There is no history on the History channel. There's nothing true on TruTV. There's no music on music television. There's no science on the science channel.

Discovery is full of shows all about people looking for things but not discovering them.

Last time I watched anything like that, probably on netflix, they where looking for pirate gold and actually found it ... buried in a military munitions burial area they couldn't reasonably or legally excavate.
It is frustrating. I still haven't found that damn Grail yet.
- One does have to know the airspeed velocity of an unlaiden swallow.
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.

No truth on truth social

Funny, but true
- The USA FREEDOM Act violates US citizens freedoms and civil liberties.
  
  The "democratic" republic of NK has never been democratic.
  
  Fox News had the motto "Fair and Balanced" for like 20 years, despite being a conservative state propaganda machine.
  
  Turns out you can just lie without consequences!
That’s why they had to call it that.
Also antisocial behavior!

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.

PBS is the only television worth a damn. Incidentally, it is replete with history, documentaries, non-editorial news, music, and science.

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.
So true. PBS has always been a reliable place to find something decent to watch when all else fails I feel. Not to mention no commercials! or very little if any.
It's the tv version of NPR

There's no foxes on Fox News either.

Nor news
Yeah, because they own the rights to the name. If only I ran Fox News.. damn them.
- Today on Fox News
  
  This one is taking a nap in the snow. Was it a good nap? Did they have nice dreams? We'll investigate!

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

Don't forget Animal Planet, which hosts shows about tree houses and mermaids now.

that one pisses me off the most, not to mention that pitbulls and parolees or whatever the fuck its supposed to be. I swear its on every day.

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.

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.
- Oh god, I can. Remember TiVo?
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.

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

Enshittification time

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.

Sometimes I can get the weather forecast on The Weather Channel.

But there are letters on ABC.

Checkmate, atheists.

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.

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
Are you sure it wasn't just the bumpers to rediculousness?

All those examples (except MTV) is David Zaslav hard at work. So glad he's in charge of WB now!

So... No brothers I guess?
Murdoch bought Fox News and History Channel around the same time.

Learning on The Learning Channel (TLC)

That still breaks my heart. There used to be really good shows on that channel.
- my 600lb life

Don't even get me started about the Body Shop.

No bodies I suppose. The old bait and switch.
- I just wanted a couple of them for my own reasons and now I have a lifetime ban from the place.
- Olive oil is made of olives… at least in Italy it is. Anyway, what about baby oil? Better not think about it.

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 use to say television rots the brain, but now it's clear that television just rots.

Nickelodeon wasn't actually a movie theater that cost a nickel per show.

Fox isn't owned or operated by foxes.

ABC is not gum that has already been chewed.

Thank God for Cartoon Network.

There was a time they tried to rebrand as CN and push live action content.

There used to be

True, greed killed it.
- Pure ignorance helped a lot.

Someone should make a channel called boredom.

I think that's Hallmark.
- Jesus I just snorted coke out my nose.🤣
  
  My wife loves that damn channel. But I swear to god if I have to watch another Father Christmas movie I’ll hurl. Fuck Father Christmas. Wait… I might watch “Fucking Father Christmas”

There is no war in Ba Sing Se

There is no socialism on social media

Ah, but is there Sy in Syfy?

No. No there isn’t.

I will never understand that stupid name change...
- For branding. Sci-fi is generic and can’t be trademarked. While SyFy can be trademarked
- Yeah. I think they were trying to be edgy. Or maybe some guy named Sy Fy did the name change while everyone else was on break.
I’m sorry but I just call that the syphilis channel because that’s what pops into my head when I read syfy.

I remember when The Learning Channel had learning on it. Now watching it actively depletes your intellect.

Remember flipping through the channels and stopping on TLC, what's that? Oh just some open testicle surgery. Ugh

There is no Mötorhead on Lemmy

And Beyond 2000 stopped airing in 1999

Its all simple minded commercial fodder. Geared to hold the attention of the slow witted emotion driven masses long enough to throw ads down their psychological throats

There's little to no British content on BBC America.

That's odd, I didn't know that.
Your not missing much. Last time I looked at it there wasn't much more than reality and chat blocks aka cheap lower common denominator stuff

Travel channel and Food network switch content sometimes

And there are no Indians in Indiana.

To the tune of Home Again In Indiana:

There are no Indians, in In-diana Most were removed, through treaties And the Del-a-ware, had no care went to Miss-ou-ri, with ease The Shaw-nee screwed, the Mi-am-i With the treaty, of, Fort Wayne William Hen-ry Harr-i-son versus Te-cumseh The In-dian's loss, became, whitey's gain Now there are no Indians in In-diana