "rural purge," in which these shows were canceled in favor of shows targeting younger, suburban viewers.^[17]

One less obvious example of the phenomenon has occurred since the 1980s in American public television. From the origins of the medium in the late 1950s, stations—who were then affiliated with National Educational Television (NET), the precursor to the current PBS—served two specific audiences: on weekdays, they provided instructional programming for children used in school classrooms to supplement traditional curricula; and on evenings and weekends, they served adults by scheduling shows that were alternatives to mainstream commercial broadcasting, such as theatrical plays, classical music concerts, literary dramas, and serious public affairs initiatives like investigative reporting and civil political discussion, things that had been mostly abandoned by the commercial networks with the end of the Golden Age of Television in and around 1960. Beginning with the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, the Federal government, along with those of most U.S. states, invested in production and distribution of such programming via NET/PBS and the construction of a large number of new stations. The political climate of the time was liberal and thus supportive of governmental funding of the medium, which developed its institutions accordingly.

However, the 1970s saw a political turn rightward which led to a suspicion of Federal programs, and originally anticipated steady increases in public taxpayer support did not materialize, leaving the new PBS and its stations with significant monetary gaps that had to be filled by other sources. Pledge drives, at least an annual occurrence on stations, emerged in the mid-1970s to address cutbacks from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting that occurred due to political changes and the economic recessions of that period. Members of the general public donated money to the station in exchange for certain privileges. Also, stations and program producers began to cultivate so-called "underwriting" (a modified form of advertising that did not interrupt shows in progress) from businesses, particularly large corporations who were then motivated by a sense of noblesse oblige to their communities and the country at large (in later years, these grants were targeted more toward certain genres, raising suspicions by critics that they constituted de facto commercial advertising). This created another significant source of revenue. Some stations even held week-long auctions of merchandise or services donated by retailers and other businesses, where viewers placed bids and the highest bidder received the item or service in exchange for a donation to the station. These auctions were highly successful in many markets from the 1970s through to the 2000s.

To attract audiences who would donate to stations—which, in turn, purchased programming from other stations and producers within the PBS system—program managers increasingly felt it necessary to reduce the proportion of cultural and informational shows to appeal to a broader audience beyond a small, educated cohort. This especially became the case during pledge drives, thought to be times when non-regular viewers could be appealed to with special programming. With the aging of audiences who were the most enthusiastic for more serious fare, it was felt that younger viewers with more disposable income would be more interested in programs more similar to commercial television, rather than formats such as classical dramas (including imports from the British Broadcasting Corporation) and documentaries. This led to the introduction of things like lifestyle-oriented shows featuring hobbies like gardening, cooking, and home repair; specialty or niche informational programs like the Nightly Business Report and The Charlie Rose Show; reruns of certain former commercial TV shows (e.g., The Lawrence Welk Show, National Geographic specials); and British and Canadian-import situation comedies (a la Are You Being Served?, Monty Python's Flying Circus, The Red Green Show). This amounted to exchanging what is termed as "high-brow" material for a more "middle-brow" approach to programming, while avoiding conspicuously mass-appeal formats such as game shows, crime dramas, sensationalistic news, and celebrity talk shows. By the 1990s and 2000s, pledge drives became mainly reliant on content such as TJ Lubinsky's nostalgic music specials (themselves focusing on oldies and adult standards music) and self-help seminars of often-questionable integrity (the latter were in fact not officially sanctioned by PBS and even rebuked by the network's ombudsman).^[18] Despite the stated aims to appeal to a non-elderly audience, PBS could not keep up with rapid developments in cable television, which had begun offering generally more sensationalistic and visually compelling media. Some of those new networks in fact began to adopt the "how-to" and lifestyle formats that originally became popular via PBS (e.g., HGTV, Food Network). That competition, in turn, began to influence programmers to even further diminish or outright remove any shows considered "stuffy" or slow-paced, which eliminated several long-running staples of the network (e.g., Firing Line [original version] and Wall Street Week).

At about the same time, development in technologies such as video cassette recorders enabled schoolteachers to bypass the need to schedule their classes around broadcasts of instructional material; typically, either school support staff would record the shows or teachers would do so themselves by using their VCRs' overnight silent-record function (some stations accommodated the latter practice by using what would otherwise be "dead air" time). Some PBS stations, in fact, took advantage of the changes to directly provide educational programs to schools without using airtime at all, something that accelerated with the emergence of video on demand via the internet in the 2000s. That created a void in the daytime hours that PBS executives decided to fill with a new generation of children's programming, aimed at preschoolers. To supplement beloved historic programs such as Sesame Street and Reading Rainbow, the network and leading stations developed several animated series with an educational and/or ethical emphasis. Around this time, commercial stations and networks were canceling children's cartoons, many of which were considered of dubious quality, due to changing viewing habits and the FCC mandate imposed in 1996 that required broadcast stations (of any kind) to include at least three hours per week of informational and educational programs for young people.

Therefore, with the original mission of public television having drastically changed in both its dimensions since its 1950s origins due to technological, political, and cultural shifts, channel drift became quite endemic to PBS and its affiliates. As such, this occurrence has left voids for adult viewers that have been filled other sources such as the cable-and-satellite-distributed Classic Arts Showcase, which is funded entirely by an endowment from the estate of its founder and is not dependent whatsoever on donations or government funding, unlike the PBS system. Serious, civil public affairs programming can be found on the C-SPAN networks, non-profit public services provided by cable companies and paid for by a portion of each customer's monthly bill. This supplements PBS news programming such as the PBS Newshour and Washington Week, two of the remaining public affairs programs on the national schedule.

Channel drift is not always successful, and can often lead to backlash. The Weather Channel (TWC), for instance, faced criticism for its attempts to add entertainment programming to its schedule (which had historically focused primarily on weather news and information), culminating in the controversial introduction of a Friday-night movie block featuring films with some relation to weather as a plot point (such as The Perfect Storm). Citing the network's carriage fees and drift toward entertainment content, Dish Network dropped TWC and replaced it with WeatherNation's The Weather Cast on 21 May 2010,^[19][20][21] only to reach a deal to carry TWC again three days later.^[22] In January 2014, TWC faced a similar carriage dispute with DirecTV, who dropped the channel by citing its carriage fees, and complaints from viewers over the amount of reality programming it had carried. DirecTV added a competing channel, WeatherNation TV, as an alternative.^[23][24] TWC reached a new carriage agreement with DirecTV on 8 April 2014, with the network agreeing to reduce the amount of reality programming it carries on weekdays.^[25]

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 (a cable extension of televangelist Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network) 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 spin off 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" (a reverse reference to the American Broadcasting Company's abbreviation) 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 (something that, in modern times, is fairly common, but would have been much more disruptive to one of the most widely distributed channels on cable).^[26][27] 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 rejects 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.^[28]

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 8 – 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 (originally an outlet for "American Movie Classics") drifted successfully into premium scripted dramas in the late 2000s, such as Mad Men, The Walking Dead and Breaking Bad. However, a further drift into unscripted shows such as 4th and Loud (a docuseries focusing on an Arena Football League team owned by members of the rock band Kiss) and Game of Arms (a reality series following competitive arm wrestlers) were mostly unsuccessful, prompting the network to cancel all but two of the shows (Comic Book Men, a docuseries following a comic book store owned by filmmaker Kevin Smith, and the Walking Dead-related talk show Talking Dead) in favor of focusing more on its core scripted slate.^[29]

In the early-2010s, USA Network—which built a niche for lighthearted comedy-dramas through the 2000s—attempted to augment them with original sitcoms (such as Benched and Sirens) to build upon its acquisition of off-network reruns of Modern Family. USA mostly backed away from that approach by 2014, as it prepared a shift away from its previous "blue sky" direction for its drama slate.^[30][31]

HGTV attempted channel drift in 2025 for what appeared to be budget reasons; after the network lost half of its audience that year due to widespread migration away from cable, it canceled much of its expensive original programming and filled the empty airtime with holiday films from the Warner Bros. Discovery library, drawing consternation from the network's viewers.^[32]

In some countries, cable television channels are subject to the rules and regulations set forth by each country's communications bureau and must be licensed accordingly.

In Canada, specialty television channels were initially subject to conditions of license requiring them to operate within quotas of specific categories of programs. This system was designed by the country's telecommunications regulator, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), primarily to ensure the integrity of channels that were licensed with the expectation of a specific format, and to prevent undue competition with established channels–a practice referred to as the "genre protection" rules.

For example, the presence of MuchMusic as an established music channel in Canada led to applications of these rules impacting the later launch of MTV-branded channels in Canada; Craig Media's MTV Canada was licensed as a channel featuring entertainment and informal education programming targeting youth and young adults, and could not devote more than 10% of its weekly programming to "music video clips" in order to protect MuchMusic. However, following complaints by its owner CHUM Limited (who also accused Craig of having used the pretense of a youth-based service to contravene the genre protection rule by, ultimately, offering a music-based service), the CRTC ruled that MTV Canada violated this quota due to music video content contained within programs such as Making the Video and MTV Select—even though the program categories distinguish music-related programs and music videos.^[33][34] Contrarily, sister channel MTV2 Canada was able to devote its lineup to music video programming, as it was licensed as part of "Music 5"—a specialty service consisting of channels devoted to specific genres of music.^[35][36]

A second incarnation of MTV Canada launched by CTVglobemedia in 2005 was also restricted in its airing of music content, but this time as the result of drift from its original format as TalkTV.^[37][38]

Over time, many channels found ways to adjust their programming to more popular fare while technically remaining compliant with their licensed genres, such as the original Canadian version of Bravo! (now CTV Drama Channel) replacing performing arts programming with more scripted drama. In 2015, the CRTC said it would no longer enforce most of the remaining genre protection rules, except for those related to sports programming.^[39] Since then, many Canadian channels have altered their formats considerably, such as with the former Outdoor Life Network (OLN) first becoming a male-skewing reality-focused channel under the OLN name, then rebranding as a new version of Bravo, based on the current version of the U.S. channel of that name (now a reality channel targeting women), in 2024.^[40]

The South African Broadcasting Corporation originally had its 3 main channels dedicated to specific ethnic groups and their home languages. SABC 1 primarily broadcasts shows that target the Bantu-speakers, while SABC 2 focused on Afrikaans programming and SABC 3 aimed at the English-speaking South Africans. With the fall of apartheid, SABC2 eventually transitioned to a mix of English and other languages, including Afrikaans, and more programming shifting over to other venues such as DStv, with KykNET the most prominent example.

In 2017, as Chot Reyes become president and CEO of TV5 Network Inc., AksyonTV began to shift as a complement sister station of TV5, as the network started airing reruns of US series that were aired on TV5, including Arrow and Supernatural, as well as Movie Max 5 block and home shopping in lieu of live sports programming. In December of the same year, the channel also added classic TV5 local programming. The network also expanded its broadcast hours till 1:00 am on selected days. This practice, was heavily criticized by viewers, putting news programs and coverage on-hold for these kind of programming. As a complement, Cignal, a sister company of TV5, launched its 24-hour satellite news channel, One News which combines news content of the media companies owned by MediaQuest, including News5 on May 28, 2018.^[41] In 2019, AksyonTV was then rebranded as 5 Plus (later One Sports in 2020).^[42]

On a similar note, in September 2020, GMA Network, Inc.'s GMA News TV (formerly QTV) began its gradual transition from its original news format to general entertainment and sports, since the acquisition of rights to NCAA and additional entertainment programs due to the increase of its commercial load. These changes were targeted by mounting viewers' criticism where entertainment programs should be pre-empted for the news coverage, notably when the Philippines was hit by Typhoon Goni (Rolly).^[43] The channel later re-branded as GTV in February 2021.^{[44][45][46][47][48][49]}

To a certain extent, channel drift can also occur in radio, especially music radio: see, for instance, the transition from oldies to classic hits, beautiful music to smooth jazz, and MOR to adult contemporary. In these cases, channel drift occurs when a format's older music becomes less popular or profitable (often due to the fans of that music dying, retiring, and leaving the area, or aging out of advertising demographics) and newer music is inserted into the playlist to draw younger listeners.

• Enshittification
• Key demographic
• Radio homogenization

• Dominic Small (2009). "Channel Changing". Off the Telly. Archived from the original on 23 July 2011.

• Top 5 Networks That Have Sold Their Souls
• Demographic Downfall: Television Executives Missing the Point