A&E and Bravo have abandoned ...
Question: A&E and Bravo have abandoned the highbrow entertainment they were created to showcase for the more lucrative waters of lowest-common-denominator reality shows, but they are just some of the latest examples of this phenomenon. Niche cable nets start out aimed at a targeted audience, often providing the only example of certain types of programming, but after a few years they start moving inexorably to the mainstream. MTV goes from videos to endless
Real World-type shows. VH1 goes from videos to repackaged nostalgia shows. The Nashville Network turns into the National Network then morphs all the way into Spike. The Game Show Network becomes GSN, the Outdoor Life Network (which I hadn't heard of until it made its move) becomes the new ESPN. Even outfits that don't totally change their "mission statement" start adding their own versions of
Survivor or
American Idol. Is the money in niche programming so lousy that these networks have to make the change, or is it a case of their execs having stars in their eyes and wanting to go for the big time?
Answer: An excellent question, and you give some excellent examples. What seems to have happened in many of these cases is that as the clutter of cable options continues to explode, each network is looking for a brand identity to differentiate itself from the pack. This has been intensified by channels such as Bravo becoming part of a huge corporate entity such as NBC-Universal. The impetus is to get noticed and attract advertisers, which also means aiming for a younger demographic than those so-called "highbrow" options tend to attract. So when any of these networks manages to produce a breakout show of any sort, the tendency is to milk it, clone it, use it as a tool to brand the network. Sometimes this provides some great entertainment (on Bravo,
Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and
Project Runway, upstaging old stalwarts like
Inside the Actors Studio), and sometimes this results in appalling trash like A&E's
Growing Up Gotti supplanting the likes of
MI-5 and
Horatio Hornblower.
