Discovery is full of shows all about people looking for things but not discovering them.
It is frustrating. I still haven’t found that damn Grail yet.
Homestead Rescue is cool. That’s about it.
If you think of Discovery like how Christopher Columbus “discovered” America, it does seem fitting. A bunch of bullshit that later lead to genocide and scorched earth. This seems fitting for what they’ve done to HBO and all the other IP they’ve gobbled up and destroyed.
Because around 20 years ago these networks figured out that they can make just as much money pumping out cheap and crappy reality shows as they can by creating expensive and difficult to produce quality programming.
Capitalism at its best
capiTALiSm bREeDS INnOvATIon
And it worked before streaming came around. Now cable subscriptions are in free fall and they don’t know what to do.
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Their YouTube channels are also top notch. Spacetime, Storied, Eons, Terra, Origins, Be Smart… all gold.
Man I love Spacetime and Eons. I have watched almost all of spacetime. I wish there were a spacetime hardcore where they threw as much math at me as possible. Awesome channels
That’s why they want to get rid of it
Shout-out the PBS passport. $5 a month and I get all the antiques roadshow I can handle.
There’s no foxes on Fox News either.
Nor news
Reminds of an observation my dad made once about how neighborhoods are named after what had to cleared away to build there. Oakwoods. Rolling hills. Pleasent view. Etc etc
History channel has Forged in Fire where, for about 30 seconds per episode, they give a quick lesson about the historic weapon the contestants will make.
But yeah, TV is bullshit. Fuck commercials.
I always appreciated that in shows like Pawn Stars and American Pickers, yeah the main point is entertainment, but they actually made an effort to explain the objects and history around them.
Kinda wish they didn’t need to fake the premise of the show so hard to do the history lesson though.
Really we just need more antiques roadshow.
Enshittification time
Cable is dying and they will do whatever it takes to keep it afloat until the last second
I can’t remember the last time I had a cable subscription. It’s been a while.
The last time I had cable was the year of 9/11. And that was only because I plugged in a stray cable on a whim and found that my upstairs apartment tapped into the the cable from the downstairs apartment.
Honestly, with internet, I never saw the point. And internet only cost $10-25/mo back then. Ofc, by about 2012 or so they became wise to that being the trend and started jacking the internet bill rates. And now internet costs the same as cable used to cost, or more, depending.
But I don’t think anyone ever did a GenX is Killing Cable TV headline.
And internet only cost $10-25/mo back then.
True, but minimum wage was like $5 an hour, and broadband connections were like 1.5 Mbps. My current broadband connection is almost a gigabit.
I think that’s around the same time I cut the cord. I moved shortly after 9/11 and didn’t see the point in subscribing. I left my (CRT) TV behind too rather than waste space in the truck for it. I haven’t owned a TV since.
Oh god, I can. Remember TiVo?
I used to have a TiVo
I really miss the TiVo sound effects. And hacking them to add bigger drives.
They really need to pare down the number of channels at this point since they’ve all been bought up by a few companies and all show the exact same shit just at different time slots.
Don’t forget Animal Planet, which hosts shows about tree houses and mermaids now.
There used to be. Turns out you can make more money with reality TV.
Which reminds me. Reality TV isn’t real.
Only temporarily which is why nobody has cable anymore.
Cable was only good when broadcast TV was the alternative. Today it’s entirely obsolete
This reminds me of people who still cling onto the radio for music when there are objectively better alternatives.
Sometimes I can get the weather forecast on The Weather Channel.
Because of capitalism. Because all content must drive quarterly profit ever-higher.
Meanwhile, public broadcasting (PBS) is still putting out great content for families regardless of profitability.
advertising is the most corrosive poison
Yes, they have people I don’t know trying to sell me things I don’t want and can’t afford just so some bigwig could buy a second yacht.
All of those channels were idealistic and naive. The reality of capitalism destroyed them.
Capitalism just takes advantage of human nature. That’s why it has clearly been the most successful system, at least as a starting point, for the overall well being of a nation.
The issue with these channels is that most people just don’t give a fuck about the information. They want to be entertained. Capitalism is just good system that enabled that to be figured out.
Your issue is not with capitalism, but human nature.
That’s a bingo!
So it’s a most or nothing situation? They need to be maximally broadly appealing? That sounds like capitalism to me.
I don’t care if only a certain percentage of people are into these channels. That should be just fine. It is just fine. And I’m not here to guilt anyone because they don’t like watching history shows or whatever else.
The economic model failed the audience of the original versions of these channels. It’s not society as a whole that failed the producers of the channels.
They need to be maximally broadly appealing? That sounds like capitalism to me.
“broadly appealing” means “human nature.” This is my point. Capitalism is just a good system to figure this out. You want stuff that appeals to you, as do I. But that stuff is boring to most other people. Most people like this drivel, unfortunately. You just want a system that caters to you, and your niche interests (ones we likely share, BTW). You just want the stuff you want on what is available to the broad public. . . .But why is that fair to the majority?
And you know what? With things like youtube, podcasts, and streaming (all thanks to capitalism, BTW), all of that is available to you. Just not on inappropriately named cable stations. Why do you care? Do you even get cable? Who does anymore? Even my pre-boomer dad has cut the cord.
Don’t get me wrong. Capitalism certainly has it’s faults. There are certain things, like policing, fire protection, and health care, that simply don’t fit into the mold of capitalism well. Even as a well off American, I’m all for strong socialism for many things, like what we see in Europe.
I just find the concept that “these aren’t the original intent of the channels. . .what a failure of capitalism!” to be kind of funny. Who really cares?
I was 100% watching MTV the other day and they legitimately played some music
Thought I was hallucinating
Are you sure you weren’t smoking something
